Comments on: Screening and Interview Methods to Find the Right SAP Consultant

By: Sayed

Sayed — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:26:09 +0000

I just want to add that it makes the people who feel that they can do a great job and gain experience seems that they have to embellish on their resume to even ge the interview. It is the many skills that the organization asks for. Many of the jobs out there want the SAP to be able to do everything, i.e., Project Manager, Abaper, gather the business requirements, do the mapping, do the training, power user, end user support, configuration, create PI sheets, etc., etc., etc., Suppose the person just has 5 out of the 10 skills the organization is asking for; that person just want a chance. How can the organizations help those just beginning in their careers with SAP? Can you give me a list of organizations that will accept Junior SAP people who on a face-to-face interview can answer your questions, can do some configurations (IMG activities), but do not have the 2-4 full life cycle implementations; 3-8 years experience. This may be the reason for some fraud. Is it hard to ask lower salary rate for those who can do the functional stuff like configurations, and configuring Material Master Data with BOMS, MRPs, QM, WM, etc. and then hire technical guys to deal with most of the implementation. WHAT ABOUT THE NEW PEOPLE>

By: Sayed

Sayed — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:15:25 +0000

I’m new to SAP and have over 10 years in IT and earned my MBA and have a Bachelors of Science degree in Management Information Technology. I studied SAP for 2 years and getting ready to test for certification in SAP PP module. I have studied configurations, creating and configuration materials for various business scenarios: MTS, MTO, REM, Kmat material, variant configurations, etc. I have access to SAP servers 24 hours/7days to practice. I read, breathe, and live SAP. But I do not have any experience. Did I mention I have a background HR; training & development and change management experience. I have worked on quite a few IT projects that are not related to SAP. How do I get my start? Every job I see out there demands a lot of experience. I think it is not fair because the people who has 10 years experience, at one time another had 0 experience. HOW DO I GET MY START. I WOULD LOVE TO SHADOW, BE MENTORED, AND CONTRIBUTE WITH NO PAY. I JUST WANT TO JUMPSTART MY CAREER IN SAP. PLEASE REPLY TO THE ABOVE EMAIL ADDRESS. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

By: John

John — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 21:50:03 +0000

The issue is that, 99.9% of companies out there are only interested in employing experience job seekers. Therefore, candidate with no experience but SAP Certification have no hope of getting any job.
In my opinion, majority of the so called self proclaimed experience SAP Consultant out there, must have bluff at one stage of their career progression to get to that comfort zone of I know it all.
Many of the companies have forgotten or ignore their corporate social responsibility of employing entry level candidate.
HR’s augment is that they might leave for a better job after given them the job experience. There is no doubt about some people, too hard to please ones, but these kinds of individuals you really don’t want them to stick around any way, you will prefer them to leave your organisation, and end up with loyal employees. Employing for a short time projects is out of the question.
HR need to have a good hard look at their employment and training processes and think how they can give back to the society in which they operate.

By: Bill Wood

Bill Wood — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:38:44 +0000

Unfortunately until independents who have actually “paid their dues” start stepping up and educating clients about the widespread fraud nothing will change.

So, I do what I can and have had some success in educating some pretty big clients about some of the fraud and the marketplace is VERY SLOWLY changing a little at a time.

By: jerome mungapen

jerome mungapen — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:07:33 +0000

Great article, I agree whole heartedly that there is an undercurrent of fraud in many Consultant hiring situations, I have seen the bait and switch move personally in the last year, where a different person showed up than the one who took the interview. Not wanting to besmudge names, but this definately seems to be a problem with some offshore companies who have a bunch of h1B guys they’re are trying to staff on projects. An additional fraud is role exageration, i’ve been on projects where i’ve been screening guys who have claimed to have done something on a project I know for certain was completed by someone else. I honestly think the biggest problem are the IT recruitng ans sourcing companies that have shot up in the last 6 years or so. Their goals are not in alignment with the clients. they want to staff the cheapest resource at the highest margin that the client will accept. As an independant consultant I really do not see that these middle men add any value and until client project manager start looking for independants directly or using reputable firms, they will of course be subject to this kind of fraud.

By: Bill Wood

Bill Wood — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 13:39:05 +0000

While I appreciate your comments I do not entirely agree. With many of the consulting firms charging premium rates for “senior” consultants with just 2 or 3 years experience the screening needs to be intense.

Also, most of the screening methods I’ve written about are related to fakes, frauds, and con artists. From that standpoint EVERY SAP consultant, or any IT consultant needs to be carefully evalutaed. If they are frauds they should be exposed.

By: edgarofone

edgarofone — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 06:27:21 +0000

These are great tips for screening quality consultants, especially senior ones, who mostly come for firefighting. These are not for screening consultants army which provides junior consultants without much experience. But these armies still need room to survive and grow. That’s a different story. This is a balance and juggling between what clients, consulting firms, independent consultants, and SAP itself, want.

When we said we started SAP in 1990s, the world was young, more friendly, clients were, yes, rich and naive, and frauds were fewer. Now clients swing to the other end of the pendulum and ask for only the best. Then the “best” come from everywhere.

There should be different playgrounds for different levels of consultants. I remember long ago some big consulting firm had a document which showed that ideally every senior consultant is paired with several junior consultants. I also saw first hand many times that junior or semi-fraud (if we are addicted to the word “fraud”) consultants worked hard and grew to full blown genuine experts.

But for my current project, I will do my screening as hard as I need. Just like an audition. Just like I listen to a violin performance. We need only 5 seconds to know where the violinist stands.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 05 May 2010 08:56:36 +0000

Excellent article, this points me to another issue that I believe there has always been a void in the SAP Consultant world.
Where are the protocols from SAP that governs the conduct of certified SAP Consultant in the market? It seems that basically a consultant has nothing to lose, with regard to his quality of service delivery and will move onto the next client. I have yet to see some kind of control where a SAP Consultant can lose for example his SAP certification for poor system quality service delivery.

By: ansi12

ansi12 — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:58:40 +0000

Amen! Having been the one to do technical screens in SD for many years, many of the points raised resonates. Just like to add couple of annedotes and an observation

- I have never came across resumes that were outright fabrications, I had candidates who crossed the line of resume padding. One claimed to be a whiz when it comes to taxes. When pressed for details, he changed his story to he didn’t do US taxes but is expert in Canadian taxes. I told him I am Canadian and like to talk about couple of issues that SAP didn’t quite get right when it comes to Canadian taxes. He had to admit that he was merely a super user and he watched a consultant configure the various taxes.
Another candidate claim to have implemented repair processing. Again when I told him I spent 3 years implmenting SAP repairs he had to admit that he only did the dcumentation. Crazy part of this is that two weeks after SD team passed on this guy, he show up at the project as the newest MM resource!

Lest this post is deemed as another one on the bandwagon of H1B Asian bashing, one of the two above is a good old American citizen.

Lastly, an observation, when it comes to screening out unsuitable candidates, one must invest the time and effort in doing it properly. I have seen far too many firms write up a script and then ask some non SAP knowlegeable people read it to the candidates. You loose both ways, fakes that gives you the correct buzz word will pass through and good ones may get rejected because he/she answer slightly differently than whoever wrote the answers and the interviewer lacks the background to interpret answers properly.

By: manel hernandez

manel hernandez — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 01:03:57 +0000

Dear Bill, I have written the Critical Sucess factors in the wiki sometime ago because after 12 years experience on SAP i have learned from the adversity and good and bad experiences. I have been in both sides, as Consultant and as client. So let me insist on some of the questions that you make to find out the good consultant. 1) To find somebody that gives a different way to solve the same problem is nice to have. I will also agree on screening some IMG and see how the candidate will react, but you have to admit that even discovering a person with the IMG stamped on their brain, you will find a bad candidate. If you want a good question to make, just ask them WHY they propose this os that. And to answer that they must before understand what is the use of the provided solution they give. I mean that I insist on having consultants that they have the business skills and education as to understand the problem behind and propose a business solution rather than a SAP solution. What is this solution bringing to the performance of the business? I can tell you that some specific times we have decided to use a pencil and a notebook rather than a standard SAP solution, or worst ABAP.
Final question. 2) How can you presume to have the right candidate as you are asking to have a f.ex SAP MM Consultant with ABAP? Is this a joke? A MM Consultant should know among others about the full technics and strategy of purchasing, (which are not in a SAP manual). Are you still considering a SAP Consultant an IT guy? Don´t you think is an area more for organization and business understanding?
Do you drive a car by night without lights? The car and the engine works but….
3) Language skills. This is a funny topic. And it´s funny because when an english speaker with no idea of languages other than English tends to think that others have no idea about everything except him/her. Most of SAP implementation are international roll outs, and behind of many bad implemantations there is a problem of communication originated by somebody who tends to think that people with less skills in English are somehow brainless. A Good Team leader develops its communication skills, by making sure that the communication line is clearly understood. So don´t blame a candidate because their “poor” English, blame yourself for not being able to understand it´s capacity on SAP. Also, I always try to say hello, and some words in the local language, and make sure that any communication made is copied on a paper and distributed.
I am not saying I know everything, in fact the more I know of SAP and Finance the more I think that I have no idea. So as you I am always open to learn from anyone on any new project, and to admit the many thinks I don´t know after this 12 years.
Thank you.

Manel