Hiring Technical People

Q&A with the Recruiting Animal

For the recruiter interview series, I had a conversation with the Recruiting Animal:

JR: How long have you been in the recruiting field?
RA: Over ten years.

JR: Do you have any specialties?

RA: I’m a generalist but I have done a number ofsearches for internal auditors in recent years. I have also worked on teams recruiting a wide range of people for large public sector organizations. Years ago, I specialized in technical sales reps for hardware and software companies.

JR: What do you think hiring managers should know about recruiters?

RA: That we go crazy when they push us to bring people in quickly and then drag their feet on the interviews. This is most relevant for large organizations. (JR editorial comment: For smaller companies too! Sigh.) I’ve recruited Audit Managers for large accounting firms and had the partners take so long to schedule the interviews that the candidates were hired by other people before we even got rolling. Some of these people hadn’t even been looking for a new job but once we got them thinking about it they were ready to go.

Here’s the worst example. I once recruited an instructional designer for security software programming. I don’t think there was anyone better in the country. This person lived two thousand miles away but was coming to Toronto for one day on his way to write some certification exams in another city.

The client organization had a rule that candidates had to be interviewed by three people. Only two of the interviewers could make it to the interview on the one day the candidate was in town so the company couldn’t extend an offer. (He was hired a month and a half later but I can’t remember how the problem was resolved).

That’s more of a bureaucratic problem though than merely as scheduling problem.

JR: What do you think candidates should know about recruiters?
RA: Well, they should know that third party recruiters work for the client company. And we don’t like it when they try to claim strengths that they don’t really have.

I was recruiting a Director of HR for a large international resources company. They needed someone who had strong experience in pensions and benefits. Not every HR person is financially oriented but few would admit it.

I had to force them into a corner conversationally in order pin them down and get a clear answer. By that time, I knew that they were feeling hostile toward me and it didn’t endear them to me either. If they don’t have the experience they are going to get knocked out so they might as well do it gracefully.

JR: What do you think internal recruiters should know about external recruiters?
RA: I don’t deal with many internal recruiters. I work directly with hiring managers or with other recruiters on an external recruiting team.

I do have a message for the relationship managers in that situation. Don’t be afraid to go back to the client and ask for more information. Sometimes these guys don’t want to look dumb so they don’t ask too many questions and we have to start the search with minimal information.

I guess that’s a recommendation for recruiters who have a deep knowledge of a certain field. They have more of a chance of understanding the requirements without coaching.

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Recruiting Animal does a talk show, The Recruiting Animal Show. If you’re a recruiter or a hiring manager who’s interested in recruiting, give it a listen.

Add commentMay 16th, 2008

Entry Filed under: recruiter interview

Using Your Network

I found my first job with the help of an on-campus recruiter, and with a local Boston-area recruiter. I found my second job through the newspaper. I’ve found all my other jobs (all of them, including my consulting engagements) via my network, which does include recruiters. That’s about 25 years of jobs.

Louise Fletcher has a great post about companies responding to online applicants, Is there Anybody Alive Out There? Sure, companies are not responding, so what’s a candidate to do? Network.

Candidates: Let me echo Louise’s advice: If you’re not on LinkedIn, join now. Stop reading and go there, join, fill out at least part of your profile, and then come back here. Find the people you’ve worked with before, invite them. Recommend a few of them. The more you recommend, the more likely they are to recommend you. (I’m not affiliated with LinkedIn. I receive no money from this endorsement.)

Is this a pain in the tush? Yup. And, it’s worth it. I know that some of my recommendations have made a difference in people calling me for consulting engagements.

If you’ve been working for more than 3 or 4 years, you’ll need your network just to find good recruiters, if that’s one of your job-seeking strategies.

Hiring managers: If you want the ability to know a little about a candidate before you phone screen or interview them, or if you want to do a behind-the-scenes reference check, you need to be on LinkedIn also.

I don’t recommend Facebook or Myspace for professional networking. You can’t see the connections or recommendations. My kids use Facebook to post pictures and gab with their friends. It’s for social networking, not for professional networking. No, I’m not friends with my kids. That’s just wrong. But when they graduate from college and are ready to increase their professional networks, I will connect with them on LinkedIn, offering them the use of my network.

You need to be ready to offer something to your network connections, and a recommendation is a great way to start.

It’s rare for a more senior person to find a job without networking, so make sure you pay attention to your network (whether you are looking or not), and manage it.

Add commentMay 13th, 2008

Entry Filed under: network

How Do You Know if a Recruiter is Trustworthy?

Matt Buckland had some great comments about my post Why You Should Make Friends with Recruiters. In his post, Why you should make friends with Recruiters, Matt rebutted a couple of points (which is just fine!). He made a great point at the bottom:

I’d add one major exception to the list, make friends with a recruiter you trust.

So the question is: How do you know if a recruiter is trustworthy? There are two parts to the answer, and I’m assuming we’re talking about external recruiters here, not people who are part of your company.

Part 1: Looking for trustworthiness if you’re a hiring manager:

• Is your recruiter willing to work with you on your hiring strategy and job description? You might not know exactly what you’re looking for at the beginning of a search, and a good recruiter is, at least partially, a consultant.
• Does your recruiter trust you to do your own phone screens? I stopped working with a recruiter who tried to assure me he knew best. BS.
• If the recruiter offers the job to the candidate, does he or she offer exactly what you explained the offer was? I’ve never let a recruiter offer a job to one of my potential hires, but some hiring managers do.

Part 2: Looking for trustworthiness if you’re a candidate:

• Does your recruiter want a blank check to send your resume to his/her client companies? If you’ve been working for more than three or four years, you know a bunch of the local people in your field. (Ok, I hope you do.) You and the recruiter should expect to talk about places to send your resume.
• Does your recruiter blast your resume to “everyone who’s hiring” without considering whether you would be right for the organization or the hiring manager? If so, run away.
• Does your recruiter not want to show you your resume on his/her letterhead? I stopped working with certain recruiters when I was a candidate and a hiring manager, when I realized they just *lied* about me or their candidates.

What other actions help you know if a recruiter is trustworthy?

1 commentMay 9th, 2008

Entry Filed under: recruiting

Why You Should Make Friends with Recruiters

In response to my first recruiter interview, a colleague wrote in with the reasons he stays in touch with recruiters:

• Some of the best jobs / candidates are rarely advertised
• If you refer people to your friend the recruiter, there is the possibility of a finders fee
• They can keep you aware of trends in the local market
• You might be able to get a free lunch every so often

I still keep in touch with recruiters I’ve known for over 30 years. When I refer someone to these people, my referral means something. I’ve even sold books and landed one consulting engagement based on meeting someone through a recruiter.

Think about it and make friends with a recruiter today!

2 commentsMay 6th, 2008

Entry Filed under: recruiting

Q&A With Dave Freireich

I decided to start a new series, interviewing recruiters. It’s not clear to me that either my hiring manager colleagues or candidate colleagues are using recruiters as well as they could be. Here’s the first interview with Dave Freireich, one of the authors of Getting the Job. I loved his An interview is a blind date. Don’t screw it up.

JR: Please tell my readers a little about you. How long have you been in the recruiting field?
Dave: 9 or more years, at least 5 or 6 focused solely on delivering great software engineering talent to companies on the frontier of software development.

JR: Do you have any specialties?
Dave: Yes. Very passionate, energetic, quirky, extraordinarily skilled software developers. We introduce them to the companies that make them happy. Win win.

JR: What do you think hiring managers should know about recruiters?
Dave: I wish hiring managers knew how difficult it makes our jobs (as external recruiters) when they try to make us work only through internal/corporate recruiters. It’s not possible for us to do a great job unless we interface with the team we are recruiting for as well.

JR: What do you think candidates should know about recruiters?
Dave:I think they should learn how to QUALIFY recruiters. We have a lot of information on our blog about this. I talk to a lot of candidates who I could have gotten a job at one of our clients that failed because they were submitted by another recruiter who didn’t help them prepare to do well in the interview.

JR: What do you think internal recruiters should know about external recruiters?
Dave:We are not the enemy. We are a part of the team. We may have some things to teach you. You may have some things to teach us. Together we’ll make the team win.

JR: How has blogging made a difference in your ability to attract clients and candidates?
Dave: Blogging helps solidify their comfort with us. We hold ourselves to a much higher standard than ordinary recruiters. The blog is the place where we talk about how and why we do that. I am able to get responses from candidates when I send them an email whereas 95% of my competition would not. The candidates check our corporate page and blog and can assess that I have been in the business for a while and know what I’m talking about.
JR: What kinds of differences are you noticing about high tech candidates compared to the candidates of 3-5 years ago and 6-10 years ago?
Dave: I don’t see a lot of difference in the candidates. They are always bright, energetic, concerned people who have an interest in bettering themselves and the companies they work for. Each one is totally individual and in a unique situation but they all have the same needs-growing.

Dave’s bio: Dave Freireich started Core Search Group, the company that has this mission:
“Bridge the divide between proven software engineering talent and the companies on the frontier of software development.”

1 commentApril 29th, 2008

Entry Filed under: recruiter interview

A Possibly Perfect Interview Question

Jurgen has The Perfect Job Interview Question. It’s

When reviewing somebody else’s code, what is it that you usually find most disturbing?

This is a good question. If someone doesn’t review code, you’ll hear that. Jurgen goes on to discuss the syntax answers vs. the design/architecture answers.

He has a point. I would add some more questions, such as:

• When was the last time you reviewed someone else’s code? I want to know how recent this experience is
• When have you been prohibited from reviewing code? … What were the circumstances?
• When did you fight to review code?
• Have you ever reviewed unit tests and code? (a closed question to understand the context) What did you do? (a behavior-description question to understand what actions the candidate took or didn’t)

There may be even more questions to learn more about how a candidate is accustomed to working, and how well that experience might fit for you.

I don’t think this is the one and only perfect interview question, even for developers. But it’s a good start.

3 commentsApril 25th, 2008

Entry Filed under: interview question

What Do You Want to Learn from Recruiters?

I have a lot of recruiter contacts, especially through recruitingblogs.com. I’m planning a Q&A series with recruiters, and would like to know from you: what do you want to learn from recruiters? Email me or leave your questions in the comments here.

1 commentApril 2nd, 2008

Entry Filed under: recruiting

Recruiting Trends Column About Writing and Speaking, Part 2 Posted

My column at Recruitingtrends.com has evidently been up for a while, but I missed the email telling me. Gotta clean out that inbox.

The column is: Using Writing and Speaking to Recruit Candidates, Part 2

You can’t leave comments there, so please do so here.

Add commentMarch 28th, 2008

Entry Filed under: recruiting trends, recruiting

Can a Candidate Take “Criticism”?

I ran a workshop recently about hiring for an agile team, and one of the people learning to interview said, “I want a candidate who can take criticism.” I replied, “Don’t you mean feedback?” He asked, “What’s the difference?”

Oh, boy. Plenty. Criticism is when you you’re looking at a piece of code and you say, “This seems brain dead.”  But if you say, “I’m confused by this piece of code,” you’ve provided me some feedback. I guarantee you, you want candidates who can take feedback.

So, if you want to know if a candidate can take feedback, here are some possible interview questions:

• “Have you recently been in a position where someone reviewed your work?” (wait for a yes answer.) “What happened?”
• Offer to work with the candidate in an audition (possibly pairing) and review as you go.
• Ask for feedback on some of you work as part of an audition and see how the candidate provides feedback.
• “How do you know your work is good?” Wait and see where the question goes. You might be able to follow up with a question such as, “Is there a way you prefer feedback on your work?”

Asking candidates about their ability to take feedback is useful. Asking about criticism is not.

5 commentsMarch 26th, 2008

Entry Filed under: audition, interview, agile hiring, candidate

If You’re Hiring, Answer These Questions First

Joan Lloyd has a great post that I saw at Don’t turn down the new job before asking these questions by Joan Lloyd bizjournals.com. Her questions are:

* What specific results are you expecting in the first three months? Six? One year? How will you measure those results?
* To whom can I go for questions as I’m learning my responsibilities? How much time will you have to devote to getting me up to speed?
* Who are the strongest performers on the staff and would they be willing resources to help me with day-to-day questions and processes?
* What are the biggest problems that need resolution within the first six months? What has been done thus far? Who would I have to work with to settle these issues?
* Why have you gone to the outside to fill this position?
* May I meet some of the staff before making my final decision? That way we can make sure it’s a good fit from all perspectives.

If you’re a hiring manager, you need to answer these questions before you start interviewing, so you can answer a candidate. Yes, you need to answer them.

2 commentsMarch 4th, 2008

Entry Filed under: hiring strategy, interview