Read the accompanying article on a day in the work life of Bill Ryan. Then write a job description for the job of customer service agent. Use the exhibits in this chapter to guide you in deciding what information in the story is relevant for job analysis.
1. Does the day diary include sufficient information?
2. Identify the specific information in the article that you found useful.
3. What additional information do you require? How would that information help you?
Pick a teammate (or the instructor will assign one) and exchange job descriptions with your teammate.
1. How similar/different are the two descriptions? You and your teammate started with exactly the same information. What might explain any differences?
2. What process would you go through to understand and minimize the differences?
3. What are some of the relational returns of the job?
Bill Ryan often deals with difficult people. It’s what he gets paid for. He’s one of 30 customer- service agents at Half.com, an online marketplace owned by eBay Inc., the Internet auction company. Like eBay, Half.com attempts to match buyers and sellers in a vast flea market featuring millions of products ranging from trading cards to camcorders. But unlike eBay, there’s no bidding. Half.com lists items only at fixed prices. If you see something you like, pay the price and it’s yours.
The other big difference with eBay is that for most of the products listed on Half.com, there’s no way for buyers and sellers to interact directly. Usually there’s no need to. To make a purchase, buyers use their credit cards or checking accounts to pay Half.com, which then automatically credits the amount to the