Minimum Qualifications: What do they mean?

Minimum Qualifications:What do they mean? Rod Freudenberg, Ph.D. Director, Classified Human Resources

What we’ll discuss… • What is a minimum qualification? • What purposes do they serve? • What standards do they need to meet? • Working with SMEs – What do we bring to the discussion? • What does “Education” represent? • What does “Experience” represent? • Experience “Terms of Art” • Substitution • Other considerations • Special Requirements.

What are they? • AKA: Minimum Requirements, Entry Qualifications, Pre Reqs, Basic Reqs. Etc. • Can be anything: • Education • Experience • License, certification, membership • Completion of training/internship • Skill (typing speed) • Language • Age • Physical Ability (e.g., lifting) • Perceptual Ability (vision, hearing, etc.) • Physical characteristics (e.g., height, weight) • Universal in employment, education, certification, memberships, sports etc.

What purpose do they serve? Proxy for desired minimal competencies • Reading, Writing, Math, Critical Thinking • Technical Knowledge • Opportunity to acquire and demonstrate necessary proficiencies State an expected career path • Rights of passage – pay your dues • Lower level work precedes higher level work • Enable candidates to self-select out or decide whether the job is right for them Selection Efficiency • Eliminate candidates who have a low likelihood of being able to perform the role or tasks. (reduces hiring mistakes) • Eliminate candidates who lack the “foundation” or “readiness” to perform or learn to perform the role or tasks. (save training time) • Eliminate candidates who can not be physically accommodated for the physical environment, conditions, or equipment of the job.

The “Bill Gates Case” of Minimum Quals • Basic Qualifications for Microsoft Software Build Engineer • BA/BS degree in Computer Science • 4 years in the software development field • Could Bill have gotten a job at Microsoft 25 years ago? • (Bill dropped out of Harvard and had no paid experience when he founded Microsoft) • Is this the case for no “minimums”? • Base “minimum” on the exception or outlier?

Are there “true” minimums? No, any combination is possible, but there are practical minimums. True Positives False Positives True Negatives False Negatives

Some general points • There is no exact “minimum” • Tilting the balance between false negatives and false positives is driven by: • Candidate scarcity/abundance • What the “market will bear” • Labor market norms (survey employers) • Criticality of the job • Risk of false positives • Potential adverse impact on underrepresented groups • Risk of false negatives

Reliability and Validity • MQs are first part of the selection process • MQ are considered a “test” under UGESP • Validity and Reliability are necessary considerations • Validity pertains to: • Job relatedness • Differentiates the better from lesser qualified • Reliability pertains to: • Consistency in interpretation • Consistency in application across candidates and across evaluators

Predictive Validity Standing (meta analyses)(Schmidt & Hunter, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 124; Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 86)

First Major Legal Challenge to MQs • Griggs vs. Duke Power • Prior to 1964 CRA, history of Black segregation in Labor Dept (dept having lowest skill, lowest pay) • Post CRA, required HS Diploma (or mental ability testing) for hiring and promotion into other jobs • Adverse Impact established for requirement (proportionately fewer Blacks meeting the requirement) • US Supreme Court in 1971 ruled that businesses must demonstrate requirements are "reasonably related" to the job when adverse impact is established. • Subsequent cases focused on “testing” rather than minimum requirements… (Why?) 10

Recent Legal Development • Tucker Vs. Grossmont (Merit System Case) • Manager (Tucker) was laid off, was met the MQs for a lower position never held, position was filled by an outside candidate from an eligibility list • California State Supreme Court ruled that a laid off employee has preferential rights to a lower level vacant position over an outside candidate provided that the employee meets the qualifications for the vacancy. • Court did not state what “qualified” means • Attorneys have advised reviewing, clarifying, and explicating minimum qualifications 11

SIOP Principles (4th Edition)(Don’t deal with MQs directly but…) “Professional judgment is necessary in setting any cutoff score and typically is based on a rationale that may include such factors as estimated cost benefit ratio, number of vacancies and selection ratio, expectancy of success versus failure, the consequences of failure on the job, performance and diversity goals of the organization, or judgments as to the knowledge, skill, ability, or other characteristics required by the work.” “When cutoff scores are used as a basis for rejecting applicants, the researcher should document their rationale or justification.”

The Law: Education Code 45276 In approving minimum educational and work experience requirements for classified positions, the commission shall insure that such requirements reasonably relate to the duties of the position, as established by the governing board, and that they will admit an adequate field of competition. No requirement may be approved which unduly or unreasonably restricts the field of competition. • We have to be “reasonable” or have a “rationale” (SIOP) • So how do we do this?

But how does the discussion go? Analyst: “What should be the minimum education and experience?” SME: “Oh, I don’t know… How about a bachelors and four years of experience?” Analyst: “Bachelors in what?” SME: “Something related to computers.” Analyst: “Any particular kind of experience?” SME: “In the software development field.”

The Mind of the Subject Matter Expert Not necessarily thinking “minimum”… • Probably hasn’t given this much thought before you asked • Use MQs to raise the performance standard (“Performance sucks, we need to increase the minimum.”) • Self-referential (minimum is what I had) • Other-referential (what my best employee has) • Norm-driven (most who work here have a bachelor’s degree) • Image-drive (all who work here should have a Master’s degree)

How about “pooling” opinions of multiple SMEs? “You can’t take the average of ignorance and get the truth.” - Unknown source

What can we bring to the discussion? • An interpretive framework • Questions • “Feel” for what is appropriate

Utility of a “Framework” • Provide common terminology to increase consistency across analysts and within analysts over ocassions. • MQs as part of the organizational “system” for of the classification structure • MQ consciously define and explicate promotional paths • MQ can help differentiate classes by level and type • Supports compensation in point factor approaches 18

Disclaimer • This is the current LACOE framework • An example • No “officially recognized” or “generally accepted professional principles or practices” here! • None really exist • But we need to open this discussion if we are going to be “reasonable.” So let’s talk…

EDUCATION

What is Education? • Provided by recognized educational institutions • A formal, predetermined progression of the acquisition of general and specialized knowledge, skills, and abilities (curriculum) • Provides evidence of the acquisition of an organized structure of knowledge with relatively few gaps (standards) • Concentrations in specific subject areas provide a broad foundation for assimilating related content that may change, expand, or evolve over time. - “lifelong learning”

Why Require Minimum Education? Proxy for transferable skills: Reading, writing, math Cognitive discipline Broad and structured knowledge Foundation for assimilating new knowledge Experience alone maybe highly relevant but… May be narrow in content and skills Contextual, procedural, and systems-specific 22

Kinds of Education: General & Specific • General Education • Functionally Literate • Elementary skills, basic arithmetic • Stable and consistent subject matter – closed domain • Instructions, forms, labels, signs, diagrams etc. • Literate • Adaptive skills, pre-algebraic math • Varied and changing content – open domain • General office/procedural material and correspondence • Super-Literate • Versatile skills, algebra and beyond • Complex, abstract, varied subject matter – multi-domain • Reports, analyses, representational material • Specific Subject Matter Expertise • Specialized course-work – upper division college

Education Benchmarks • None Required • Functional literacy requirements (literacy testing) • Stable and consistent instructions, forms, labels, signs, diagrams etc. • Interpretive support/redundancy is available • High School Diploma • Face valid sign of basic literacy and numeracy skills • Foundation for on-the-job learning changing job content • NCLB requirement for instructional assistants 24

Education Benchmarks (cont’d) • Two years of college • Core courses in reading, writing, and math skills (super-literacy) • Subject matter may not be relevant (no major) • Reference in “units” (60 semester or 90 quarter) • Associate’s degree or specific courses • Technical or business area • Certifies entry-level preparation for an occupation • A substitution of a given number of college credits in specific subject matter may be used as an “equivalency” (e.g., 15 semester credits in …) 25

Education Benchmarks (cont’d) • Three or more years of college with upper division course work • Bachelor’s degree may not be the labor market norm • College-level subject matter knowledge is required • Broad foundation is needed to keep pace with changing job content • Bachelor’s degree • Entry-level readiness for a professional/managerial career track • Societally recognized right-of-passage to knowledge-based jobs of high responsibility and consequence • Industry and labor market norm 26

Education Benchmarks (cont’d) • Graduate-level course work • Specialized work requiring advanced technical knowledge not provided through experience • The foundation for keeping pace with technical developments in a professional field • The required courses should be specified in type and number. • Reflects admission into a graduate program - evidence of strong academic foundation, academic discipline, and a commitment to an occupational area. • Master’s degree (MA, MS, MBA, MPA, etc.) • Same as above, but is the occupational norm. 27

Education Benchmarks (cont’d) • Professional degree • M.D., PH.D., J.D., BSN, etc. • Associated with specific occupations • May require state licensure or certification • License, Certificate, or other Regulatory Credential • Medicine, nursing, and legal professions; trades, contracting, and building inspection; civil engineering, public safety and law enforcement, teaching, etc. • Sign Language Interpreter 4.0 RID testing standard

MIXING THE MESSAGE: Tag-a-long Phrases • “Or a closely related field” • “Related” to what? How “close” is close enough? • Problems with consistency in application across candidates and across occasions • SMEs will need to assist in application screen • Circumscribe with reference to the duties of the class • “Bachelor’s degree in management, business administration, public administration, or a field of study closely related to the duties and the knowledge requirements of this classification.” • “Preferred” or “Desired” • Nod to SMEs. Value-added but not necessary? A differentiator of better from lesser qualified? • “Preferred over…” “Desired in addition to…” • If preferred or desired, how will it be incorporated into the selection process?

“Exchange Rates”: Training for Education • College course work vs. Trade School Certificates of Completion • Formal Education vs. Completion of training courses and workshops • What is the comparability of time and work investment? • What is the level of rigor required? • Does completion represent exposure or mastery? • Is it possible to not pass?

Education in a Promotional Series • Series: Clerical, Analytic, Administrative/Mgmt • Set entry education level for the entire promotional series to avoid: • A structural barrier (higher education) to advancement • “Dead end” positions resulting for employees not possessing the higher requirement, • Internal promotional pool may be constricted • Increased necessity for “open” recruitments for higher positions in the series 31

EXPERIENCE

What Does Experience Represent? • An individual’s unique developmental acquisition of general and specialized knowledge, enabling competencies and organizational behavior • Experience reflects the opportunity for a person to apply knowledge, learn setting-specific policies, procedures, regulations, and to develop personal work habits and work style. • Experience does not assure any of the above, but without experience, development of work-related competencies cannot be assumed. 33

Dimensions General vs. Specific How much? What kind? What level? In a Promotional Path Internal vs. External Paid vs. Unpaid 34

Kinds of Experience • General • Indicative of the development of general, transferable work competencies such as dependability, attention to detail, interpersonal skills, and other kinds of adaptive organizational behavior. • An entry-level job may require only general experience at a particular “level” (to be discussed later) • Specific • Indicative of the development and application of professional/technical expertise. • Advanced or promotional-level job would require a track record of application of knowledge and opportunity to have accomplished a significant body of work. 35

How Much Experience? What must be mastered by the end of an initial probationary period? What then must be the starting point? What is the duration at which learning diminishes and experience increasingly becomes repetition? 36

Function of… • Procedural complexity. Work involving complex procedures will take longer to master and more experience would be required. • Job-specific skill proficiency learning curve. Work involving the acquisition of complex knowledge and skills will take longer to master and more experience would be required. Time-to-proficiency should be estimated by subject matter experts.

Function of… • Task cycle time. Tasks having short cycle time (completed in hours or days) can be mastered in shorter periods than those with long cycle times (weeks or months). Work involving long term projects may take several years to establish a track-record of performance and accomplishment. • Task variety. Work involving a wide variety of tasks will take longer to be exposed to all of the tasks and mastery will required more experience

Function of… • Business cycle. To be exposed to tasks that are part of a business cycle, the following may apply: • First year -- exposure and familiarity with the tasks; • Second year – demonstrated ability to perform the tasks independently; • Third year – replication and mastery of performance • Additional years – demonstrated navigation through change (changing occupational content) and leadership potential. • Change cycle. For management positions involving managing through changes in technology, business, and economic conditions the periodicity of change may be relevant to minimum time to be exposed to a complete change – stabilization – change cycle.

RULES OF THUMB • One year of experience for entry-level jobs • plus or minus one year depending upon labor market conditions and recruitment necessity. • Three years of experience for promotional positions or non-entry professional classifications • plus or minus one year depending upon labor market conditions and recruitment necessity. • Five years of experience for management level positions • plus or minus two years depending upon labor market conditions and recruitment necessity. • Ten years of experience for senior-level management positions • plus or minus five years depending upon labor market conditions and recruitment necessity.

“Terms of Art”Context of Experience • Line and program • Continuous or cyclical in nature following a production/delivery process. • Creation and delivery service or products to the outside customers of the enterprise. • Staff or functional • Part of the organizational infrastructure of the enterprise and • pertains to the delivery of service or products to internal customers of the enterprise that are enabling to the line operations. • Operational • The physical infrastructure. Examples include: maintenance, plumbing, electrical, moving and transportation. • Systems • The technology systems used by line, staff program and project personnel. • Project • Line or staff depending upon the customer base, • Have beginning, middle, and end phases whereas programs are continuous.

“Terms of Art”Level of Experience • Independent contributor • Works independently or as a member of a team, having no direct responsibility for the work of others. • Lead/directing • Provides work direction and support to others, typically on daily assignments which do not include supervisory duties such as hiring, evaluating and managing performance, disciplinary actions, approving leave. • Facilitation/facilitating • A role of organizing, coordinating, and otherwise enabling cross-functional group effectiveness while having no direct supervisory authority or responsibility.

“Terms of Art”Level of Experience (cont’d) • Supervision/Supervisory • Includes duties such as hiring, evaluating and managing performance, disciplinary actions, approving leave, etc. Generally does not have cost-center budget responsibility or policy making responsibility. • Coordinator/Coordinating • An organizational role of planning and organizing programs, projects, or events bringing disparate groups and services together for specific purposes. • Typically will not have direct supervisory responsibility for all aspects of that which is coordinated. • Typically does not have cost-center budget responsibility. Does not formulate policy.

“Terms of Art”Level of Experience(Cont’d) • Management/Managerial • Responsible for a distinct organizational functional area, • Has cost-center budget responsibility, • Typically involves supervising supervisors in a multi-layered organization • Department-wide policy development. • May report to a director or senior manager

“Terms of Art”Level of Experience(Cont’d) • Director/Senior Management • Responsible for a major subdivision of line operations or agency-wide functional area • Has a budget that rolls-up across sub-unit budgets, • Typically involves managing managers with multi-functional span of control. • Division-wide policy formation. • Executive/Executive Management • The head of the total enterprise or someone who reports directly to the principal executive of the total enterprise • Has Director-level reports. • Enterprise-wide policy formation.

“Terms of Art”Type of Experience • Unskilled/manual • Requires no specialized skill or knowledge. • No pre-training is available or expected. • Work requirements are learned on-the-job. • Office Clerical • Involves performing routine office tasks supporting the general function of the office or managerial position. • Specialized office equipment or software may be involved but not expected upon entry to the class. • Works within rules and procedures without interpreting or making analytic or technical judgments. • Specialized Clerical work involves specific job content acquired through training and experience such as HR Assistant or Accounting Clerk. • Administrative Clerical work contains elements of office clerical and administrative work as defined below. • Secretarial work is office clerical in nature, but organizationally aligned to directly support a specific manager.

“Terms of Art”Level/Type of Experience (cont’d) • Administrative • Involves coordinating or facilitating the delivery of the products or services of the organization without directly providing the service (which may be clerical, technical, trade, or professional) • Performing office duties at a level of independence not expected of clerical staff but not at a professional or managerial level of responsibility for exercising judgment or discretion. • Trade • Having a recognized formal trade progression from novice, journey, master-levels in such fields as carpentry, plumbing, electricity, welding, machining, building inspection, vehicle maintenance, beautician, etc. • Trades are externally defined and may require state licensing.

“Terms of Art”Level/Type of Experience (cont’d) • Technical • Performs tasks that required substantial specialized training that can be obtained through external trade/technical schools or junior colleges. • Similar to a trade but having a less structured certification/regulatory requirements. • Problem solving is typically in a closed system with deterministic cause-effect relationships. • Most problems can be solved through troubleshooting procedures. • Analytic • Work involves handling novel problems, issues, or situations through breaking them down into their elements and determining inter-relationships, forming hypothesis, data collection and analysis, differentiating, aggregating and classifying data on the basis of common themes and characteristics, preparing reports of findings and recommendations. • Problem space is open and non-deterministic, and solutions are probabilistic or based on a weighing of alternatives.

“Terms of Art”Level/Type of Experience (cont’d) • Consulting • Work involves applying technical, analytic, or professional expertise in a service/advisory capacity or in a specialized problem solving capacity • Typically without operational responsibility for the larger function. • Professional • Work performed as a member of a recognized profession having an external association, body of operational principles, membership qualification standards, and code of ethics. • Members of the profession perform duties that require interpretation, and independent judgment in the application of professional principles, practices, and regulations. • A bachelor or advanced degree is granted in the occupational area. Certification or licensing may be required to hold oneself out to the public as an independent practicing professional.

Exchange Rates: Education for Experience • In general, additional years of education may be considered a substitute for experience when education is an alternative (or better) means for acquiring professional/technical expertise. • Year-for-year up to two years. Or Degree substituting for up to two years. • Experience should not substitute for required education. Consider… • Lowering the education requirement • Reevaluating the experience requirement and possibly allow for education substitution.

Minimum Qualifications: What do they mean?