K-12 IT Management: What to Say in a Job Post

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This is the fifth in a series of posts on Human Resources for Information Technology Managers.

Having identified where you want to post your job opening, you are now faced with what to write in it.

In my experience, most job openings seem to be written by formula, and a dull one at that:

[Insert school here] seeks a (choose adjective(s) here: dynamic, innovative, experienced, creative, etc.] for the position of [insert boring job title here]. [Insert School here] is a [insert adjective(s) here: leading, rigorous, challenging, etc.]  located in [insert chamber of commerce description here, e.g., dynamic, peaceful, affordable, beautiful.] blah, blah, blah.

At this point, the text usually starts to list qualifications, requirements, and job duties which no one person could possibly perform and also lead anything resembling a normal life. You might as well tack on “walks on water and then turns it into wine, heals the sick, gives sight to the blind, and is willing to die a horrible death.”

Despite these unearthly expectations, people still apply for these jobs because (1) it’s a terrible job market and (2) they stop reading after the first couple of items.

But let me be clear: Job  postings are not always about the applicants. Sometimes its about the candidates who see your posting but don’t take action.

Steve Jobs reputedly hired John Scully away from Pepsi by asking him “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” While many people may argue that Scully’s tenure at Apple was a really bad hiring decision, Jobs question was nonetheless one heck of recruiting ploy. The query altered Scully’s mental framework. Knowing how to frame a question, or how to frame a job posting, can make the difference between finding good candidates and great candidates; between the solid and the spectacular.

Consider using different text depending on where you are posting the position. For example, on your school’s web site you may reasonably expect that candidates are interested in K-12 education in your geographical area. You can reasonably infer to use text that is more in keeping with other job postings and overall marketing message of the institution as a whole.

On job boards, especially those frequented by geeks, perhaps you’d like to be a bit more experimental and bold.

You could try issuing a challenge:

  • Think you’re re really smarter than a third grader? Prove it!
  • Did high school suck for you? Make it better.
  • Would you rather fix the computer for some marketing nerd who could care less about you or thirty kids who think you’re the goddess of computerdom?
Or you might try appealing to a candidate’s sense of public purpose and mission:
  • Anyone can make money. Only a few can make lives.
  • American education is broken. Fix it.
  • Would you rather build your resume or build the future?
And the a dash of humor might even be worth a shot:
  • Work for the coolest school this side of Starfleet Academy.
  • Geniuses wanted. The merely brilliant need not apply.
  • Dilbert wishes he had gone to school here.
Another “out-there” idea: A video job posting. Put your posting on Vimeo or You-Tube, following a scripted description of the opening. Don’t have time to make one for a specific job? Consider making one just about working at your school, being sure to involve multiple people (faculty, staff, students) talking about why your school is a great place to be, revealing a bit more about your culture and facilities. Schools aren’t Google, but you can get a sense of what Google’s culture is like from this video:

Getting a Bit More Specific
When you create a job posting, whether somewhat formulaic,”edgy” or something in-between, there are certain elements that it should always contain. In no particular order, be sure to:
  • describe why someone should be interested in your school. What distinguishes you from other schools? How is this particular job going to be better than a similar one in another school? (Tip: substitute a competitor school’s name for your own and see if it still holds true. If so, you have not distinguished yourself.)
  • get a second opinion. Run your posting by a trusted colleague, especially someone from another school, and ask them how they would respond if they saw it online.
  • describe how to take action. Be very clear about the steps candidates should follow to apply including any or all of the following: letter of application and what it should include, a resume or longer curriculum vitae, an online portfolio, and to complete any online application that your school uses.1 Don’t include phone numbers if you don’t want calls. Don’t include personal email addresses but rather one that can be auto-forwarded to whoever is handling your hiring process. Do include physical addresses so applicants can Google your location and get a birds-eye view of it.
  • use an industry-standard job title. Assume that some candidates might find your job by using standard search query terms. Even if your posting is on the creative end of the spectrum, try to include more common terminology to allow for search engines and searching humans to discover the information.
  • keep it short. The posting is not the same as a job description nor is it a reiteration of annual performance objectives. It should be relatively short, 2-3 paragraphs in length. See “walks on water” above.
  • format for the web. Depending on your posting site, you may be able to embed graphics and hyperlinks in the posting. If you can, make strategic use of these to draw attention to your posting and make it convenient for applicants to take action.
What have you found to be useful in creating job postings? Feel free to comment below.
  1. The reason you ask for candidates to complete an application is that it often concludes with a statement indicating that the information in it is true and factual. If you later discover that the candidate lied on the application, that can be grounds for dismissal whereas misrepresentation on a resume may not. ↩

K-12 IT Management: Where to Post Your Jobs

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This is the fourth in a series of posts on Human Resources for Information Technology Managers.

You’ve been informally advertising and building your department’s IT “brand” by word-of-mouth through parents, vendors, and other school visitors and they’re impressed by what they see. You and your colleagues have been participating in listservs, social media, and conferences to further enhance the word on the street about you. You have up-to-date job descriptions and are confident that you have the right positions in place, or will have with your next hire. And you have a job management system to track the hiring process. You’re ready to start recruiting. What’s the next move?

Your Recruiting Strategy depends on several factors:

  • your capacity to read and process letters of application and resumes. The larger your capacity, the broader you can search.
  • the seniority of the position. The more senior the position, the more focused the search needs to be.
  • the amount of time you have to conduct a search. The greater the lead time, the more deliberate the process can be.
  • your budget. Some recruiting efforts are free or low cost. Using search firms will incur fees, usually equivalent to about 1-3 months of the candidate’s starting salary.
  • the “mix” of skills required in the job. Schools sometimes talk about hiring teachers who are “triple threats,” candidates who can teach, coach, and perform dormitory duties. Triple threat candidates in an IT context might be those who can teach one or two classes, provide professional development training to adults, and manage highly technical systems. The more unique the mix, the longer the search may take.
  • academic requirements. I personally think that community colleges can be a great place to look for entry-level personnel, but if the baseline for your job is a bachelor’s degree, don’t even look there.
  • your school’s geographical location. Rural, isolated schools will need to have a broader geographical reach than those located in urban areas.
  • the job market. It is currently an “employers” market, meaning that there are many un- or under-employed potential candidates; however, that is no guarantee that there are a lot of really good candidates.
  • your school’s commitment to affirmative action. Women and certain groups of people of color are underrepresented in IT fields (http://goo.gl/Db3tD). By law, all schools must have statements of non-discrimination in hiring, but this does not mean that de facto discrimination in hiring does not occur, and it can start with your recruiting efforts. If you’re not looking in the right places, you will not find underrepresented candidates.
  • “fit” to culture. In a previous post (http://taffee.edublogs.org/2012/05/14/fit/) I wrote about what people mean when they talk about an employee as being either a “good” or “bad” fit, and how “too much “fit” may not always be a good thing [and] we need the right mix of friction and fit in order to keep the gears of our schools moving smoothly.” If your IT department is highly functional, admired, generally perceived to be on the right course, then you will want to advertise in places where you are more likely to find candidates that will blend with your existing culture. If, on the other hand, your IT department is dysfunctional, stagnating, or in need of re-invention, then looking for non-traditional candidates who can “shake things up” might be a better bet.
Answering these questions should help you decide on how much time, effort, and money you want to invest in finding your next hire. Hiring may be the most important task a manager faces, so in my book you should maximize all of these items, but money dictates that this is not always possible.
The Usual Suspects for Recruiting
  • Print Media. Just say “No!” Since you are recruiting for an IT position, unless there are extenuating circumstances or policy obligations, forego traditional print media.
  • Craig’s List.  Posting to something with a huge readership such as Craig’s List will likely inundate you with applications. But it’s affordable and if you have time and capacity to sort through the applicants you may turn up some great people. Be strategic in determining the geographic spread for your posting.
  • General Job Boards such as Monster.com, Indeed.com, and CareerBuilder.com. You will pay a bit more than Craig’s List but reach a broader geographic audience.
  • Government-sponsored Job Boards such as American Job Center and its state affiliates for the unemployed.
  • Specialized IT Job Boards such as Dice, JustTech, 37 signals, The Ladders IT Jobs, Slashdot Jobs will get you to highly technical people, some of whom may be interested in working in schools and (perhaps) a few who are actually qualified to do so.
  • University and Community College Job Boards. Entry-level personnel can be often found in two-year programs be both interested and willing to work at a school, particularly if your school offers some form of tuition-reimbursement or other incentives for them to complete a 4-year degree.
  • Social Networks. Use both your personal and school-based social networks including the usual suspects, Linkedin and Facebook’s Social Jobs Partnership, but also smaller groups such as Nings, blogs, and other sites frequented by you and others in your school community.
  • School Association Job Boards. NAIS and their state/regional affiliates. You’ll need an account with the National Association of Independent Schools, but its part of your membership fee. Likewise, look to the National Association of Girls Schools, the Council for American Private Education. and others.
  • Professional Listservs and IT Association Job Boards. My personal favorites are the BAISNet (SF Bay Area) and ISED-L (national, independent schools) listservs, and the ISTE job site. Please add a comment about your own favorites.
  • Underrepresented Candidates Job Boards such as Mentor.net, Women in Technology, Systers, POCIS (Northern California People of Color in Independent Schools EdNet), National Minority Employment Network, LatPro (Latin American, bilingual candidates), The Black Collegian, Saludos (Hispanic professionals), Diversity Jobs, Native American Jobs, and others.
  • Hyper-local News Job Boards, such as those run by AOL Patch, Everyblock, DNA Info (New York and Chicago), Daily Voice (CT, MA, RI), OutsideIn, see others listed by the Columbia College of Journalism. The jury is out on whether or not hyper-local web sites will be economically viable, so use them while you can.
  • School and Alumni Web Site. Listed last because your school’s web site is (a) both obvious and (b) likely to be seen only by candidates who are looking in your specific region or at your particular school, so they are finding you, not the other way around. When you do use your school and alumni web sites, be consistent when you post, keep the information current, and make the ad copy something that a reader can confidently forward to friends.
The Unusual Suspects
  • Former employees. Perhaps this should be in the category of “usual suspects,” but it has been my experience that when someone leaves a school or company little effort is expended to stay in touch with them. Yet former employees, especially those you valued can be a fantastic source of referrals. They know your school and presumably liked working there. Keep in contact with them, and not just when you need them. Make them part of your schools alumni network.
  • Parents. I’ve mentioned how parents can be given positive impressions of your IT department simply by how it conducts its business and maintains a professional looking operation. Many schools have an technology advisory committee including parent representatives. That is a start, but ask your Development or Advancement office to provide you with the names of parents who are in IT careers and reach out to them. After all, parents have e deeply vested interest in seeing their child’s school be the very best.
  • Places of Worship. Members of the clergy often know who in their congregation is looking for work. Places of worship can also be means for recruiting underrepresented candidates.
  • Geek hangouts, such as computer and electronics stores, computer user groups, Comic-Con, Trekkie conventions, science fiction book clubs, libraries, book stores, and coffee shops. Just as good hocker players skate to where the puck will be, good recruiters know to go to where the geeks and nerds hang out.
  • Senior Centers. Gray hair and gray matter often go together. Senior centers may be great places to find part-time, entry-level help, consultants, and experienced full-time employees who are less interested in money but highly motivated by benefits and a mission-driven organization.
In the end, your best recruiting strategies will cluster around the category of “word of mouth.” It’s important, therefore, to have as many mouths getting the word out as possible. How you do that is dependent upon your personal, professional, and extended networks which is why you need to be constantly expanding and tending to them.

Others in the IT Management series:
Space: The First Frontier
Writing Job Descriptions
Using Technology to Manage Hiring 
What to Say in Job Postings
Screening Resumes and Letters of Application
Phone Screening Applicants

K-12 IT Management: Using Technology to Manage Hiring

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This is the third in a series of posts on Human Resources for Information Technology Managers.

If you have had the pleasure (yes, I mean that) and responsibility for hiring someone, you know that there’s a lot of organization required to do it right, including managing:

  • job descriptions
  • job postings and other recruiting efforts
  • reading and evaluating resumes
  • scheduling interviews
  • making and managing offer and rejection letters
  • handling on-boarding and new employee orientation
  • moving data between various business systems
And as techies, we know that if there’s something that needs organizing, it’s probably a good candidate for using technology to help. And there are a lot of options available for organizations to use that go far beyond spreadsheets and email.
In the commercial sector big players in the field include Taleo (acquired by Oracle), SuccessFactors (recently acquired by SAP), Kenexa (recently acquired by IBM), and ADP (so far not acquired by anyone.) These are expensive, complex systems. Fortunately, there are more affordable, smaller solutions available.
Before going much further, it may be helpful to think about the specific tasks and requirements that a school might need from job management software. (Such software may also be called talent management, applicant tracking, or recruiting management software)
  1. Integration with your current email, document sharing and calendaring systems. There will be letters of application, resumes, recommendations, interview questions, interview results, and other documents that will need to be shared among a variety of people. You will want a robust file permission system so that confidential documents are treated appropriately and deleted or archived according to school policies. Automatic routing of emails to the right people at the right time can save a lot of manual oversight. There will be phone screening calls, interviews, and other deadlines and meetings to manage. Ideally, this will be happen seamlessly through your existing calendaring and scheduling application.
  2. Integration with web applications, job boards, and social media. You may be using social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to communicate with your school community. Wouldn’t it be great if your job management software could automatically post to these services on your behalf? Similarly, the ideal solution would also post job openings and updates to your school’s web site. Finally, there are probably several job sites you use to advertise your position. Integration with big job sites such as Monster.com and Craig’s List are likely to be part of some systems, but postings to smaller boards such as NAIS or POCIS will not be a standard part of such offerings. Colleges and universities often have systems that share openings with one another. It would be ideal if your system could email an opening or fill out and online form to targeted higher education institution, search firms,  and area newspapers.
  3. Integration with your school’s HR Management system. If your HR or Payroll management system is from a larger software company, they may offer a talent management module.  Some HR departments want to track all applications whereas others wish to track only those candidates who are hired. At the very least, most HR departments require that candidates complete an application in addition to submitting a resume and letter of introduction, so look for a system that support web-based job applications.
  4. Support for multimedia. More and more candidates are submitting or being required to submit videos, portfolios, and other multimedia could take a lot of disk space and, of course, leaves open the possibility of incompatible file formats. Your system should be able support multiple media types. In the case of IT candidates, it is not too much to ask them to submit their files in a given format. In the case of faculty, you may wish to be more lenient and be able to convert their files to something viewable by all necessary personnel.
  5. SIS and other systems. In the case of teachers, especially mid-year hires, it may be helpful to simply be able to replace one teacher with the new hire’s name in your Student Information System and transfer ownership of class folders and other work-related files.
  6. Auto-replies and updates for candidates. Candidates often feel like they are throwing their information into black-holes. Treat them as professionals and worthy of respect. They may represent a future colleague, and all represent people who will remember how they are treated by you.
  7. Resume scoring. If you are a school with a lot of openings and a lot of applicants, you may want software that pre-sifts resumes on your behalf, based on searching for key-words and scoring resumes accordingly. I personally think that this is overkill for most independent schools, but I could see its utility in very large school districts.
Products that Work with Google Apps
Longtime readers know that I am a big supporter of Google Apps for schools. In that spirit I offer some job management software systems that purport to integrate, in various degrees, with Google Applications.
If you are a Google Apps user, here are several systems you may wish to consider:
In smaller schools, IT departments may hire infrequently, but chances are that your school hires a number of people each year. So, IT Managers, if you make the job easier for yourself you will also be investing in technology that will pay dividends for others across the school. Come on, you’re techies. You know you want to use tech to manage this.

K-12 IT Management: Job Descriptions

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Important Note: Job descriptions should be reviewed by your school’s HR Department and/or legal counsel.

I may be in a minority of managers who actually likes to write job descriptions.

Some people think that job descriptions are obsolete. Such critics point out that job descriptions:

  1. take valuable manager time to create,
  2. are often unread by the people they apply to, and
  3. rapidly fall of-ouf-date.

But the problem is not with job descriptions per se, but with the process used to create them. While it is important what the job description says, more important is what the job description does. And what a job description should do is force you to think about your IT department’s structure, the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and abilities needed to make it function, delegation of duties, cross-training, and the flexibility to change and evolve with new technologies and institutional needs.

The Job Analysis

In a previous series of posts (see The Goldilocks Number) I wrote about the variables that are entailed in determining the appropriate number of staff for an IT department. For the sake of this post, we’ll assume that those decisions have been vetted and you ready to move to hiring.

Before writing the job description it is helpful to conduct a job analysis. In the case of a replacement hire, you may already have much of the information you  need, in your head if not written down. Even so, a savvy manager will take a close look at what their department requires and if it still makes sense to do it the same way. For example, If you have a Senior System Administrator leaving, perhaps some of her or his responsibilities could be given to a more junior member of the team who has earned the right to more challenging work. If the position is incremental, it is it likely that the duties of the new hire have been spread among one or more other staff who will be asked to give them up and provide guidance to the new gal or guy on the block.

The job analysis should try to answer questions such as these 1:

  • What physical and mental activities does the worker undertake?
    • For example, physical tasks such as the ability to lift and install a 40 lb. UPS into a rack, walk a laptop cart from one building to the next, perform basic keyboarding and mousing functions, identify colors, speak clearly on the telephone, or climb a ladder, and mental tasks such as the ability to think clearly under stressful conditions, in confined spaces, create a logic flow chart, or prioritize tasks with little supervision.
  • What qualifications are needed to perform the job?
    • You are in an academic institution and academic credentials carry credibility. It will be a hard sell to hire someone into a technical position who does not have at least a Bachelor’s degree, so think twice about pushing hard for someone lacking such credentials.
    • Technical degrees are no guarantee of competence, so you may want to hedge your bets and not specify particular majors and minors, but rather knowledge of particular technologies.
  • What are the working conditions?
    • Physical spaces such as offices, classrooms, server rooms and network closets. Noisy children. Possibly in front of or in proximity to large audiences.
  • What machinery or equipment is used in the job?
    • Computers, servers, switches, but also copiers, printers, projectors, handheld devices, TVs, and practically anything with an on/off switch and a silicon chip.
  • What are the work duties, tasks, and responsibilities that need to be accomplished?
    • Think about what a typical day and week might be like, as well as periodic duties that happen less frequently, such as building new disk images, checking in new inventory, and start of school workshops.
  • What are the most important outcomes or contributions needed from the position?
    • Measures of success. How do you apply standards of performance to the duties, tasks, and responsibilities listed above?
  • What is the level of compensation associated with positions like this in other companies and schools?
    • It is sometimes hard to get this data. Public schools usually have published salary schedules. In Independent Schools, the Head of School and Business Officer have access to private NAIS salary data.

Do not complete the job analysis in a vacuum. Talk with others in your department especially, if practicable, the a person who leaving the position. Talk with colleagues in other schools. And most of all, talk with your HR department so their is clarity about what you are looking for and that your job description meets its standards.

A Job Description Template

The elements in the job description outlined below are ones that I learned years ago as a manger at MECC, and they continue to be commonly found in many other organizations. Your school may have additional elements.

job description template

(1) Job Title. Titles can be a touchy subject for some people. Employees are often overly fixated on them, particularly in larger organizations where where titles can designate expertise, seniority, and reporting relationships.

In academia, titles have largely been slow to change and are seldom “cutesy.” Among college faculty, titles normally follow a predictable hierarchy: assistant, associate, and full professor. A similar system may hold in staff positions, such as assistant, associate, and senior systems administrator.

IT departments in business, companies that relish creativity, out-of-the-box thinking and the nerd culture, may include titles such as “IT Overlord,” “Network Ninja,” “Help Desk Diva,” or “Technology Kahuna.” The question you need to ask yourself is if such titles fit within your department and school culture, and if such titles will help or hinder staff who leave the school.

Organizations can also opt to have two titles for a position, one that is uses within HR and another used informally within the school and as part of  IT signature files in email and business cards. I used to tell my staff that they could call themselves anything that was non-offensive and was not my title. For more information, see “What’s in a Job Title, from Inc. Magazine.)

(2) Revision Date. Enter the date that you are writing or re-writing the job description. It’s up to you if you wish to enter revision numbers, file locations, and so in this area. Some organizations stipulate that revision dates, revision numbers, and file locations be specified in document footers. In any event, enter data here that will help you remember when the job description was created and revised.

reporting relationships; who they report to and who reports to them

first year or probationary period stipulations

Exempt or non-exempt

(3) Department Name. Probably a no-brainer, unless this is a dual-appointment, in which case there may be even two job descriptions. There may also be “dotted line” relationships, in which there’s a close working relationship with someone other than your formal supervisor. For example, a school’s web master may formally report to an IT manager, but have a close working relationship with the school’s Director of Communications.

(4) Reports to (Title) and (6) Reports to (Name). Enter the name and title of the person to whom this position is reporting. My own personal experience is that reporting to more than one person is often more trouble than it is worth unless there’s a very high level of trust and communication among all of the participants.

(5) Exempt/Non-Exempt. 2 Your HR department will make this determination based on applicable Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations. The FLSA has specific regulations concerning technical employees that apply. See their 2006 opinion and fact sheet. While it may be tempting for schools to try to fit their help desk personnel into the exempt category, you do so at your own risk. As they say in their fact sheet: Job titles do not determine exempt status.  In order for this exemption to apply, an employee’s specific job duties and compensation must meet all the requirements of the Department’s regulations.

(7) Job Summary. This area consists of several sentences that describe the general duties of the position. The language should be simple enough for a lay person to understand, and acronyms should be spelled out. The summary should talk about the why of the position and its place within the organization. Here’s an example of such text from a position I once held:

The Director of Technology is responsible for setting and implementing the overall strategy and operations for the school’s technology curriculum and its computer and telecommunications systems. The Director is also responsible for all administrative and interpersonal aspects of management for the Technology Department including budgeting, staff development, and employee performance.

Resist the temptation to get too specific here. You can drill down in the next section.

(8) Essential Job Duties and Responsibilities. Once again, the language should be simple enough for a lay person to understand, and acronyms explained. This section is characterized by action verbs (see suggestions from Ethan Willing’s list and Post-Doc) followed by nouns and sometime one or more criteria. For example, a system administrator’s job description might include:

Maintain servers to achieve an “uptime” standard of 99+%

This section should not be a list of all of the duties required to fulfill a given goal. It is enough to state up-time of 99+% and leave the specifics of how that is achieved and measured for other documents, such as employee goals or department procedure manuals.

The verbs you use are important as they designate a level of authority and independence of action that can distinguish between entry-level and senior level positions. Take for example the tasks associated with server log files.

  • Entry-level: Verify that logs are being generated for all assigned servers
  • Mid-level: Analyze server log files to identify possible performance problems
  • Senior-level: Direct improvements to server performance based on log files and other data

You may wish to include information about important interactions between the person in this position and others in the department or organization. If the employee is part of a permanent, cross-functional team you can spell it out here. If the employee has one of the aforementioned “dotted line” relationships with another manager, describe it here and use a verb to convey who makes the calls. Perform is much different in tone and intent than negotiate.

IT staff in schools are subject to changes in job routing due to the seasonality of schools. Different work occurs when school is not in session, be it for a few days here and there or extended vacation periods. For example, many schools build new master disk images once a year during the summer. If your IT staff is on a 12 month contract, be sure to factor that into your thinking and writing when completing the job description.

Finally, in this section be sure to include the wiggle-room afforded by other duties as assigned to provide needed flexibility for unanticipated needs.

(9) Educational and Experience Requirements / (10) Education Part 9 is designed to help to set the expectations for what you expect this person to already have as part of their past that gives you confidence that they can do the job you are asking of them in the present and provide them with a platform to build upon for the future. Remember, as minimum qualifications these criteria can help you quickly sort through stacks of resumes and applications.

The first of the qualifications described in this section is education, including technical certifications.

Working in an educational environment, it’s hard to see how a professional IT department could hire anyone (other than an intern) who does not possess at least a Bachelor’s degree. This requirement will eliminate some candidates who may be self-taught technical wizards. And people in technology love to talk about college drop-outs who have had huge success in business. But such people are rate exceptions, and you are not looking to build a company but to staff an IT department. Every other professional position in a school requires a college degree, and you risk denigrating your profession if you do not.

The field in which the degree was granted is less important. Many outstanding school IT professionals do not have technical degrees, but came from the classroom into technology. But that was probably ten to twenty years ago. So the way around a hard and fast rule is to required something like “Bachelor’s degree required. Degree in technology-related field preferred, or equivalent on-the-job experience.”

Certifications are another matter to consider. All of the major equipment and software manufacturers, Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, VM Ware, and so on have certification programs which grant credentials indicating that someone has followed a particular curriculum of study and successfully passed examinations. Such credentials used to demand a premium over other candidates, but with the job market as it is now, and the number of certified people out there, my hunch is that this is less the case.

Schools must also ask themselves about their current computing environment and where it may be in five years. As more services move to the cloud, the need for on-site expertise may become more crucial for networking than for server administration. Even so, some schools are moving to managed, plug and play networks. In theory, this means that as long as your Internet connection is maintained, almost all other services could be cloud based and outsourced, leaving more resources for technology integration or other uses.

(11) Skills and Knowledge. Part 10 identifies the academic and training requirements while Part 11 identifies what the job actually calls for. While you can call for specific skills such as “advanced Excel skills” or “administer Cisco Call Manager” I recommend avoiding brand-specific skills, which can be quickly learned on the job, and instead write “advanced spreadsheet skills” or “administration of Voice Over IP telephone systems.”

(12) Physical Requirements. I don’t think enough managers think about this aspect of the job description. There are aspects of working in an IT department that can be physically demanding, such as lifting heavy equipment, crawling under tables and desks, working in hot server rooms, using precision tools and tiny parts, and so on. Some of these activities are not easy to accommodate in the workplace. Ask yourself if there are certain handicapping conditions, such as blindness, deafness, lack of mobility, limited physical strength or dexterity, that would render it impractical for someone to perform the job. The language in this area could protect you from charges of workplace discrimination under the American Disabilities Act. Your HR department can help assure that any requirements in this area are bona fide occupational qualifications (BFOQ), ”a quality or an attribute that employers are allowed to consider when making decisions on the hiring and retention of employees—qualities that when considered in other contexts would constitute discrimination and thus in violation of civil rights employment law.”

(13) Business Equipment, Systems and/or Tools Required. By this point in the job description this information may seem redundant or self-evident, but it pays to be explicit. In an IT department, people will be working with computers, servers, printers, copiers, and other electronic equipment. Repair technicians will need to use a variety of hand tools and use repair manuals and online resources.

Job Description Maintenance
A study published in the European Journal of Social Sciences of 126 companies found that the majority feel that job descriptions have a positive role to play but too often fall out-of-date and need a regular schedule of updating to remain relevant and helpful to the company. My own personal sense from the listservs I follow indicates that school IT managers are regularly polling one another for suggestions on job descriptions, suggesting that there use remains widespread in schools and that a repository of job descriptions would be of value to this community. Readers are encouraged to add comments to this blog if they know of or would like to start such a repository.

At a minimum, job descriptions should be reviewed annually as part of the employee review process, a process that will be the subject of future posts.

Others in the IT Management series:
Space: The First Frontier
Using Technology to Manage Hiring 
Where to Post Jobs
What to Say in Job Postings
Screening Resumes and Letters of Application
Phone Screening Applicants

  1. see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_analysis, www.job-analysis.net/G000.htm, humanresources.about.com/od/jobdescriptions/g/job_analysis.htm ↩
  2. See also this article: http://nr.nlh1.com/downloadablePremiums/ExemptNonexempt09.pdf ↩

K-12 IT Management: Space – The First Frontier

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The best time to think about new hires for your IT department is when there are no openings, when things are running smoothly, people are performing well, and the fire fighting is at a manageable level. And it starts right in the IT manager’s office and radiates from there to all of the other physical spaces inhabited by or owned  the IT staff, including office spaces, storage areas, wiring closets, computer labs, mobile carts, and all tech installations across the campus.

Each and every school day, dozens of outsiders – parents, vendors, and other campus visitors make their way through the hallways, classrooms, and offices of your school and, consciously or subconsciously, make judgments about what they see. And much of what they see has at least a smattering of technology in it. It might be a classroom projector, an office desktop PC, a computer lab, or the IT offices. On rarer occasions they may get a glimpse of IT’s underbelly in a network closet, server room, or storage area. And what they see will inform their opinion of you and your operation. You want their opinion to work for you (these people really have their act together) rather than against you (helpless, hapless) so that they become part of your candidiate referral process. You want a positive word-of-mouth system working for you at all times, not just when you need it.

Managing Physical Space
I am the first person to acknowledge that IT departments need a lot of “stuff” in order to do their job. Spare computers, parts, tools, consumable supplies such as toner cartridges, extra video adapters, and assembly and tear down areas. IT departments are busy places where multitasking is the norm and neatness and organization sometimes play second fiddle to the needs of the day. Cable management in classrooms and offices? Many IT staff are just happy the devices work. Besides, it’s hard to perform wire management with office desks lacking grommet holes or cable trays! So the rat’s nest of cables, power strips, chargers, and so on pile up under and behind desks, collecting dust and all too frequently getting in the way of workers feet.

But if IT departments wish to be treated as professionals, and more importantly to recruit and retain top IT talent, then they must eschew the look of the mad hobbyist and neighborhood junk shop and look like a place that knows what it is doing and takes pride in all their work, including the details such as wire management, labeled equipment, lean inventories, and a minimum of equipment that is no longer in use. You want to look like a BMW dealer repair facility, not Larry’s Salvage and and Auto Repair Shoppe.

Manage Your Cyberspace, Too
Managers should ask several IT professionals outside of their school to take a critical look at their department’s public-facing web site. You should already be spending a fair amount of time assuring that your user support intranet and documentation is up-to-date. But you may be less rigorous about the information about what is said about your department on the school’s general web site. It’s also possible that you the description is aimed at your school community and not the general public (or IT professional that happens upon it). So ask your friends if what they see depicts an IT department that they would want to work in. What does it say about your priorities, your technical environment, your place in the overall mission of the school? Look, you are not likely to be able to entice people to your school based on salaries and benefits, so what else can you sell them if not mission?

Establishing a reputation as a leader in your field by having your IT manager and staff regularly participate in local, regional, and national listservs and social media. Some may wish to blog. Be helpful to others when you can, and ask for advice from your peer group. Such participation helps to establish credible mindshare among IT professional that will pay dividends later.

Other Benefits
Positive first impressions, followed by first-rate performance, will help your IT department in other ways, such as budget negotiations and vendor relations.

Money is very tight in schools, and people with a reputation for running a tight, well organized ship are in a better place to make a case for funding than those who lack such credibility. It’s always a plus to start with people already on your side as you lay out your case. Knowing what you are doing and how it is furthering the mission of the school is critical.

Similarly, vendors want to work with smart customers. Competent customers can drive a better bargain than those who appear to be clueless. Clueless means more hand holding, more support, more pain for the vendor. And you may even find potential recruits among the ranks of the vendors you use.

Others in the IT Management series:
Writing Job Descriptions
Using Technology to Manage Hiring 
Where to Post Jobs
What to Say in Job Postings
Screening Resumes and Letters of Application
Phone Screening Applicants

Left to Their Own Devices

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Marjorie Scroggy was grading student essay in her classroom during a free period, when Rita from the IT department showed up. “Hi Mrs. S.,” lilted Rita. “I’m here to upgrade your technology.”

“What is it now?” sighed Mrs. Scoggy. “Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something? Can this wait until later? You always come at the most inopportune time. And it seems like we just had some of these so-called upgrades last semester, and I haven’t learned how to use those yet.”

“Sorry, Mrs. S. This is a required upgrade. Security-related, I’m told. It should just take a couple of minutes. But I will need to take your Faber 7.6 from you for  a sec.”

“But that’s what I’m using grade these papers, dear. Can’t you take my older Faber?”

“Sorry again, but this upgrade can only be installed on a version 7 system. All your other Fabers are 6.0 or older.”

“Well, if you say so, Rita” said Mrs. Scroggy. “But hold on. How about if you leave it to me? I can do a simple upgrade, I’m sure. I’ve seen you do it lots of time.”

“No can do, and you know that Mrs. S. We’ve had this conversation before. You don’t have the correct permissions to install updates. And it’s not just you. None of the teachers do. That’s IT policy.”

I know you’re only doing your job, dear,” said Mrs. Scroggy. “I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble for me. Okay. Go ahead.”

Mrs. Scoggy hands Rita her Faber 7.6. Rita took it from her and gently laid it on one of the student desks, knelt it front of it, carefully removed the synthetic rubber from the end of the barrel and placed it on the desk. She then tilted the barrel until a small, perfectly round piece of graphite slipped out, which she then set aside. Next, she produced a small, clear plastic shell labeled Faber8.0, took off its top, and removed a replacement piece of graphite which, to the untrained eye, looked identical to the one she had just had just removed. Rita then slipped the new graphite piece into the barrel, replaced the synthetic rubber stopper, and handed the instrument back to Mrs. Scroggy.”

“There you go, Mrs. S. Faber 8.0 at your service,” said Rita.

“Thanks, I guess” she replied. “Now I can get back to my papers. But what’s this upgrade supposed to do for me that the pervious version could not?”

“I’m not really sure, Mrs. S. I’m sure they’ll go over it with you and the other teachers at a meeting or something. But you know how it is, there’s never enough professional development time. I’ll see what I can find out. Maybe there’s some documentation back in the office. I’ll send you anything I find.”

Rita packed up her things and left classroom as Mrs. Scroggy turned to the next paper on her desk. She only got as far as the second sentence before she saw it: a split infinitive. She brings her Faber 8.0 to bear on the problem, and–nothing happens. She tries again;  still nothing. She puts her head in in her hands. She feels a headache coming on. Since she can’t write IT a note, she pushes back from her desk and starts a trek to their offices. It’s going to be a long day.

To hear some IT managers talk, you would think that their users, their constituents, their customers if you will can’t be trusted to even change the lead in s mechanical pencil, let alone take responsibility for maintaining a complicated device like a computer. Giving adults administrator privileges on their electronic devices would lead to chaos in the form of un-patched operating systems, out-of-date virus definitions, the installation of unapproved software applications, and disk space filled with personal photos, movies, and music. The road to IT hell is paved with good intentions and ridden upon by idiotic motorists who should have taken then bus. Responsible coffee drinkers trust professional baristas and not their sleep-deprived partners to brew their morning cup of joe.

Such IT departments fear based and control oriented, spinning worst possible scenarios as likely rather than exceptional; when the shit hits the fan, it will be their ass on the line, and all fingers will point at them. Like flight controllers who guide planes during take-off and landing they may not be piloting the craft, but they share a deep responsibility to see it liftoff and land safely. Given this, they want as much control as possible.

If K-12 schools were dealing with jets or national secrets I might forgive them such zeal, but thank goodness they are not. Yes, schools deal with sensitive and confidential information that should and must be kept secure, and networks and computers should be properly maintained. But schools are foremost places of learning and teaching and the role of IT is to facilitate rather than to encumber these ends. Given the role that technology plays in the lives of teachers and students it therefore makes sense that IT departments provide a safe haven in which its users to become self-sufficient, confident managers of digital devices. Yes, some users may screw up their computers. Some may inadvertently download a computer virus. And I can practically guarantee that many users will store personal data on their computers. But I also know that if you treat people with respect and given them responsibility that the vast majority will demonstrate that they deserve your trust , including Mrs. Scroggy.

 

How Technology Reveals Bad Teachers

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In January of 2011 I wrote about how technology has altered the pursuit and management of knowledge in all academic disciplines and “that there is virtually nothing happening in academia that does not use technology to great effect in research, publication, creative expression, and collaboration.” I went on call for teachers to embrace responsible and creative uses of technology and not simply bolt it on to a new engine. Having said that, I failed to recognize that the next logical step is to examine the use of technology by classroom teachers as a means of illuminating effective teaching. Conversely, the ineffective use of technology can identify teachers who may need additional professional development, performance improvement plans or, perhaps to even be fired.

New technologies often reflect the practices of the technology they displace. The first cars were dubbed “horseless carriages” after the horse drawn buggies they replaced. The first television shows were stage shows filmed with a fixed camera and broadcast to the audience. Transparency projectors replaced hand written notations on blackboards, and PowerPoint presentations were (and arguably still are) a simple change of format from transparencies to the computer.

While many technologies are ultimately transformative their initial incarnations may not be. As you think about how technology is being used in the classrooms in your school, do you see a Model-T auto, a black and white episode of the Jack Benny Show, and fifty shades of transparencies that have not substantively changes in decades, or do you see fresh, even revolutionary uses of technology that are truly transformative?

Technology  reveals much about how teachers approach teaching and manage their classrooms. For example:

  • Are teachers using technology to “stand and deliver” with the majority of information flow coming from the teacher to the students? What is the real added value of technology in such a class? As for students, their use of technology in such teacher-centric classrooms is often limited to note-taking.
  • Are students using technology to perform electronic seat work such as worksheets or drill and practice games? Worksheets are a hell of a lot cheaper than iPads.
  • Are students off-task, texting one another, checking social media sites, and so on. (Chances are they are also off-task in poorly managed analog classrooms)
  • Does the teacher struggle to get the technology up and running and freak out when it fails? Chances are that they may be disorganized and fretful in other aspects of their teaching such as when textbooks change, the forget a lesson plan at home, or a fire drill interrupts the class period.
  • Even so-called “flipped” classrooms are often simple adaptations of the staid lecture model which values the one-way regurgitation of content via the teachers voice to students, often increasing students’ out-of-school workload. A dull lecture is still a dull lecture and truly gifted lecturers are, in my experience, quite rare.
  • Assessment is probably the most resistant artifact of old teaching models. Technology has made few inroads here. The College Board allows languages students to submit MP3 recordings of the oral portion of the AP foreign language exams (with strict, convoluted security measures attached.) This is an adaptation of their old tape recordings method.  It was big news when the state of Oregon allowed students to use spellcheck in testing situations. (see Driving Nails with a Hammer). But relatively few school are allowing open-computer examinations. (see Why Teachers Don’t Trust Students). It’s like telling students that it is fine to use technology for everything except when it matters.
If you want to find really good teaching, find people who are doing really creative things with technology. Want to find mediocre teaching? Look for adaptive rather than transformative uses of technology.

 

Plagiarize This!

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Have you ever felt like you are fighting a losing battle? It seems to me that many educators feel that way when it comes to student plagiarism. There are so many resources for students to find online and, with a few keystrokes and click of the mouse, they can copy something from a web page and claim it as their own. Teachers feel powerless to determine original authorship.

But what technology giveth, it can taketh away.  And so it is that teachers can use any one of a number of web sites and services that can hold a student’s paper up to the light of billions of comparative Internet searches, looking for plagiarized passages. Like a forensic police officer on CSI, they can turn up the bits of evidence that can prove your guilt.

But going to such ends seem to me to be inconsistent with the values we claim to be trying to instill in children. Values such as honesty and trust. It sticks in my craw the same way as the attitude of  ”guilty until proven innocent” does.

The Internet has changed many thing but no so much our attitudes about plagiarism. I don’t know if this is right or wrong, but at the very least, I believe we should examine our attitudes about copying in the light of contemporary scholarship and creative activity, with a dash of historical context.

  1. In the area of fine arts the idea of copying the masters was encouraged, and indeed some of them (such as Van Gogh) unabashedly based their paintings and drawings on the work of others, while contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol found inspiration and lucre in copying Campbell’s Tomato Soup can.
  2. In literature, notables such as T.S. Elliott, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and H.G. Wells plagiarized. More recently, plagiarism scandals erupted over some of the work of Jayson Blair (NY Times) and Fareed Zakaria (CNN).
  3. Within music, modern technology has enabled a whole means of creative expression that uses “sampling,” the copying of portions of someone else’s recording to re-use it in your own work. This use is seen as entirely legitimate.
  4. The idea of plagiarism is, in some respects, a product of the Western mind. Collectivist societies are more likely to identify thoughts and ideas as belonging to a group rather than to an individual.1
  5. It could be argued that in some areas of inquiry, such as history, it is practically impossible to not plagiarize.  In an online essay entitled “Plagiarism, Technology, and our Changing World,”  Evea Dayan recounts the story of historian Stephen B. Oates who was accused of plagiarizing portions of his Lincoln biography, With Malice Towards None. The accusation of a noted historian and the brouhaha within the academic community surrounding it led to a great deal of soul-searching, including the conclusion that “Many [historians]… while objecting to Oates use of verbatim copying-took the opportunity this event provided to point out that much of history is appropriation.”
For the sake of argument, let’s agree that technology may require us to rethink plagiarism. What can or should be done?
One idea is to teach students how to meaningfully, creatively, and thoughtfully appropriate the content of others.  This is what’s behind a college course offered by University of Pennsylvania professor and award-winning poet Kenneth Goldsmith, whose course “Uncreative Writing” is described as follows:

It’s clear that long-cherished notions of creativity are under attack, eroded by file-sharing, media culture, widespread sampling, and digital replication. How does writing respond to this new environment? This workshop will rise to that challenge by employing strategies of appropriation, replication, plagiarism, piracy, sampling, plundering, as compositional methods. Along the way, we’ll trace the rich history of forgery, frauds, hoaxes, avatars, and impersonations spanning the arts, with a particular emphasis on how they employ language. We’ll see how the modernist notions of chance, procedure, repetition, and the aesthetics of boredom dovetail with popular culture to usurp conventional notions of time, place, and identity, all as expressed linguistically.

What this does not say, but is made clear by Goldsmith in a fascinating interview titled “Did You Footnote?” on NPR’s The Story, is that as students are required to create works made up entirely from that of other people! This same podcast episode also features Professor Cathy N. Davidson of Duke, whose asks her students to work collectively and no-one person assumes responsibility for the finished work. It is owned by the group. Goodbye traditional, individually authored term paper.
At the end of the day I think that educators do a disservice to themselves and their students when they think and talk about plagiarism in absolute, right versus wrong terms. The truth is that like so much in life, reality is more nuanced and gray areas the norm. While it’s true that we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior, intent needs to be part of the discussion. I think you will find that students and teachers will benefit from the conversation. Technology challenges to “think different” – about everything.

 

Here’s the Did You Footnote? podcast.

  1. See  this study of Indonesian students How different are we? understanding and managing plagiarism between east and west  and this an A Different Perspective on Plagiarism, both of which delve into the differences between Eastern and Western thinking about plagiarism ↩