How you introduce yourself in an interview matters. You can draw a candidate in, or make the candidate wish he or she was walking over hot coals barefoot.One hiring manager, Sam (not his real name) started his introduction this way:
“Hi, I’m Sam, a founder of this company. I’m a Phd in Computer Science. I work here part-time, because I’m also a professor at local-big-name-university.”
When he practiced his introduction to me, I explained my reaction. It’s nice to know he’s a founder, but he said it in a way that said, “I’m a founder and you’re not.” I’m a little suspicious of PhDs in industry, because I’m not sure they care enough about developing a product and shipping it. Since he works there part-time, I’m wondering why he’s interviewing me because if I’m not going to work with him, why is he bothering to interview? And, since he’s an academic, is he going to vanish at the end of every semester? Sam was surprised by my reaction. He’s revising his introduction. Here’s the last revision I heard:
“Hi, I’m Sam, part of senior management. Even though I’m only here part-time, and I make sure to interview everyone, because making sure we have the best people on staff is critically important to our commercial success.”
That introduction explained Sam’s position, and that he cares enough about the people he hires to make sure he’s interviewing all of them. I particularly liked the “commercial success” part. I suspect Sam will continue to revise his introduction, making sure he continues to draw candidates in, not put them off.If you’re a candidate, you may only have to say, “Hi, I’m (your-name-here).” But if you’re on an interviewing team, please do think about how you’ll introduce yourself. Your introduction is part of that infamous first impression. Make it a good one.
My column on Stickyminds this week is Building Better Test Teams. (One of the people who commented realized he could use these questions to self-assess his work.) Feel free to comment on Stickyminds or here.
The third biggest hiring mistake I see is when hiring managers don’t consider cultural fit issues with candidates. I don’t mean small/large company, although that’s a common question hiring managers ask. Here are more cultural fit issues:
The personality diversity of the team. If you have a team of introverts (not uncommon), think about that extrovert you’re interviewing. Some people don’t know how to stop talking long enough for the introverts to think. I’ve met some teams where the extroverts and introverts didn’t know — and felt no compunction to learn — how to work with the other type. If you get past that, think about the big-idea people and the data-driven people. Does your candidate know how to work with the other type?
What your offices look like and how people work. If you’re hiring for an agile team where the team works in a collaborative work environment and your candidate is used to an office with a door, how will you assess whether that person can learn to work in your environment?
Is your candidate accustomed to a generous office supply policy, and you don’t buy yellow stickies because they’re too expensive? (I swear, one hiring manager told me that the yellow stickies (4″x6″) that I use to lay out schedules were too expensive. Sigh.)
Some candidates are used to a “reasonable” training budget, and yours is zero for this year. You’re not sure when it will go above zero. You’ll need to raise the issue with the candidate and determine if that candidate would be happy working in your organization.
Sometimes cultural fit issues are how people discuss problems at work. I worked at a company, where we were expected to call what we perceived as stupid ideas “brain-dead.” At another company, people referred to a straightforward solution as the “plain old vanilla” problem or solution. Certainly, language can be a big piece of how a candidate can adapt — or not — to a particular culture.
There are more, such as having to make all decisions by consensus, but these are the kinds of issues that candidates sometimes forget to ask about. As a hiring manager, you’ll need to look at these attributes of the job, and make sure you ask questions, to make sure your candidate is sufficiently adaptable to your cultural environment.
The second biggest hiring mistake I see is to hire for the eventual future — but not to create the future from the current reality. I see this mostly when hiring managers and senior staff. Here are some examples:
A CTO knows he needs a program manager to manage multiple releases and release operations, so he hires a very expensive, highly seasoned program manager. The problem? The highly experienced program manager is managing only one project and one operations person. The development staff can’t take the program manager’s rigidity and rebel, making sure the organization only has one project at at ime. The CTO didn’t consider how fitting into the team (hiring mistake #3) would change the program manager’s role. The program manager is frustrated and bored out of his mind within a couple of months and is back out looking for a job, gone within a year.
A senior manager is looking for a senior QA person. Not just someone who’ll run the test group, but someone to collect metrics on projects, who can be a peer to the engineering managers. Eventually, the senior manager thinks the process and the metrics will be so ingrained that all he’ll need is senior test manager. (I don’t know why he thinks this, but he does.) So, he hires a senior test manager. This person is great at test strategy-in-the-small — project by project — but is not able to articulate a vision of testing and metrics for the enterprise. The other engineering managers lose respect for the test manager, the company loses face in the marketplace due to a large public defect, and the test manager is fired.
An established organization wants to create a new product to replace the current flagship product. Thte VP can’t stand the current architect or the senior designers, so he hires a new architect, handing off the new product development to that person, keeping the current senior architect and senior designers on maintenance of the old product, because they’re too valuable to lose to the new product (and he wants them to leave eventually). But the new architect doesn’t understand why some decisions in the current product were made — so he makes some bad decisions. The existing architect and senior designers leave because they aren’t working on the new product. The people who are left can’t maintain the old product, nor can they create the new one.
Creating a new future is difficult — possibly the most difficult position a new hire can be in. Hiring managers need to balance the need to create a strategy and act on it, along with the tactical deliverables they already have. Finding someone who can meet the current needs is more important than hiring someone who can only perform the future role. You mguth even need two different people, one now and someone else later. (But maybe you can coach the person into performing the eventual role.) Always make sure you hire the person who can create the future by working in the present.
Many companies think an employee referral program is a form of viral marketing. Most of the time, they’re not. Take a look at If your referral programs don’t spread from person to person, it isn’t viral for some great ideas to how to make an employee referral program work.I particularly liked the idea to RSSify your job listings. (Wish I’d thought of it!) Lots of other good ideas too.
As part of an interview, a reporter asked me what the single biggest mistake managers make when hiring. Unfortunately, I see three common mistakes:
Hiring based on a tools checklist (some number of years of Java or WinRunner or some other tool) as opposed to hiring someone who can adapt his/her knowledge to the products at hand. This is the biggest one I see.
Hiring for the future instead of the present. (I see this one almost as much.) Hiring someone who the manager thinks will have the skills to grow into a new/different role in the future. This is different from hiring to create the future.
Not considering how a new hire will fit into (or not!) the team. People are not just a collection of technical skills. If they can