The job posting that wasn’t

Had a great side conversation today during our management seminar, about job postings.  A colleague was looking for ideas on how to post a description of a job without the laundry list approach that tends to the be the usual fare.  I mentioned that a few months ago, I had written up a post that was meant to tackle the issue less by itemizing the skills and responsibilities of the person I wanted in list form, and more by describing actual experiences I expected the person to have had, and to have once they joined us.

It turned out that we didn’t need a UI Developer as we had originally anticipated, so I never posted the job description.  I’m going to send it to her but wanted to post it here to see what people think.  Let me know how this lands.

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Stop Building Websites that Sell Widgets.  Change the World.  Seriously.

Your workplace…
Reading Plus®/Taylor Associates is the leading producer of silent reading assessments and remediation solutions.
We offer unique, patented products, technology, and implementation strategies that build the foundation for academic, vocational, and real-world success.
We are dedicated to producing research-based products that help students of all ages become better silent readers and independent learners.

Your teammates…
We are a passionate group of technologists that work to support the students who use Reading Plus, the teachers who administer it and the Research and Instructional teams who design our products.
We build interfaces that support our core pedagogical intent while gathering metrics to inform design decisions.

Your days…
Daily stand-ups to sync with the rest of the Team.
Working with the Product Group to understand goals and requirements from User Stories.
Using JIRA to organize your workload.
Writing Code.
Working with other developers to make design and engineering decisions.
Writing Unit Tests.
Collaborating in front of a whiteboard.
Checking code into SVN, triggering builds on the Continuous Integration Server and watching your tests pass with flying colors.
Refactoring your code.
Stepping back to plan the next set of interfaces with the big picture in mind.
Writing more code.

Your skills…
* Strong coding of JavaScript, JSON, HTML, CSS
* Cross-browser / cross-platform interface development experience
* Ability to communicate with technical and non-technical teammates
* Strategies for debugging
* Familiarity with JQuery or other JS frameworks

Your education and work experience…
You have a CS degree and at least three years Web development experience, or five or more years producing code and interfaces.  Most of your work has been developing Ajax-driven applications and sites.  You know your way around tools like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.  You understand HCI, and love designing meaningful interfaces that streamline interactions for users.  You know enough about IA, IxD and UX to be able to apply them to your daily work.  Agile development is something you have done before. If we say ‘beep’, you think ‘Responsive Web Design’.

Is that you?  Send your CV, LinkedIn profile, or a link to your portfolio to [email protected], and put “UI Developer” in the subject.

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Would be interesting to compare this with a more standard approach.  Or maybe this isn’t that much of a departure after all…