Module Five focuses on interdisciplinary professional positions, which encompass responsibilities that align with more than one professional occupation. These positions are commonly found within scientific, engineering, or mathematical fields and allow for flexible recruitment based on overlapping qualifications.
Key Insights
- Interdisciplinary positions involve duties that draw from multiple professional series, enabling agencies to recruit candidates from more than one academic discipline.
- These positions typically arise within fields such as engineering, science, or mathematics, where there is a high degree of commonality in core education, knowledge, and skills.
- The final classification, including title and series, is determined by the qualifications of the selected candidate and is documented once the position is filled.
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We're going to start on module five of this intermediate position classification course. Module Five: Interdisciplinary Professional Positions.
Interdisciplinary professional positions are module five. Let's look at the learning objectives. In this module, we're gonna explain the rules for classifying interdisciplinary positions.
And we're gonna apply the rules for identifying and classifying interdisciplinary positions. And so what is an interdisciplinary position? An interdisciplinary position involves the duties and responsibilities closely related to more than one professional occupation. The interdisciplinary approach allows agencies to use qualification requirements for multiple professional series to recruit a single position.
An interdisciplinary classification is used principally for positions in mathematical, scientific, or engineering disciplines. And so in layman's terms, if you have an office of engineers and you want, well, let's say an office of engineers and architects, and either an engineer or an architect could perform the duties of that position. And so you would create a position description, an interdisciplinary position description that would allow you to hire either an engineer or an architect.
And so your selection and the title of the position is gonna be based on who you select based on their knowledge and skills that they will apply to their position. And so, because architects and engineers do similar types of work and they are professional positions, you're able to advertise them as interdisciplinary. And then, based on your selection, is what the title would be for the position.
Again, the interdisciplinary concept is based on the fact that a professional occupation represents recognized academic disciplines. And so, nearly all professional positions have positive education requirements. And some of those positive education requirements are similar or core requirements that overlap in a particular occupation or field, like mathematical, scientific, or engineering.
And so let's look at the obvious degree of commonality. The obvious degree of commonality. The core education, knowledge, and experience.
And so a true interdisciplinary position generally falls into one of the following categories. Positions that involve a combination of knowledge and characteristics of two or more professional series. In other words, interdisciplinary positions include some duty characteristics of one profession and some characteristics of another.
However, they have common knowledge, skills, and abilities. Also positions that involve knowledge, characteristic of either of two or more professional series, such as work that is substantially identical to work performed in either a professional occupation or an academic discipline. So as a practical matter, the PD for these positions must state that they are interdisciplinary and show the tentative classification, title, series, and grade for each profession.
The final classification will be based on the qualifications of the employee selected and is recorded on the PD once the position is filled.
