Searching through job boards, I will see positions for web developers, salesforce admins, marketing managers, UX developers, UI designers, but as I go deeper into the positions, I realize that things are not always that simple. I will see salesforce admin positions with salesforce developer requirements and WordPress developers with React Developer requirements. Is this type of compartmentalization good for job positions? Searching for that one person that can do the work of four people?

3 in 1

When I see companies post a position and it turns out to be three positions in one, I always think back to Final Fantasy XI online. There was this description for the human characters in the game that has stuck with me for a long time. It’s “The humans are good at everything, but they don’t excel at anything”. I think of this anytime I see companies compact many different positions into one position. When I look at it, I think this type of trying to nab someone who does everything will hurt the company overall.

Yes, having a unicorn in the company can be more hurtful to a company in the long term. Let me explain why…a while back I applied for a “WordPress Developer” job with a company…This isn’t the actual job position but is a common thing I see when I see compacted job postings.

Job Requirements

• Design and Build Websites on the CMS WordPress
• Code Custom WordPress Templates and Plugins
• Create Custom Templates from Photoshop / Sketch Files
• Focus on Mobile Design
• PHP / JS / HTML5 / CSS3 / SASS / LESS Knowledge
• AWS and Azure knowledge
• Google Analytics tools (Analytics, Webmaster, Surveys, Tags Manager)
• JSON/API/XML Data Integration
• MVC Frameworks (React, NODEJS, Angular, vueJS)
• Code Management Tools (Git, Bitbucket)
• Knowledge of SEO and Keyword Research and Planning and best practices.
• DNS / DOMAIN configuration, Cloudflare.
• Detail Focused
• Experience managing CRM’s with 10,000+ plus customers such as Pardot, Marketing Cloud, Mailchimp.
• Experiencing developing customer journey mapping.
• Email Marketing Automation QA Optimization.
• Social Media Management and Integration with CRM’s.
• Microsoft Office Suite
• Knowledge of CAN-SPAM Rules, GDRP, Data Protection ACT and 2003 Spam ACT.
• Knowledge of Salesforce, custom fields and objects. Validation Rules, and page layouts.
• Knowledge of bulk data loader and importing mass amounts of data into salesforce custom orgs.
• Salesforce Org Management
• Process Builder, Lightning Components and Apex Triggers and Classes.
• Able to Design and build landing pages in visual force.

Pluses

• Salesforce Certified / Marketing Cloud or Pardot is a Plus
• Project Management
• Developer Workbench

Now as we look through this job position it starts off normal, WordPress knowledge, plugin and theme development. But as you go down you start seeing Email Marketing Automation and even SEO management and beyond that we start getting into Salesforce Admin and even some small Salesforce development. Now I wonder what you are thinking, what is this company offering in terms of all this knowledge? It was around 68 – 72 grand a year. 

Now when we break it down, we see a WordPress developer position according to Indeed is around 25 an hour and according to Glassdoor its around 60,000 a year. Now that job post is above the base pay for a WordPress Developer but when we look at what else the position is asking for which is Salesforce admin / marketing cloud and Pardot expertise, that shoots the position to be around 80,000 a year according to Glassdoor. Now if you also include a Marketing Automation Specialist with email marketing that is another position that according to Glassdoor is around 48,000 a year and according to Indeed it’s around the same. And even including someone as a SEO Specialist that is around 58,000 a year.

Even if you took half of what these positions are paying and added it up it would still come around to 100K a year. Companies that do this hurt their long-term goals. Think of a company like a band, would you hire someone who could play bass, guitar, drums then expect them to perform all of them at once? They could try but it will not work in their favor. The reason why you want someone to excel at maybe one or two jobs is because their attention won’t be divided between multiple massive tasks.

I believe the limit for most people is around 4 tasks at once before they go into overload. And when they are taking on massive projects the last thing a company would want is for things to get convoluted and messy. If companies wanted to optimize further, they would hire more and pay more because investing in workers leads to a better outcome.

Another downside to this type of overload is it can lead to burnout. Burnout is what happens when the workplace stress, increased mental fatigue on someone and just an overall toxic workplace environment. Burnout has gotten to a point where the W.H.O. has actually classified it as a world health problem. Now how could a company avoid burning out someone who has multiple roles? By hiring multiple people to help spread out the work. That way if someone goes on vacation that person isn’t being bothered on their vacation. I have known many who have gone on a vacation but yet they still get emails from work asking them to “deal with this” even though they are supposed to be enjoying a beach and are always in the hotel dealing with clients and managing phone calls and expectations. And if this one person leaves the company it could end up leaving a big hole in the company that could damage it while they try to find someone to fill that missing piece.

More is More

I often get asked why companies feel the need to compartmentalize jobs. I believe the issue came from the 2008 crash when companies had to learn to operate on skeleton crews in order to keep costs down from a failing economy. That mindset hasn’t really been broken because companies could see their overall base expand without the extra cost of hiring additional help and cutting corners even without the recession happening. I have heard from many people over the years that were able to keep their jobs that companies didn’t expand to their original size before the recession but kept their size to the skeleton crew.

In Conclusion

How could this change? I think this would be an overall slow process because we have become so use to not having enough people. I know companies that when they need someone who is good at Salesforce, they hire someone who is good at Salesforce. You know what you know, and you know what you don’t know. And companies need to understand that when you move into hiring someone to fill multiple roles, you have to think to yourself can we actually find someone for this or could we make this two positions in order to speed things up and build a more efficient work structure?