Are you familiar with the situation when the needs of your business are growing, but there are not enough people to implement them? What to do in this case? Where to look for people with the necessary competencies and is it worth doing this at all?
Since the problem, frankly, is not new, there are already ways to solve it. Some companies resort to an outstaffing scheme and attract specialists from external organizations. Others expand the geography of the search, use the services of recruitment agencies. And still others find people without experience and raise them for themselves.
One of our most serious projects for training systems analysts from scratch was probably the School of Systems Analysis, which was reported by Kirill Kapranov at the last November . However, before entering the project, we decided to conduct an experiment, took a person with no experience and tried to grow out of him a system analyst that meets our requirements. Under the cut - how the analyst was prepared and what eventually came out of this venture.
I met Dasha at organized by Alfa-Bank employees. On the same day, I was offered to become her mentor and conduct an onboarding analyst from scratch. I agreed.
Onboarding started in October. In general, it did not differ much from the onboarding of a system analyst with experience (for more information on the selection, onboarding and development of system analysts at Alfa-Bank, see the report by Svetlana Mikheeva at ). Dasha and I had to go through the same stages - to form a "Plan for 100 days", pass an intermediate assessment and successfully complete the probationary period. However, each stage had its own peculiarities.
Plan for 100 days
For each new analyst, we make a plan for 100 days. It fixes a list of goals for a new employee and metrics for assessing their achievement. But if the goals and metrics for experienced professionals are more or less clear (since there is an accumulated base of plans), then which ones to put analytics from scratch? Well, apart from remembering who and what their names are, what we do here and where you can have a bite to eat.
To answer this question, a meeting was organized with the participation of leads. We formulated expectations from a new analyst in 100 days. And they fixed them in the plan in the form of three blocks - Scrum, Architecture, Analytics.
scrum. Dasha was trained for the product team, and most of our product teams work according to Scrum (taking into account our specifics, of course). Therefore, as a result of the implementation of the plan, we expected the new analyst to understand the terminology and the accepted approach to the development of the Bank's products.
Architecture. Our analysts are "mini-architects", they are engaged in designing the architecture of the future product. It is clear that in 100 days you will not become an architect (even a "mini"). But understanding the principles of corporate architecture, the process of designing applications for a new Internet bank for legal entities and individual entrepreneurs (onboarding took place in the team developing applications for this channel), their structure should take shape.
Analytics. The first two blocks were conditional 10% and 20% of successful completion of the plan for 100 days. The main attention was paid to the development of hard skills - the skill of working with individual modules of master systems and developed applications, the skill of identifying implementation inconsistencies with the stated requirements and writing statements to eliminate them, the skill of maintaining the structure of project documentation and maintaining documentation for different layers of applications. Soft skills that play an important role, for example, when searching for the information the team needs, we also did not ignore. However, it was understood that this was not the fastest business, so more emphasis was placed on the first category of skills.
Within each block, goals and expected results were formulated. For each goal, materials were proposed to help achieve it (recommended literature, internal trainings and other usefulness). Criteria for assessing the achievement of expected results were formulated.
Interim assessment
After a month and a half, we sum up the interim results. The goal is to collect feedback, assess the progress of the new analyst and make adjustments to his onboarding if necessary. An interim assessment was also carried out for Dasha.
Five people participated in the evaluation, all from the onboarding team. Each participant was asked to provide free-form feedback by answering a series of questions. The questions were pretty basic - βHow do you rate Dasha as an analyst? What does she do well and what doesn't she do well? Where should she develop?
It is curious that four out of five people could not give an assessment. So we have identified the following problem. All analytical tasks were assigned to me first, and then I handed over part of it to Dasha. The results of Dasha's work first passed my review, and then reached the team. As a result, all communication between the team and our new analyst was limited to me, the team did not see Dasha as an analyst and could not give feedback on her. Therefore, in the second half of onboarding, we focused on building direct communication between the new analyst and team members (hello soft skills).
End of probation
And now 100 days have passed, we are summing up. Did Dasha manage to fulfill the plan and achieve all her goals? Have we managed to grow an analyst from scratch?
The plan for 100 days was fulfilled by 80%. Feedback was collected from five team members. This time they were able to note the positive aspects in the work of our new analyst and give him recommendations for further development. It is interesting what Dasha noted when summing up. In her opinion, a specialist with experience could complete the plan set before her in a couple of weeks. In my opinion, this is an indicator that Dasha has entered the workflow and clearly understands what knowledge and skills she has acquired during onboarding.
One year later
A year has passed since the end of the trial period. Dasha shows excellent results. She has already participated in the launch of two new products. And now he is engaged in analytics of one of the key modules of the new Internet bank for legal entities and individual entrepreneurs - the correspondence module. Moreover, Dasha is a mentor and onboards a new analyst with experience.
Thanks to the experience gained in growing a systems analyst from scratch, we were able to launch the School of Systems Analysis, train and hire seven more people. Have you had a similar experience in training specialists from scratch? And to what extent, in your opinion, is such an approach to the selection of people with the necessary competencies justified?
Only registered users can participate in the survey. , you are welcome.
Grow specialists from scratch:
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80,0%preferred practice8
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20,0%not worth it, they will use the company as a springboard2
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0,0%long and expensive, outstaff is better0
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0,0%leave the selection of personnel to recruitment agencies0
10 users voted. 3 users abstained.
Source: habr.com