Determining the job specification
The first consideration is whether the job or jobs you are looking to fill are needed for:
A new team duplicating an existing team
An addition to an existing team
A new function in an existing team
A new team with a new function
A demand fluctuation
A discussion with your manager is needed to find out what is required.
The simplest situation—duplicating an existing team—suggests the job and skills specifications, interview questions, and scoring methodology that Human Resources (HR) previously determined are still relevant and useable.
If you are looking to recruit an additional team member for a team that has an unchanged role to perform, you must be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the team, including yourself. The people in the team, and those coming for interview, are not Lego bricks. When you try to assemble them into a working team, you will discover different skill sets, which means the new recruits have to fill in the weaknesses as well as offer the basic skills.
This will require the score sheet to be reviewed in light of the emphasized need for certain skills; those skills may need a higher weighting factor. You will learn about the score sheets in Chapter 3, Conducting the Interview – Questioning and Scoring.
Sometimes you may be looking to expand the capability of an existing team and are looking for new skills. This can come about through innovation in the team's processes, a future need, or your manager's experience of how the present team operates.
This new capability may need new skills, and the HR information will need to be modified to suit this new requirement. Apart from understanding the existing team, you will need to incorporate the new skills requirement into the interview documentation in cooperation with HR.
Finally, a new team with a new function will need all the job and skills specifications, interview questions, and scoring methodology to be created anew.
You may also be recruiting to cover demand fluctuations leading to lower-than-acceptable service levels. An understanding of the demand and team capacity fluctuations is essential to recruit to sustain team performance in those situations.
Whatever is the reason for the recruitment, you can explore the issues through a discussion with your manager and then ensure that HR amends the documentation as needed.
