"...5 or 6 bullet points for a performance tester..."

A friend of mine sent me the following question the other day:

Can you give me 5 or 6 bullet points for a performance tester and what we need to tbe looking for when hiring a new person?

Attempting to honor his request for a short list (because I could very easily send a long list, here is what I came up with off the top of my head. Note the things that I would be willing to pay more for in terms of salary. If I didn't say based on salary, then the level I've indicated would required.

1. Can they test (analysis skills, techniques, planning, etc...)
   
   
   
   • intermediate
   
   
   
   


2. Can they model (UCML, UML, various diagrams, concept modeling, etc...)
   
   
   
   • intermediate to advanced based on salary
   
   
   
   


3. Do they know math (probability and statistics)
   
   
   
   • intermediate to advanced based on salary
   
   
   
   


4. Do they know hardware, networks, and application servers (servers, routers, switches, JVMs, configurations, etc...)
   
   
   
   • basic (they know where to find info and what questions to ask)
   
   
   
   


5. Do they know tools (HTTP Spy, Etherial, LoadRunner, Robot, RPT, OpenSTA, etc...)
   
   
   
   • basic to advanced depending on salary
   
   
   
   


6. Can they code (not tool-code, but code-code)
   
   
   
   • basic to advanced depending on salary
   
   
   
   

I know that many of you in the TestingReflections community are performance testers, and I was wondering how you might answer this same question. We had an interesting discussion about this topic at the last WOPR (during the SWOPRs).

Feel free to post below...