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Who Are You Going to Hire?© 2008 Max Lent Most Web-related job descriptions demonstrate a disconnect between the needs of companies and the lack of vision on the part corporate executives and hiring managers. This disconnect has its roots in the origins of the Web. During the infancy of the Web, Web sites were so technically difficult to produce that only computer engineers could make them work. A job label was created to encompass everything having to do with publishing Web pages, Webmaster. The label is now considered archaic, although it does still show up in a few job descriptions. The Webmaster was responsible for building and operating a server, designing and publishing Web graphics, developing databases, creating forms, and sometimes creating content. Webmasters were highly technical and usually had computer science and engineering degrees. Content, defined here as words and images, was created by others and submitted to the Webmaster for publication. The Webmaster was the gatekeeper for all published Web information for a company. The results were disastrous and can still be seen on many corporate Web sets, usually small to medium sized businesses. Engineers and computer science grads do not usually possess great communication or graphic design skills. The results were Web sites containing simplistic clip art graphics, poorly written text, and poorer navigation tools. To call these sites amateurish would be a compliment. However, it was a start and the Web had to start somewhere. What was management to do. They didn't understand the Internet or the Web. It was all so new and technically complex that the logical organization to manage it was their information technology (IT) department or group. This was perhaps the first big mistake that corporations made regarding the Web. Information technology is just that, information technology. It is not communication, publicity, advertising, sales, or marketing. What executives didn't get was that information technology was the technical delivery system for publicity, advertising, sales, and marketing. The decision that corporate executives made was the equivalent of having telephone repair technicians initiate, answer, and respond to all corporate telephone calls. To continue the analogy, if someone in marketing wanted to call a customer, they would first contact an IT telephone technologist, give them the message, and give that technologist the responsibility to contact the customer and make the marketing presenation. It may sound ridiculous, but that was what happened to Web content in nearly all corporations and it continues today. What has changed is that the technology has become transparent. It is now possible to train a person to create a Web page in less than a minute and to create a Web site in less than five minutes. I often perform this task as demonstration when lecturing on the topic. Creating, publishing, and managing Web sites has become easier, but what is really important is that IT no longer needs to be the gatekeeper for content. The flow of content from content experts to the Web only passes through an IT department on its way to the Web. IT departments should only be functioning in the role of a supplier of a Web utility just as they manage the set up and installation of word processing and other business software. The role of IT organizations in the context of the Web is to enable other corporate organizations to communicate with customers and other businesses directly without IT intervention. In the early days of telephony all calls were operator assisted. Corporations should no more consider having Web communication require IT intervention than having to contact an operator to make a phone call. When corporations hire new people to handle their corporate Web sites who do they hire? The following is an example copied off of the Web from an organization I will not identify.
I have no doubt that there is a need within the organization that placed this advertisement for someone with some of these skills. However, the job description identifies the organization's lack of understanding of their mission. It also demonstrates their lack of understanding of technology. There is not likely a person living today that meets these requirements. Anyone saying that they have excellent communication and presentation skills is not likely to be an expert in "JSP, Cold Fusion, JAVA, SQL, Relational databases (such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server), JavaScript, HTML editors (Dreamweaver preferred), CSS, Graphics Utilities (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Image Ready, Fireworks, etc." Even more specifically, anyone who is an expert in in Dreamweaver is likely to have a lower skill level in any of the applications mentioned. Have you ever met someone comfortable working in both Unix and Windows? People in these two camps often hate each other. Imagine how much therapy this person would require if they were forced to go to Unix and Windows conferences. If there were such a mythical person as this job description describes, why would they want to work as a low level Web developer within an institution when they could start their own company or become an executive at Microsoft. The header for this position says that they are looking for "...a skilled, energetic Web Developer possessing imagination and vision." In these few words they defined the crux of the problem. In all of the arts there is a spectrum of practitioners. At one end of the spectrum exists the technologists. At the other end of the spectrum are the visionaries. In the art of photography the technologists devote their mental powers to create the perfect image by controlling all of the technical variables available. They experiment with technical processes leading to image creation. Often times, the actual image is not as important to them as how well the image is rendered. The visionaries are characterized as being more involved with conceptualizing the final image than actually producing a tangible image. They care little about the technology except if it can be part of the concept of the image. Images produced by visionaries are often poorly rendered, but wonderfully creative. Photography is just one of many examples of this concept. How many grammaticists produce great literature? How many creative writers are known primarily for their sentence structuring skills? The institution that provided the example may need a visionary or a technician. Even more likely, they probably need both. The job description for the first person they should hire might read something like the following.
Many more companies need the employee described in the second description than the first. Most of the technology described in the first job description could and should be outsourced to an internal IT organization or external service. Most Web hosting services provide many of the services described in the first job description as part of their monthly fees or for a modest fee. Most companies would be better off outsourcing their programming and database needs and focusing the efforts of the internal employee on customer needs assessment and developing new Web-related projects. You might assume that my argument would logically lead to suggesting that sales, marketing, or publicity take on the responsibilities of managing corporate Web sites. The answer is that none of these organizations have the expertise or skills to successfully manage a corporate Web site on their own. I have seen first hand what happens when organizations attempt to wrestle control of the corporate Web site from another organization. If a new organization wins the battle to take over the responsibility for the corporate Web, they will do no better than the first organization, probably worse. Additionally, the bad blood created by the aggressive takeover will prevent those organizations from productively working together. Few organizations are ready to admit this, but Web publishing is an executive level organization on par with sales, marketing, publicity, and IT. In many ways Web publishing is more significant to the welfare of corporations than the other organizations mentioned. In an ideal corporate environment, sales, marketing, publicity, and IT would report to the chief Web officer on all matters that were Web-related. Sales and marketing would support Web publishing by coming up with ways and means of selling product online. Publicity would support Web publishing by adding corporate communication content such as press releases to the Web publishing effort. IT would be a support organization for Web publishing by making the technology work. Why this won't work. Too many corporate executives spend too much time golfing instead of surfing the Web. Most don't have a clue how important the Web is to their business. One major telecommunications CEO I knew about had his administrative assistant print out his emails so that he could read them. Replies were handwritten on the print outs and returned to the administrative assistant for reply. This person was responsible for making strategic decisions for a multibillion dollar company that provided among other things email services. It is impossible to imagine such a person understanding how his customers might use email creatively to increase productivity. That company is now bankrupt, but the CEO has gone on to become the CEO of another technology company. Politics and status quo will prevent all but the most creative of corporations from instantiating a new corporate structure with a chief Web officer reporting to the CEO. No sales executive in their right mind would cede some fraction of their power to a new executive level organization. They would not cede their power unless they had the best interests of the corporation at heart. Power and politics will keep the current executive level organizations as they are. IT will continue to control anything Internet or Web related. Sales will continue to pester IT for applications they cannot afford to implement. Marketing will want larger and glitzier Web sites that IT doesn't know how to afford or implement, and publicity will continue to send out press releases by mail. It's sad, but true. Change is happening and it is being driven by consumers and people like you. Consumers are a noisy raucous outspoken group and now they can speak out through the Web and email. Look at the number of Ihate(fill in the blank).com Web sites that exist. Look at Epinions.com http://www.epinions.com). Look at the user reviews at Amazon http://www.amazon.com. What you will see is more consumers speaking out about what they consume. Other consumers read about what they are interesting in consuming and base their purchases on the advice they obtain from still other consumers.. Before I recently moved I sent out an email message to everyone in my contact database who lives in my geographic area asking for recommendations and horror stories about local movers. I received back dozens of emails with descriptions, good and bad, about local movers. I collected those statements, made them anonymous by only publishing only the initials of the authors and published them to my Web site. I found a great mover and shared my information with lots of friends and colleagues also in the process of moving. Beyond obtaining high quality information about movers and helping others, I moved a number of companies under the magnifying glass of the Web without their knowledge or permission. Many of the moving companies don't have email addresses let alone Web sites, but through my efforts, they became active participants in the Web. Their bottom line is being influenced by the Web in ways thy are unlikely to imagine. Another perspective is that a consumer put companies on the Web whether they wanted to be there or not. When and if the moving companies discover that they are already on the Web who should they hire to create their Web presence? Will they hire someone described as having "Solid Skills/Experience: JSP, Cold Fusion, JAVA, SQL, Relational databases (such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server), JavaScript, HTML editors (Dreamweaver preferred), CSS, Graphics Utilities (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Image Ready, Fireworks, etc.), Microsoft Office. Possess basic knowledge of TCP/IP networking and be comfortable working in both UNIX and Windows environment." Or, should they hire someone who knows how to leverage the positive statements made about them on personal Web sites to drive increased sales and who could outsource the technical needs for a fraction of the cost? With each new generation of Web publishing technology it becomes easier for content experts to publish directly to the Web. The important issues today and for the future deal with changing companies to better meet the needs of consumers through the Web. This requires a vision that is based on more than technology. It requires understanding customer needs and wants. Most importantly, the vision must be based on an understanding of how humans are using the Web. Not the technology underlying the Web, but the Web its self.
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©1995- 2008 Max Lent
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