What qualifications should the systems analysis team be looking for when hiring their new ecommerce development team member? Is it more important to know specific languages or to have an aptitude for picking up languages and software packages quickly? How important is it that the person being hired has some basic business understanding? Should all team members possess identical competencies and skills? What personality or character traits are desirable in a systems analyst who will be working in ecommerce development?

“You’ll be happy to know that we made a strong case to management that we should hire a new systems analyst to specialize in ecommerce development,” says Al Falfa, a systems analyst for the multioutlet international chain of Marathon Vitamin Shops. He is meeting with his large team of systems analysts to decide on the qualifications that their new team member should possess. Al continues, saying, “In fact, they were so excited by the possibility of our team helping to move Marathon into an ecommerce strategy that they’ve said we should start our search now and not wait until the fall.”