What to Look for When Hiring for DevOps Jobs: 24 Pros Reveal Top Hiring Considerations on Stackify, September 5 2017
Alan Zucker
Alan Zucker has over 25 years of experience working in Fortune 100 companies leading projects and large organizations. In 2016, he founded Project Management Essentials to provide training and advisory services.
“When hiring DevOps resources, there are three primary skills to consider…”
Strategic thinking, communications, and technical capabilities.
If the organization is in the early stages of an Agile and/or DevOps transformation, strategic thinking and communications skills are critical. The new resources will play a critical role in charting the overall course of the transformation and influencing the development and operations teams to adopt the new ways of working. Organizations that are well on their way to being more focused on hiring resources with the required technical skills.
DevOps is primarily a cultural and organizational transformation. The strategic view is to focus on people and process before tools. I look for people that talk about understanding the value stream, identifying systemic bottlenecks or waste, building a collaborative environment, or gathering and understanding metrics. These resources are the people that will help lead the transformation. They will guide the organization to optimize the end-to-end value stream rather than optimizing local processes. They see DevOps as not just a tool for technology, but as a way to increase value to the entire business.
In Agile environments, we want resources that are “generalizing specialists.” So, when it comes to technical skills, I look for “T” or “E” shaped resources. “T” shaped resources have a depth of experience in one technical specialty and have a good working knowledge in other areas. “E” shaped resources have a deep expertise in several domains. In other words, l look for people that can play multiple roles and support multiple technologies. The DevOps toolsets are still rapidly emerging and changing, so I also want resources that are inquisitive and comfortable with change.