How Fit Are You?
There are plenty of recognizable and relatively accurate standards that measure various types of fitness such as physical, mental, financial, and even cultural fit to an organization or company. Each Armed Service uses an annual or biannual Physical Readiness Test (PRT) to measure the fitness of its soldiers, sailors, marines, and airman; Credit Score agencies and investment portfolios are strong indicators of financial health; IQ tests, standardized testing, and personality tests can quantify both intellectual and mental capacity.
But do you know your Technical Fitness score or even how to find it? The answer is ‘no’ because it has never existed before. There has never been a quantifiable standard in place that would allow for such a determination to be reached and validated across infinite variables.
What is Technical Fitness? Technical Fitness measures your ability to meet the Technical Requirements of ANY job posted in the English language, or to show you the fastest way to ‘Upskill’ to that Job. More formally:
Technical Fitness is how your education, experiences, and skills sets combine to allow you to properly meet and/or exceed the various requirements, activities, and tasks associated with any given job or combination of jobs at any company or enterprise.
OR
Technical Fitness determines if you are qualified to interview for a job or not.
Among many, the primary reason you get hired for a job is because the company believes you are a Technical Fit for the position. That is, you met or exceeded the minimal technical requirements deemed necessary for completing the job’s tasks. The more defined and/or technical the position, the more Technical Fitness is important in the hiring process.
The technical requirements of most job postings are usually prioritized from top to bottom that capture years of experience, education level, area of study, certifications, clearance level, interpersonal skills, and so forth. Combining ALL of these technical requirements gives each posting a Job Technical Fitness level. Technical Skills are on top because the Technical Fitness of the candidate is THE most important factor for any initial job screening. If an engineering and architectural firm needs civil engineers, the candidate MUST be technically fit to meet the job description requirements before any of the other variables such as corporate culture fit and personality traits come into play. I’m sure we are all in agreement that we want our bridges built by technically qualified individuals — I really don’t care about that engineer’s cultural fit score or how ‘socially flexible’ he or she is. Also, if you look closely the individual Job Technical Fitness requirements are a direct correlated to the job’s salary level. No surprise, but almost always the more technical job description, the higher the salary.