Do you even know what a BA does?

LinkedIn likes to let me know about jobs that match my profile, but it seems to do it simply on the basis that I live in Madrid, so most of them are of no interest whatsoever.

However, although I am not looking for a permanent position, if a vacancy for a business analyst comes up in Madrid, I like to have a look to see what the local understanding of a BA is.

The latest is for an online travel agency, except they simply said they were an OTA, so I had to figure out for myself whether they meant “Organic Trade Association”, “Orthopaedic Trauma Association”, “Orthodontic Technicians Association” or “Online Trust Alliance”. Of course, it might be that if you don’t already know what the advertisers mean by “OTA”, then they don’t want you to apply.

Here is the stated purpose of the role:

“As a Business Analyst your purpose is to provide functional expertise in defining, clarifying and documenting requirements, testing solutions and implementing them. Taking business ideas and making them a reality.”

I wish LinkedIn had a feature where people could comment on job advertisements.

It sounds to me that they think there is programming and everything else, and they want to hire a BA to handle everything else. This is a sure sign of a company that does not know what a BA does.  I’m not really sure what they mean by the word “implementing”, but to judge only by its position in the sentence above, I suspect they mean either deployment or training or both, but considering the breadth of the stated purpose, I wouldn’t be surprised if it meant programming too.

Perhaps I should hire myself out as a consultant just to explain to companies what business analysis involves. Hint: it involves eliciting, analysing, modelling and stating business needs, not realising and testing technical solutions to those needs.

By the way, as well as doing business analysis, I also write novels, make the world’s best mashed potato, draw cartoons and I am trained to kill with just my thumbs. But if a company wants me to do all of that, then they really have to break out the big bucks, especially if they want me to do the last bit.

However, in my experience, the companies that want a BA who can also plumb in a kitchen sink while reciting all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, rarely do want to pay the big bucks.

The advertisement also says:

“Attractive salary based on experience.”

Which is code for “salary not attractive at all”.