This is a big issue. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to interview a number of job applicants for open positions in my organization. I learned early on that you

can’t rely on the Skills and Knowledge section of an applicant’s résumé to get an accurate picture of what they can and can’t do. Case in point: Back in the late 1990s my group had a position open that required an exceptionally strong background in computer hardware and networking. The job posting listed “extensive background with computers and networking” as one of the requirements for the position. One of the candidates I interviewed claimed in her résumé to have an extensive background in these areas. In fact, during the interview she claimed to be an expert in the field. I have to admit, her résumé did look impressive.

However, as the interview progressed I began to have some doubts. This person just didn’t speak or act like a true techie, so I decided to give a little test. I asked her to connect an Iomega Jazz drive to the external SCSI port on a workstation. A pretty easy task for an expert, right? Well, she couldn’t do it. In fact, she didn’t even know where to begin. To make a long story short, upper management eventually hired this applicant in spite of my objections. It wasn’t a good situation. She didn’t have the background required and subsequently performed very poorly on the job and eventually quit after only a year. The key problem in this situation was conflicting definitions of a “computer and networking expert.” We define this as someone who could install expansion cards, hard drives, and operating systems as well as set up a computer network. This applicant, on the other hand, had a very different definition. She considered herself to be an expert because she knew how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. She also knew how to log into a network using her username and password. In essence, she was an expert end user, but she was not an expert system administrator, which was what we were looking for.