Hiring Technical People

What Does a "Bad" Decision Look Like on a Candidate's resume?

2007-09-17T13:02:00.000-07:00

In his comment, Gregbo asks what I mean by "bad" judgment.

Here's an incomplete list:

Frequent job changes, at least one job a year for several years
Months of no discernible work or lag times between jobs.
Titles that appear to move up and down the ladder.

There are more, but those are the common ones. Sometimes, people take jobs because they need a paycheck or health insurance (or both). Those people tend to feel as if their jobs are sucking the souls out of them. If you see a resume like that, don't discard it. That candidate wants a good job--and may almost be desperate for a good job.

I once had a job for two weeks. The same week I was hired, I got a call to report to headquarters in another state, where they laid me off. I made a bad decision to take that job. Luckily, the hiring manager at my next job thought it was funny, and didn't consider that small interlude a problem job.

So that's what I mean by a "bad" decision. Candidates can't tell if a company is on the skids, or will cancel the project they got hired for. If you're a hiring manager or a recruiter, you have the opportunity to offer the candidate a great start in your organization. Don't let your prejudices about length of service persuade you to avoid this candidate.

Ask About Salary in the Phone Screen

2007-09-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

In his comment, Justice points to the other side of when to ask salary questions. Too early, and you have the problem outlined in When to Ask About Salary. Too late, and you have Justice's problem.

The way you manage the salary question--which is admittedly the start of the salary negotiation--is in the phone screen. You have a chance to build rapport and to see if this person is worth pursuing. You haven't led this person on, thinking there's a potential offer when you finally realize the candidate and salary don't match. And you're not asking the question out of the blue, when the candidate doesn't know you, and has no rapport with you.

That's why I like the hiring manager to conduct all the phone screens. If you have an HR phone screen or a technical person phone screen, don't ask the salary question until the hiring manager talks to the candidate.

Treat your candidates with respect, and they are then advocates for you and your organization. Asking about salary early--but in the phone screen--is one excellent way to build respect.

New Workshop: Hiring for an Agile Team

2007-09-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks, I've been updating my web pages, which includes (finally) updating my workshops. One of the workshop you might be interested in is Hiring for an Agile Team. Hiring for an agile team can be a bit trickier than for more traditional project teams. The issues of culture, and personal qualities, preferences, and no-technical skills are much more important than in a non-agile team. This workshop is a full day. If you took one of my 1/2 day hiring tutorials at any of the agile conferences, this workshop goes into more depth and explores the combination of questions and auditions that will help make your interviewing and selection successful.

If you want to try this workshop, I'll be facilitating the half-day version at Agile development Practices in December.

Recruiting "Failed" Candidates Posted

2007-09-04T10:06:00.000-07:00

See my article on Recruitingtrends.com, Recruiting "Failed" Candidates. You can't leave comments there, so leave them here.

Deciphering Job Descriptions

2007-08-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

Raven has a very funny take on what job descriptions really mean.

When to Ask About Salary

2007-08-29T08:11:00.000-07:00

Imagine this scenario. You have a number of openings, some for senior positions. Maybe you even work for a large company that's highly attractive for potential candidates. To manage the phone screens and interviews, you send out a pre-interview set of questions. There's a variety of questions, and the last one is about salary.

Stop right there. Do not ask the salary question. Ok, maybe you can ask it of someone with up to 5-8 years of experience. Do not ask the question of an almost-senior person, and certainly not a senior-level person.

Here's why. The senior candidate has compensation in many forms: money and stock are just two obvious forms. More senior people may have more freedom to set strategy, both for their domain and for the business itself. They may have learning opportunities that are not obviously covered in compensation. They might have specific time off or the option to take more vacation. Maybe they get to fly business class for flights of a certain duration. (I do; I wouldn't consider a job that made me fly coach over an ocean.) But senior people are not going to make these demands at the beginning of a salary negotiation. They want to discuss the context of the job with you, before they start asking.

If you ask the salary question before you've built rapport in a phone screen or in an interview, you're telling the potential candidate, "We want to save money on your position." Of course you do. But do you want to save money before you know what the candidate has to offer?

Be smart. Save the salary question for a real-time conversation with a technical hiring manager or a technical person. Too often, the HR folks don't know the value of all the compensation pieces; just the cost.

Salary is a complex issue the more senior the candidate. Don't make it an elimination question for a senior person, unless you really do mean to eliminate people based on salary. And, if you need to make it an elimination question, why are you looking for someone senior?

Dilberterian Job Descriptions

2007-08-24T07:22:00.000-07:00

Read Sidu's Avoiding hell at work by spotting Dilbertian job descriptions.

Sidu's on target. That's why I suggest you do a real job analysis, and write the ad and/or job description with other technical people. People who are not in the industry dumb down the descriptions and ads, and make them worthless for people to filter themselves in or out for your job.

Is the Question You Asked What the Candidate Heard?

2007-08-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

Last week, at the Agile 2007 conference, I ran a tutorial called "Hiring for an Agile Team." As part of the tutorial, I ask people to group themselves into threes, where one person interviews, one is the candidate, and one is the observer.

It never fails. An interviewer thinks they're asking one question, but the candidate hears something else. The longer the question, the more likely the candidate is to answer a different question.

The session went well, but with all the fire alarms, I didn't take my normal notes. I'm paraphrasing here what I think the interviewer asked and what the candidate heard:

Interviewer: Think back on your career. Can you tell me about a time you found yourself challenged? What did you do?

Candidate: Where have I failed?

The interviewer's question isn't bad; it's just a little much. Here's one way to make it more clear:

On your current project, have you noticed any challenges?
This is a closed question, and gives the candidate a chance to think. It's also time-bound to the recent past. And, it doesn't specifically ask for challenges to the candidate.
Assuming the candidate says yes, you can use this question next: "Ok, give me an example." Listen for that answer, and then ask, "Were you able to change the situation that caused the challenges?" Wait for the answer. Assuming a Yes, ask "How?" If a No, ask, "Can you give me an example on this project when you saw a problem and fixed it?"

If necessary, walk the person to the project before the current one.

If you keep your questions short and focused on current or most recent projects, you're more likely to hear an answer to the question you wanted to ask.

Take a More Agile Approach to Hiring

2007-08-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

In Hiring the Best ... , I recommend you hire for today's projects, not for tomorrow's projects.

Now that we are back in a candidate's market, it's even more important to hire the people you need now. You can't tell who you'll need in the future. That "guaranteed" project? I've seen many of them postponed again and again. The plan to hire someone now and make that person a manager in several months? That always takes longer.

A more agile approach says, "Here's what we need to do now. which of the candidates will help us get the work done now?" If these people are good enough to help you finish the work, they're good enough to learn the new work.

Negotiating for Salary

2007-07-31T12:39:00.000-07:00

Diane Danielson in Ask and ye shall receive ... a bad review points us to this post, Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling.

Well, if that isn't a slap in the face, I don't know what is. If you negotiate for a salary that fits for you, you're "not nice." If you don't negotiate, you can lose big over the course of your career.(My opinion: Techies of all stripes tend to have a difficult time negotiating for salary, no matter what their gender.)

Ladies and gentlemen: ALWAYS negotiate for the salary you think you are worth. You may have to negotiate for these things:

More vacation time for the same salary (paid vacation time).
An earlier review time (3 months or 6 months) if you're taking a lower salary than you think you deserve.
More stock, and/or a shorter vesting period.
If the difference is small, other perks such as a guaranteed book allowance, some number of conferences per year.

No one else is in charge of your career except for you. (Yes, in Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management, Esther and I talk about how both the manager and the employee have responsibilities for career development. Your manager will rarely fight to get you more money (except in the obvious cases of discrimination).

To negotiate effectively, be prepared:

What is the job worth the company?
How easy is it for the company to fill the position?
What is the job worth to you?
How easy is it for you to find a new job?

Read Getting to Yes and know your BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement). But don't just accept an offer without negotiating because you want to be nice. Know if that offer reflects what the job is worth and whether it meets your needs.

Audition Type #3: Behavioral Auditions

2007-07-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

A behavioral audition is one where youw ant to see some specific candidate behaviors. Management auditions typically fall into this category. But especially if you're hiring for an agile team, you might want to see how a candidate exhibits behaviors, such as coaching, feedback, how the person participates in a standup meeting or in a retrospective.

If you want to see some specific behaviors, first, return to your job analysis. What are those essential technical and non-technical skills? Can you make a behavioral audition around those skills?

You might want to see if the candidate will be a smooth addition to a team or a disruptive addition. In that case, you ask the candidate to do some work with one or more members of the team. You'll ask the candidate how that work went, and you'll need to debrief the members of your team (with open-ended questions) about what it was like to work with the candidate.

Try a focused conversation for the debrief:

What stood out for you?
Where were you challenged?
What insights do you have about this candidate?
What do you recommend we do with this candidate?

Behavioral auditions are the most difficult to design. In my experience, you can see the behaviors if you use a technical audition, you are likely to see the behaviors you want to see. But to know what you want to see, you've got to do a job analysis.

Audition Type #2: Management Audition

2007-07-27T13:30:00.000-07:00

A management audition is similar to a technical audition, but because the functional skills are so different, and because senior technical people may also require some management capability, I see these as two different kinds of auditions.

As usual, your mileage may vary. Here are some possible management auditions:

Facilitate a meeting
Give a presentation
Analyze some budget information. Don't forget to ask what they would do with that budget and why
Organize a project portfolio
Develop an audition for a manager. (ok, that's slightly evil :-)

If you have other good ideas, please comment away.

Technical Audition for a Business Analyst

2007-07-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

In his comment, John asked about auditions for a business analyst. The audition will vary, depending on the kind of projects you do. Here are some possibilities:

For a more serial lifecycle, you could ask a BA to help elicit requirements. You'd listen to the way the candidate interviewed, if the candidate interrupted the speaker, if the candidate asked meta questions.
For a more agile lifecycle, you could ask the candidate to make user stories from bullet lists of requirements.
For any lifecycle, ask the candidate to explain his or her favorite way to express requirements. Then take a product and ask the candidate to write down the requirements for that product.

Make sure your audition matches your environment. I might not have described something useful for you, so adapt my suggestions.

Audition Type #1: Technical Audition

2007-07-23T15:18:00.000-07:00

If you're thinking about auditions, consider a "technical" audition for any of your open positions. A technical audition provides you a little insight into a candidate's functional skills.

If you're hiring a developer, ask the candidate to extend a design, or find a problem and design a solution. You could ask a tester to test a piece of a product, or a particular set of features.

A particularly good technical audition is one where you always ask the candidates (for a certain role) to perform the same kind of work. Ask each developer to write some kind of code, or ask a tester to test some specific product. (Don't vary the task between candidates.)

You can use these auditions for a phone screen or an in-person interview.

Consider technical auditions the minimum entry point for auditions. You'll learn a lot about a candidate with this audition.

Interviews Are a Candidates's Audition of You

2007-07-11T11:43:00.000-07:00

I'm planning to do a series on audition, and the first one is the idea that every candidate enjoys an audition of the hiring manager, team, and company. That's because every time you organize an interview, ask a question, or do anything at all, the candidate can watch you work. That's an audition.

Time to Start Continuous Recruiting

2007-06-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

At the Better Software tutorial yesterday, several managers said their hardest problem was finding good people. If you haven't started continuous recruiting yet, it's time to start.

Continuous recruiting is not just the "keeping your eyes open" part of recruiting, it requires your (and possibly your team's) active participation. It means you bring a couple of hundred business cards with you to conferences, professional group meetings, they gym--anywhere you might meet people. When you attend conferences or meetings, you always carry job description flyers. You ask where you can post them, or have them announced. And that's just the beginning.

Continuous recruiting is a form of marketing. You're marketing your company and yourself.

Ask yourself why people would find it valuable to work for your company in your group. Have a good story to tell? Write an article. Give a talk (local or at a conference). The more visibility you have, the more likely you are to attract the passive candidates, the ones who are already employed. And the more you provide exposure to your team and company, the more likely you are to help people screen themselves in or out for cultural fit.

Is Your CxO Candidate Any Good?

2007-05-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

I've been working with more and more senior managers (and executive recruiters), helping them assess their CxO candidates (CEO, CIO, CTO, Senior VPs, you name it). By the time someone's made it to the senior management level, they know how to make themselves sound good, so you can't ask the strength/weakness question, even if you wanted to. But you do have other choices.

As with all jobs, the job description is key. Let's assume you care most about strategic planning and the ability to turn those plans into tactics, succession planning, and general management style. Based on those qualities, preferences, and skills, here are some questions you could use.:

"Tell me about your management style when it comes to strategy. Give me a couple of recent examples." Strategic thinking is an ongoing issue for senior managers. If all they do is one off-site every 19 months, they are not managing the strategic direction of the organization. When you ask for a couple of examples, you're allowing people to use last week's Operations Committee meeting, where they readjusted the product roadmap plus the quarterly strategic planning meeting, plus whatever else they have up their sleeves as examples.
Follow up that question with, "Tell me about a time you changed strategic direction. Why did you choose to, how did you choose, and how did you carry out the changes.
"Tell me how you make things happen in your current organization." Some senior managers work through groups of people, some give more specific direction to their managers. This question helps you learn whether this person prefers more group decision-making or one-on-one decision making. You'll need to ask more questions to see if your initial assumption is correct. "So based on what you told me about working with your OpCom, you tend to work more with each manager to set direction, and use the OpCom to bring the group together for information?"
Some very young senior managers haven't had to do succession planning yet. But you can ask this question, "Have you ever planned for any management job's succession? What did you do?" and follow up, if the first answer was a yes with, "Have you ever planned for your succession? What did you do then?"
Asking questions about general management style can be a little tricky. Here are some questions you can consider. "Tell me how you prefer to manage and give me an example." That's so open-ended, you need to be more specific and ask about the particular functional skills, such as giving feedback, coaching, organizing the work, and so on.

When you interview senior managers, do you look for something else? Let me know and I'll post more questions.

10 More Ways to Bomb an Interview

2007-05-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

Over at Employment Digest, there's a post called The top 10 ways to bomb a job interview, aimed at candidates. But hiring managers and HR folks can be just as likely to bomb an interview. Here are my favorite ways:

Change your toddler's diaper while interviewing a candidate. Yes, this happened to me early in my career. The hiring manager changed the poopy diaper during our interview. I like casual workplaces, but that was too much for me. (No, I was not a parent yet.)
Interview a candidate in the lobby. The lobby might have been ok, but the traffic level and the interruption level was quite high.
Interview a candidate in the stairwell. Yes, I sat on concrete stairs in an unheated stairwell, wearing a nice suit when it was below freezing outside. I was shivering about 10 minutes into the interview. When I asked to move someplace inside, my interviewer said, "I can warm you up," and proceeded to hug me from the side. Ooh ick. (I extracted myself and ended the interview shortly.)
When the HR manager starts negotiating about salary and the candidate doesn't even know if he or she wants the job. One of my interviews started with the HR manager. The HR manager must have been under orders to keep salaries down. The first thing he said was, "You make too much money." I said, "Not yet. I'm looking for a raise from you if I come to work here." The conversation went downhill quickly. I left and called the hiring manager from reception, explaining I was leaving. He convinced me to wait 5 minutes, but it was hard to take anything seriously from those folks.
Use a panel interview to interview an extrovert. I do love to speak, so when a group of 6 people tried to interview me in one hour, I took control of the interview. I had a blast. I don't think they learned anything, but I sure did. I interviewed them.
Ask the candidate to sit in an uncomfortable or short chair. One hiring manager kept a short chair in his office, for other people to feel uncomfortable in, because they had to look up. I'm five feet tall; I look up at everyone. I complimented him on his choice of chairs and I thought he was going to have a stroke. (I actually meant it.) I've sat on lab chairs (good luck doing that in a skirt), and plenty of chairs that were too high.
Take the candidate on a walk around the facility without warning that you'll be going through manufacturing areas. Back in the days I wore nice suits and shoes, one hiring manager decided to take me on a plant tour. I was not dressed for the tour, and requested we postpone it. "But we always take people on a plant tour the first interview." "But I'm not wearing the right kind of shoes. I'll destroy my shoes if I walk in here." "What's more important, the right job or your shoes?" "A manager who cares about my safety." I left.
Invite a candidate to interview from 9:30-2:30 and ignore lunch. At 1:15, I asked the current interviewer what the story was about lunch, and he said, "That's not my job." I suggested we talk while I got a sandwich from the cafeteria. He looked worried. "Don't worry; I'll pay." I did, but decided these folks were too flaky.
Making a candidate wait for your staff to interview. I agreed to an 8am interview, because that's when the interviewers could start. I arrived at 7:50, and ended up waiting until 8:45, because no one came into work that early.
Making a candidate wait in the hall until the receptionist arrives. Same interview as above, but not only weren't the interviewers in at work, neither was the receptionist.

Have any more good bombs to share?

Make Your Phone Screens More Effective

2007-05-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a webinar Thursday, May 17 for Kennedy. See Using Behavior Description Questions in Phone Screens. I am expecting to take questions and help people convert their essential technical skill, non-technical skill, and elimination questions into behavior-description questions. I hope you decide to join me.

Exploiting Your Alumni Network

2007-05-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

I'm one of the folks writing a monthly column over at Recruitingtrends.com. My first column is Exploiting—But Not Manipulating—Your Alumni Network. You can't leave comments there, so please do leave them here.

Keep Your Resume Short

2007-04-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

A capable senior manager has been looking for a new job for a couple of months. He's a capable guy, and although two months isn't that long, I was surprised that he's had no nibbles.

Then I saw his resume. His resume was 5 pages long, and had too much detail to read quickly. It also seemed to repeat information from one page to another.

Candidates, remember you don't have much time to impress a hiring manager. Those of you looking for senior management positions--you probably have less time because once the more senior manager takes a look at your resume you may only have 10-15 seconds to impress that manager.

It's ok to have two versions of your resume: the short one that's no more than 3 pages long (one overview page and two reverse chronological pages), and a longer one that you explain is available if people want more detail.

Remember, a resume is a marketing piece. Your job is to whet the hiring manager's appetite, not kill it. Think about how long you really need your resume to be.

Is Your Hiring Strategy Creating a Mono-Culture?

2007-04-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

George Dinwiddie pointed me this post, I got rejected by Google - woe is me. Read through the comments; they are as illuminating as the post. Here's the stated Google hiring strategy, Hiring: The Lake Wobegon Strategy.

I don't see Google's stated practice of hiring above the mean as congruent with what's happening in practice. It looks as if their strategy as implemented only looks for specific functional skills--not domain expertise or the interpersonal skills that really make an environment work. Sure, they may be hiring above the mean in some small ways, but they're creating a mono-culture.

Whether or not my conclusions are correct about Google and their hiring strategy, the one thing you can learn from this is to make sure your hiring strategy does not create a mono-culture. If you look for people who can work all hours of the day and night for months on end, you will hire young people, some of whom do not have the maturity to know when they're creating technical debt. If you ask theoretical computation questions, you'll get people who aced their Theory of Computation classes, but may not know how to release software. The riskier the work, the more diverse a team you need--not a mono-culture. (I discuss this in Successful Project Management.)

We'll have to watch Google (and other companies that hire narrowly), to see what happens. Be aware that the more narrowly you define "smart" for your environment, the more likely you are to build a mono-culture.

Is the Hiring Crunch Headed Your Way?

2007-04-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

On my recent trip to NZ and AU (to speak about project management), I had some informal conversations with people who could not find enough people for their projects.

From my non-scientific survey, it appears that we have started a technical hiring crunch (not enough candidates for positions). Consider people you might not have considered before:

Part-time workers
People over 40. Yes, we can still see and hear. Development is not just a young person's job. :-)
People over 65. Not everyone enjoys retirement.
People who may not have a degree, but have an avocation for software.

I'll be thinking about this for a while, because if we really are headed for a hiring crunch, it will be global this time.

Making Jobs Attractive, Part 6: Market the Job From Offer to first Day

2007-03-25T10:46:00.000-07:00

I realized today I hadn't completed the Making Jobs Attractive series, so here's the final installment.

Even a candidate who's accepted an offer is not an employee. That person is still a candidate, until he or she arrives at work that first day and signs all the paperwork. So make sure you stay in touch with the candidate from the time the candidate accepts your offer until the candidate starts work the first day.

The time between offer and first day can still be a time of investigation for the candidate--one reason I like to have a short time between the offer and the first day. The longer the time between offer and first day, the less likely the candidate will actually start.

Make sure the candidate's office space is ready for a first day. When you make the space ready, you can invite the candidate to come in, look around, see the space. People can visualize themselves working in that space. (I have a whole chapter in Hiring the Best ...--that's how important I think it is.

Consider assigning a buddy to the new employee, to ease the transition. An article I wrote a while ago is How2 Create a Buddy (Informal Mentoring) Program.

If you consistently perform all of these pieces, you will be making your jobs as attractive as they can be.

Curiousity is a Necessary Quality

2007-03-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands. I arrived Sunday afternoon, and my host took me to the Van Abbemuseum, a museum of contemporary art. It was great.

I geeked out in the elevator, however. We started at the top floor and went down to the bottom. The elevator had musical accompaniment. A high-pitched voice started at the top and went down to a lower-pitched voice as we descended the floors. I thought this was great, and when I couldn't hear a break in recording between floors, I decided we'd try a few more combinations. (Luckily, my host had a great sense of humor and wasn't upset by this :-)

We tried a few more combinations of starting at different floors and going up and down so I could reverse engineer the algorithm. I think I understood it. (I'm not sufficiently literate with music description to describe it, sorry.)

This kind of curiosity is necessary for developers and testers. I suspect that what we label geekiness is more often curiosity.