I spoke with a colleague this morning, who’s considering taking on a test management position. He wanted to take advantage of his time to ask questions of his interviewers, because the previous two managers were not successful in the position. Here are the questions he’s decided to ask:
What is your management style? (When he listens for this, he’ll listen for acknowledgement that his future manager has thought about management styles. This is a hypothetical question, unless he checks the answers with a peer manager.)
How will I be judged/evaluated? (If your hiring manager hasn’t analyzed the job and developed concrete actions for you to take as a new hire, this is a great way to start the conversation.)
How do you organize the work? (Everyone organizes. Some people have opaque organizations, some have transparent organizations
What are your expectations? (Especially for a test manager or a support manager, understanding the expectations of your manager is a Very Good Idea. Are you supposed to find all the defects? (Impossible.) Are you supposed to close each incident within 24 hours? (Impossible.)
Tell me about a time when there was a disagreement between you and your staff (one or many). What happened? (Here’s a chance to hear how interventionist your manager is and if there’s a lot of conflict among the staff. Some managers bury conflict: “We have no conflict.” Some resolve it all themselves, the managers look like a bunch of 3-year-olds. Some encourage discussion and then everyone’s supposed to have the same public face. Discover what causes conflict, and how it’s handled.
What do you think the differences are between managing a testing group and managing a programming group? (Especially if the test manager reports to a manager who’s from the development arena, this is a critical question. If the manager says, “I haven’t thought about it,” you have an opportunity to learn from each other. If the manager says, “No difference,” I would run away.
What do you do when a bug is found? (Some managers go directly to blame instead of fixing and considering corrective action.)
When is the last time you wanted to change something in your group. What happened? (Frequently, test managers are supposed to drive change, but no one else thinks they need to change. Oops. Use this question to see what else has changed and how.)
Has there been anything you have wanted to drive change about? What happened? (Managers need to change things every so often, to be effective. This is a check to make sure your potential manager is intentional about changing things.)
Take the time to think of questions that make sense for your role and the context of the organization. Make sure you ask your questions in a behavior-description way, wherever possible. Whatever you do, make sure you avoid leading questions (”You give regular feedback to your employees, right?”) Leading questions tell the person how to answer the question, and you want to know what the manager really does and doesn’t do.
Some hiring managers use certifications to filter resumes. I specifically caution against that practice in the book. I’m not a fan of certifications. Michael Schrage’s column Hiding Behind Certification is another article about why certifications are not a good predictor of job success. Here are two quotes I particularly liked:
“The truth — as we all so bitterly know — is that the IT world is filled with certified, credentialed and accredited idiots.”“…the real value of credentials and certifications like CMMs and MBAs is not that they indicate greater skill, but they signal to the market that these individuals and organizations will jump through hoops to demonstrate how much they care about being seen as top-notch. … the willingness to procure credentials can reveal more about attitude than aptitude.
Although Schrage is talking about IT, his observations aren’t limited to IT. Unless you’re talking about licenses which require some sort of an apprenticeship, certifications are no way to screen resumes or make a hiring decision.
If you don’t read my Managing Product Development blog, you may not have realized why I’ve been so quiet. My hard drive died just before my vacation. I have a new hard drive and I’m back from vacation, so I’ll be much more vocal.
If you’re looking for a job because your role was outsourced, send email to Ryan Francis. I don’t know how long he’ll take emails, but assume you have until June 25, 2004. I’ll probably pull this entry after that date.
Employers don’t hire candidates because the candidate deserves a job. Employers hire people because they like the way they feel about you when they interview you.
Employers are looking for something special, something non-commodity about candidates.
Employers hire people who can follow the directions about how to send in resumes, cover letters, whatever.
You know that I use auditions as a way to see how people work. I find that auditions, along with behavior-description questions are a great way to see how people will work at work. However, there are some questions and auditions that just allow the interviewer to play a bad interview game: Stump the Candidate.When an interviewer plays stump-the-candidate, the interviewer shows his or her “superiority.” Here’s an example. Say you’re talking to a manual black box tester, and you ask, “Can you describe a linked list?” Now, I used that question when I was interviewing testers who needed to write code. Since they needed to interrogate linked lists in their tests, asking if they knew about linked lists was a reasonable first question. However, if I’d asked that question of a non-coding tester, that’s a stump-the-candidate question. All that question does is make me look superior (in my eyes only) and make the candidate feel inferior (in my eyes only). In reality, it’s a good tip-off that I’m a jerk. Not a good way to develop a collegial conversation. You can have stump-the-candidate auditions too. If you give the candidate a task that takes an already-successful employee a few hours to perform, that audition is too long and probably too hard. If you give the candidate a task that no one in your group can perform, you’re either looking for a much more senior person or you’ve got a stump-the-candidate audition.Not all hard questions are intentionally stump-the-candidate questions. If you ever are stumped in an interview, see Roy Osherove’s thoughts: Bad interviews are your best friend.Stump-the-candidate questions are rude. Candidates make time to come to your office and interview with you. Treat them with respect.
In his provocative article Nasty People, Robert Sutton says ” Managers who belittle and oppress one victim after another shouldn’t be hired.” Amen! If you’re not sure how to avoid hiring nasty people, try these techniques:
You can try to ask the candidate about the last time he or she lost his or her temper or apologized for inappropriate behavior. Unfortunately, those are the “when did you stop beating your wife” kinds of questions, and may not be helpful.
Especially for managers, ask the candidate to provide references of peers and employees, not just managers.
Use an audition to see the candidate is some action. For more senior managers, you’ll want to see more than 20 minutes worth of audition.
Ask the candidate specific questions about his or challenges or frustrations at work. “In the last month, what were your major frustrations? How did you deal with them?” “What are your personnel/employee frustrations? What actions are you taking with those problems?” The more you can get the candidate to talk about what the frustrations were, the more likely you’ll be able to see how the candidate deals with them. These are also excellent questions to follow up with references, to be sure the candidate acts the way the candidate says he or she acts.
It’s not easy to discover the jerks, especially when we all say and do jerk-y things every so often. But the more you ask about a person’s behavior, the more likely you are to discover the real jerks.
Laurent has a great posting on Hiring Programmers. Note that he doesn’t say people have to be great writers. On the contrary, the bar is fairly low: awareness of spelling and typos, introduction, structured discussion, conclusion — that’s it. My kids practice this kind of writing all the time in school (in preparation for the standardized tests they need to pass in order to receive a high school diploma — MCAS for those of you in Massachusetts).I agree with Laurent, don’t forget to add an audition. But definitely, ask people who need to be able to communicate in writing to write for you.
