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When Opportunities Knock...

Question: Please help me to make a choice. I have two team members who are in very similar positions. They have similar education backgrounds, similar technical skills and communication skills. They both have the potential to develop into senior engineers. Now there is an opportunity for someone to take on more responsibility, deal with bigger challenges and learn more advanced skills. The one that doesn't get it this time will have to wait around for similar things to come up next time. How should I decide which one to pick this time?

Amiram: Let's start with a disclaimer. If indeed the two engineers are identical in all aspects, then the only way to make a fair decision will be arbitrary or random. However, it is extremely unlikely that two independent persons are identical. Even identical twins aren't identical. Therefore, the only way to make an informed decision is to use more criteria. You have mentioned education, technical skills, communication, potential. What about ratings, teamwork, actual deliverable, published papers, patents, coaching of others, curiosity, ability and willingness to explore, problem solving, elegance of solutions, quality, productivity..

Prepare a table with as many criteria as you need, rate the two engineers 1-5 in each criteria, and if you still have a draw - expand the criteria until you get a satisfactory answer. Otherwise, throw a dice.

Mike: You can deal with this as if you were hiring someone. Look at what the opportunity needs and the job characteristics required for someone to be successful at the position. By matching the candidates against the job requirements, I can almost guarantee that the two people wouldn't come out equally.

In general the people that are busiest are the ones that can take on more responsibilities. So pick the one that produces the most.

Sin-Yaw: The best opportunity a manager can give to an engineer is the freedom to innovate, not an assignment that appears to be popular at the time. The best engineer is the one who out-innovates others and has the tenacity to see things through. If both are good engineers, tell both of them to come up with good ideas and, equally important, a plan to prototype and productize the ideas. You then fund the better plan (not the better idea) and give the "opportunity" you talk about to the other one.

Posted at 10:25PM Apr 20, 2007 by Wen Michelle Lei in Career Development  |  Comments[0]