# Can you do that new job?

https://blog.cynexia.com/can-you-do-that-new-job

Author: [Rob Aleck](https://blog.cynexia.com/pages/about) · https://github.com/mnbf9rca · https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertaleck/ · https://family-foqos.app/

Published: 2020-12-22
Categories: Advice


Generally when evaluating someone for a role, I look for 5 things:

1. **Behaviours** - how do they operate in a team? Do they admit to mistakes and learn from them? Do they help others? Communicate and live to their personal values? Are those values ones I want people in the team to live to?
2. **Accountability** - can this person handle the magnitude of the role? Are they able to manage stakeholders of the right level of seniority?
3. **Domain** - how deep is their knowledge of this business, industry, sector etc.? And how deep does it need to be?
4. **Function** - what is their level of skill in this type of role? For example, if hiring a business analyst, how good a business analyst are they?
5. **Organisation** - perhaps summarised as “knowing how things are done around here” - processes, culture etc. - does this person have the knowledge to make things happen?

Obviously, number 1 is a given - no one wants a brilliant jerk on the team. But most people have *some* of each of the others. The question is whether it’s enough to set them up for success in the new role. Usually, I’d expect someone to have strength in 1 or 2 of the others, and to have one or at most two which give headroom to grow as:

- No headroom in role = boring job
- Too many development areas = set up for failure

When a candidate is moving roles internally, they probably have number 5. So a step up to greater accountability, or moving to an entirely new business domain (if the company is big enough) might represent a solid plan. Doing both at once is probably too much for most people.

External candidates probably don’t possess organisational knowledge, so we should assume that’s a growth area. And that means they need to be fairly strong in two of the other areas. In my experience, people usually move company to step up. So i would expect external candidates to have strong domain knowledge and functional skill.