Executive Summery
Recruiting a business analyst requires a through process that will ensure the candidate has a clear understanding of the organizational goals and strategies. The changes in the global business environment mean that every business should be strategic in its operations so as to ensure prudent approach to strategic implementation of programs is achieved. A3 Integral Energy, an Australian state- owned Energy Corporation is one company that has applied prudent and strategic approach to recruitment of its internationally spread number of employees. However, their failure to recruit and retain business analyst has affected their operations as they have traditionally applied external recruitment for a position that requires a candidate with full understanding of the organizational operations and goals. To successfully mitigate this problem, their system analyst should be recruited internally to ensure continuity and growth.
Introduction
The process of recruitment in many organizations has been noted to be a very challenging exercise, particularly if it involves senior positions. This is due to the changes that have taken place in modern business, with technology and globalization leading the pack as some of the main integral parts of the recruitment process (Hor & Keats, 2008). Again, the cycling economic situation also demands that employment criteria also cycles. For example, a booming economy makes it quite difficult to recruit and retain their most priced employees (Hor & Keats, 2008, p.29). During sluggish economic situations, businesses find it difficult to sort the increasingly huge number of applicants for job vacancies; thus the complexity in finding the best candidate among loads of applicants (Hor & Keats, 2008, p.30).
The changing economic situations notwithstanding, the recruitment process must conform to the needed job specifications and company objectives. This means that employers should be in a position to make the most of their hiring process that will reflect their goals and objectives; thus attracting the best candidates for further screening. However, many experts say that this is easier said than done and that many firms avoid the rigor that comes with the new and modern ways of attracting, handling, and maintaining the applicants during the process. A3 Integral Energy, an Australian state-owned Energy Corporation is one company that has applied a prudent and strategic approach to the recruitment of its internationally spread number of employees.
A3 Integral Energy and its Business System Analyst Job Description
A3 Integral Energy is an Australian state-owned energy corporation that âprovides power to over 850,000 homes and business enterprises all over the Greater Western Sydney, the Illawarra, Blue Mountains and Southern Highlandsâ (Hor & Keats, 2008, p.132). Other clients they serve are the people of Queensland as well as other regions that are under the coverage of the National Electricity Market (Hor & Keats, 2008, p.134). Among many employees totaling to about 3000, spread in the entire regions of New South Wales, Brisbane and its headquarters at Huntingwood, Business Analyst comprises one of the most important and critical positions in the corporation. The board takes it upon themselves to participate in the positionâs recruitment process. Although high proportions of Integral Energy employees are in a long-term contracts, they have faced challenges due to the high employee turnover, particularly for the position of Business Analyst in the past, and the difficulty in finding a replacement. This is attributed to the external recruitment process that they have adopted for most of their position, including business analysts.
On many occasions, business failures are attributed to the failures in the requirements in the analysis stage (Satzinger, 2009). These failures are not only looked at in terms of how failure occurs in the capturing of requirements but also fail to understand how the implementation of a new system will affect the overall business strategy of an organization. in other words, failure to understand the new systemsâ functionality affects the organizationâs structure as well as distorting the roles of other units. The business Analystâs role, therefore, is to capture the usage of the business components so as to have an overall understanding of the process (Hass, Vander, & Ziemski, 2008). To get enough information, stakeholders may be interviewed, where examinations of their current operations are monitored to ascertain their efficiency and adaptability, and analyzing the alternative systems used elsewhere, such as other related organizations (Hass, Vander, & Ziemski, 2008). It is usually critical to building models of recruitment in such a position to ensure the proposed system of operations and the present one are fully integrated to ensure a competitive model is established. A skillful analyst should be able to successfully define the problems that the present system is experiencing as well as setting the goals for the proposed new system. However, the problem always comes when an analyst overlooks some aspects of the operations since they are not part of the microsystems (Ebert, 2009).
Applicant Attraction strategy
Recruitment of a business analyst at Integral Energy will comprise designing the job specification to suit the goals and aspirations of the organization. The scope of business analysis is rather wide; hence making many professionals in this field specialize in just one of the areas which comprise business system analysis.
To attract more qualified professionals to apply, the design should be inclined towards a retention strategy. To do this effectively, it is important to advertise the vacancy internally through internal means of communication. Internal advertisement is important in ensuring the existing employees, especially those under the department of business analysis are encouraged to apply, hence allowing them to get opportunities to advance their career (Gundersen, Tinsley & Terpstra, 2006). It significantly helps the organization reduce recruitment costs. The corporation should aim at retaining its best-performing employees by constantly exploring means to improve the recruitment process (Foschi, 2000). For instance, an improvement strategy may entail what criteria of employee rewards scheme and how the employee development is carried out. The use of internal advertisements does not attract large unsolicited applicants.
To ensure appropriate applicants are attracted, the company must be ready to address the specific business and staff needs. Some of the modern attraction points are non-financial in nature. The offers that seem to be more attractive to generation X and Y include flexibility in terms of work arrangements, paid maternity and paternity leave, paid membership of a social club, child care facilities, and many other fringe benefits (Fiske & Taylor, 2001; Correll, Bernard & Paik, 2007). According to Fiske & Taylor (2001), these benefits are critically important in attracting modern and highly skilled workers, especially those at managerial positions.
The value statement of an organization is also important in attracting a valuable business analyst (Ebert, 2009). The value statement should outline statements that encourage integrity, commitment and respect between and among the employees, from the top management to subordinate staff. The value of work collaboration should encourage the workers to adopt a free hand in innovation and developing ideas that are beneficial to them and the organization as well (Ebert, 2009). Khosrowpour (2007) observes that if an organization is not able to instill a culture of innovation within its organizational structure, highly skilled and ambitious employees will not be willing to stay for long as that would mean career stagnation and lack of appreciation.
Explanation and justification Internal Recruitment
It is necessary to take into consideration the several aspects of changes that have taken place in the world of business. Important aspects of the job descriptions are based on the following roles:
Strategic analysis
Any organization would want to set its focused goal in the strategic issues more frequently, particularly in the continuously growing complex business environment in the global world. A business analyst to be chosen needs to have the necessary skills to integrate all the aspects of business operations to match the inherent changes (Stopeck & Heilman, 2005). That is, the suited candidate must be able to grasp the organizational profile as well as its environment in order to make policy choices that may be implemented for the long-term goal of the organization. Once these policy changes are identified, the candidate should be able to communicate these observations and proposals to organizational rank.
Adaptable and Architect
Integral Energy may plan to introduce some proposed changes in order to find a solution to the problems faced by the previous system or approach. These changes may have been revealed by previous strategic analysis. The selected candidate must be in a position to help in the process of implementing these changes by helping in âthe analysis of objectives, processes as well as resources, and more importantly, should be able to suggest ways by which redesign or improvements could be made to suit the necessary requirementsâ (Butler & Geis, 2000, p.48).
To effectively carry out all the duties highlighted above, the business analyst should possess some critical âsoft-skills, particularly those that relate to the energy business, technical aspects of the business (engineering), and the ability to do stakeholders analysis (Butler & Geis, 2000). In addition to soft skills, Blair & Lenton (2001, p.828) states that business analysis is a very important aspect of business lifeline and therefore such areas as business process modeling, that is entailed in the âhard skillsâ category can never be ignored completely. Despite not being an information technology-oriented role, the position requires some skills that are necessary for the development of essential aspects of business development through analysis processes that are central to business growth and expansion (Blair & Lenton (2001, p.829). Some of these elements are the ability to: âredesign core business processes; apply to enable technologies that will provide support to the newly initiated core processes; and finally, ability to manage the desired organizational changeâ (Blair & Lenton (2001, p.829).
System analysis skills
The production, distribution and billing of all energy services at Integral Energy are information technology-oriented. This calls for the need to infuse IT skills and development within the process of recruitment. The candidate must therefore be able to integrate the technical skills in the computing process with overall business analysis. Historically, businesses have faced problems in an attempt to get proper IT integration process, not because they lack highly skilled IT specialists, but because they lack critical analytical skills to enable them to carry technical skills alongside the business model (Hor & Keats, 2008). To effectively play this role, the business analyst should possess both technical and business skills, and shows the practical ability to integrate them to suit the process of business development at Integral Energy. If the candidate is not able to justify his or her practical skills for integrating the technological aspect of the business model, it may prove relatively costly in terms of overall investment costs. Despite the fact that some form of overlap may be experienced in the roles with IT analysts, especially during the development and testing roles, the real responsibility of the business manager should come only in the process of change, as this will lessen the prospects of role duplication (Hor & Keats, 2008). In other words, the business analyst should be brought into focus only and after the technical process has been finished and plans for implementation decided upon. His or her role will be assisting in the strategic analysis of the process of implementation and usage.
Analysis of possible problems Internal Recruitment
Although internal recruitment may be advantageous in terms of simplification of the recruitment process, its weakness can be seen in the fact that some unsolicited less qualified people for the business analystâs position are likely to apply. It is noted that some of the employees may be highly skilled and performs well in their present positions, but are not suitable for a more senior position of the business analyst (Heilman & Okimoto, 2008; Compton & Nankervis, 2009). Consequently, a specific employeeâs series of applications may be rejected by the recruitment team, leading to the notion that the employee is not wanted by the administration or seen as incompetent in his or her current position (Cuddy & Glick, 2004). To mitigate such problems, there should be proper communication to the effect of the recruitment process (Cuddy & Glick, 2004). Secondly, the process for recruitment should be put in a position where the finalists in the final list of candidates are taken through the process of self-assessment, so as to eliminate the notion of business.
Conclusion
Recruiting a competent business analyst at Integral Energy requires a multifaceted approach, where the internally picked candidates are put through the rigorous process of recruitment. The use of an internal recruitment process is favored in this process as this post requires someone with an understanding of the Integral business approach as well as possessing the needed technical skills.
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