Re: Draft version of the IAD job announcement from the IASA TT

Harald,

Perhaps I'm the only one for whom the schedule on this has 
prevented comments: the IETF is not my full-time job and other 
priorities took over the last week or two.  But I have finally 
had the opportunity to browse through the comments today.   I 
find most of them interesting and helpful, but they are also not 
completely consistent.  For example, at least one set of 
comments pointed out the "COO of the IETF" is a statement not 
justified by the draft BCP test and that it has significant 
implications.  Another set indicated approval of that 
terminology, the others did not comment on it.   I think there 
are other, similar, cases.  Still other comments point, I think, 
to a fairly significant change in tone and, in particular, the 
need to better establish the level of this position and its 
relationship to other bodies.   In my personal experience, and 
that of many of the HR and recruiting professionals with whom 
I've had discussions over the years, job descriptions that leave 
too much open encourage applications from inappropriate people 
and, especially for relatively senior positions, actually 
discourage appropriate people from applying.
This is, as some of the commenters pointed out, important.  It 
is important enough, IMO, that it really should represent 
community consensus, especially if the job description cannot be 
checked against a BCP that is still under discussion and 
development.
Given that, and given also that, at least in this case, 
contradictory comments should not, IMO, be taken as "do whatever 
you like", I want to make two very strong suggestions to you and 
the transition team:
(1) Don't just take the comments, figure out what you think they 
mean and how they should be reconciled, rewrite the description 
and send it out.   Instead, post it back to the IETF list for a 
quick review by the community before declaring it as the final 
job description.   My experience is that nothing happens in the 
week before the Xmas holiday anyway: whether you get the job 
description posted on Monday or Thursday is unlikely to make any 
practical difference.  For that reason, I share the skepticism 
of some of the comments about trying to start evaluations, and 
perhaps fill the position, on January 15, but that is another 
issue.
(2) Please review, within the Transition Team and in conjunction 
with whatever budget you are working from, whether the nature of 
this position is such that it would be appropriate to engage 
professional executive search/ recruiting talent to review and 
edit the job description for us even if not to conduct the 
search itself.  Personally, I think I'd be happier with a 
professionally-conducted search, but YMMD (and probably does). 
As others have commented in other ways, we are not looking for 
an administrative assistant here, but someone on whose skills, 
experience, talent, and effectiveness the future and functioning 
of the IETF may critically depend.  To me, at least, several 
aspects of the way in which the description is written scream 
out "amateur job".  That isn't a comment about content, but 
about style of presentation.  But it isn't clear to me that we 
can afford the appearance of amateur jobs: just as an amateurish 
resume can sometimes prevent an otherwise-qualified candidate 
from getting the attention and interviews needed to get a job, 
an amateurish job description may convince people we would like 
to have apply that we don't have our acts together sufficiently 
to be an organization he or she wants to work for or with.
regards,
  john


--On Sunday, December 19, 2004 11:18 AM +0100 Harald Tveit 
Alvestrand <harald(_at_)alvestrand(_dot_)no> wrote:
> Brian, Avri, Allison, Spencer and Adrian: Thank you for your
> feedback!
>
> Kurtis is off on holidays now, so I'll be taking on the job of
> integrating your comments with the text of the announcement.
>
> We're aiming to get it out on Monday (Friday proved
> over-ambitious).
>
> Thanks again!


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