Hiring Technical People

Questions From the Debates

I’ve got election fever, I admit it. In the VP debate last week, the moderator asked a useless question: “What  is your achilles heel?” (I’m probably paraphrasing the question.) Both candidates treated it as the weakness question, and didn’t answer the question. They each turned the question around to their strengths. What a surprise (not!).

But in the presidential debate last night, one of the questions was (I’m paraphrasing again): “How do you know what you don’t know and how will you learn it?” Ok, it’s a hypothetical question, not something I would use in a town meeting setting, but was a great opening for the candidates.

If you’re hiring a senior person, this is a good question. It can help you see the difference between general arrogance (”I know everything”) and a smart person who’s introspective enough to learn from past behavior.

Add commentOctober 8th, 2008

Entry Filed under: interview question

Interview Questions for Politicians (or Managers)

I was thinking about the election. (How can anyone in the US avoid it?) I read Seth’s piece, Politics!, and thought that nightly debates might be a great way to discover who the smartest people are. Maybe. But a lot closer than the sound bites we get now.

Since we’re not going to have nightly debates, here are some of my questions for the candidates:

1. Tell me how you’ve chosen at least four of your advisors. What do they advise you on, and how did you choose them?
2. Give me an example of a time you inherited a budget that wasn’t balanced. What did you do? (I might need to ask when that was, because we’ve had different economic cycles and unbalanced budgets.)
3. How have you affected health care in your state in the last year? two years? five years? (All of the candidates are either senators or governors.) If not the state, the Senate. Explain the effect of your actions on the people affected.
4. Give me an example of how you’ve worked with people who did not share your philosophy or values. (I might ask for half a dozen examples!)
5. Give me at least four references that can discuss your integrity. What would you like to tell me about your integrity?

I suspect I need more questions than these (!), but I would start here. The President’s job is too difficult to take people who don’t think and act clearly.

BTW, you could these questions when hiring for managers, too. Instead of the health care question, change it to a question that addresses a significant cost in your organization, such as project management.

1 commentOctober 2nd, 2008

Entry Filed under: interview question, manager

Hiring Managers Phone Screen

I had a lovely email conversation with someone who wanted to hire a firm to perform phone screens. That just makes no sense to me. Here’s what happens when a hiring manager performs the phone screens:

1. When a hiring manager creates a phone screen script, the manager refines the essentials of the job.
2. Based on the conversation with candidates, the hiring manager refines the job analysis and job description, realizing what is essential as technical and non-technical skills.
3. The hiring manager can take the conversation in a variety of places, learning more about the candidate. The hiring manager can learn a lot about the candidate, in a very collegial way.
4. The hiring manager starts building rapport, which if you end up hiring the candidate, is important.

It’s ok if the hiring manager asks a technical lead to handle the phone screens. If the hiring manager works closely with HR and trains someone in HR, maybe that person can help with phone screens (I’ve never seen this work).

But if you really want a technical phone screen, you don’t outsource it. You do it yourself.

2 commentsSeptember 17th, 2008

Entry Filed under: manager, phone screen

Ask Why

So you didn’t get the promotion. Before you look for a new job, ask why. It’s possible you’re missing something critical for that role.

Many years ago, I was working as a “senior member of the technical staff.” I was a tester, had coordinated beta tests, much of the testing work for the last couple of releases, and was working as the tester-project-manager and helping the project manager realize what her job was. My boss left the company. I was “obviously” the next one in line for his job. I didn’t get the job. When I asked why not, I was told “You’re too valuable where you are.”

That’s a non-answer. But I did talk to my new boss, and told her I wanted to know what I needed to learn to get the promotion. She smiled and said, “people skills.” Ok. Clearly not my strengths, but I figured I could learn. I told her I wanted her to teach me. She agreed.

I put away my resume and stayed at the company another 4 years. I learned how to be a great manager. I learned how to be a great program manager. I learned how to do strategic planning, both the stupid way and ways that made sense. I doubt I would have learned how to do any of those skills that quickly without my new boss’ coaching and mentorship.

Managers, telling people they’re “not ready” or “too valuable” is a cop-out. Provide authentic feedback, offer to teach/coach/mentor, and you will have a loyal employee who will amaze you.

I stayed because I asked why and because I learned what I needed to learn. If you’re frustrated with your job, maybe it’s time to ask why, before you go look for a new one. Ask. What can you lose?

4 commentsSeptember 10th, 2008

Entry Filed under: candidate, feedback

Red Flag Words in an Interview

Before my webinar last week, I was chatting with the organizer, and experienced project manager. He said that when he interviewed a project manager, and hear words such as “I control projects” that’s a red flag for him. No, he’s not an agile project manager–he’s a smart and effective project manager who realize that people control their own tasks. But he got me thinking about other red flag words.

When I hear testers say, “I control the release” that’s a red flag for me. Testers provide information. The release decision is way above their pay level.

When I hear business analysts (or anyone!) say, “I just know what the customers want. I don’t have to go back and talk to them.” Oh yeah? If they’re so clairvoyant, why doesn’t all software work the way I want it to?

When I hear architects say, “I don’t write code. I architect a system.” Oh sure they do. On paper. Or in PowerPoint (full credit to Venkat and Andy for naming these people PowerPoint Architects in Practices of an Agile Developer). Architects who don’t participate in product development are just as bad as house architects who never use the bathrooms they “design.”

Red flag words are an indication that the candidate is not sufficiently introspective about why the company pays him or her. You might still want to hire a candidate with red flag words, but you’ll have to work with that person to make him or her a fully valuable member of the team.

3 commentsSeptember 4th, 2008

Entry Filed under: candidate, interview

Guest Blogging for ITJobBlog

I’m writing about a post a week for ITJobBlog. I’ve already written a couple of posts about how to develop your interview skills when you’re a candidate, part 1 and part 2. Please join us over there, too!

Add commentAugust 27th, 2008

Entry Filed under: blog, candidate, interview

Great Assistants Help (Senior) Managers

I spoke with someone who wants a senior level management position. (He’s currently a mid-level manager.) I asked him about his experience with assistants. “I’ve never had one.”

Oh. Senior people have assistants because they need them. Other people need them, but our organizations have decided we can do all the grunt work ourselves. Don’t get me going.

A great assistant can make you or break you as a senior manager, because an assistant will make or break your ability to finish your work. That assistant can also make it possible for your managers to succeed or not.

A manager’s time is valuable, and while a manager can amplify the work of his or her staff, a manager’s assistant can *allow* the manager that time–especially time to think. When the assistant takes on the nitty gritty details, the manager is free to focus on the big picture or to dive deep where necessary. But you can’t do that unless you have a great assistant.

Great assistants can make the organization hum. Bad assistants can drop it to its knees. I was a project manager once in an organization where the assistant had her favorites. Luckily, I was one of them. I got what I needed: help from the facilities group, my contractors’ invoices were paid on time, I got the conference rooms I needed, and more. But she disliked one of my colleague project managers, and he didn’t get those things. He found it difficult to keep his projects rolling–not because of the technical work, but because of the environmental issues.

Turns out, he was fired later because he was a jerk She’d given her boss feedback about this guy (and feedback to his face) for several years, and finally stopped working with him when his jerk-iness got so bad it interfered with her ability to help other people. So she stopped helping him.

I stayed in touch with that assistant until she retired. For her entire tenure at this organization, she made the organization hum smoothly. Her boss made great decisions, because he had time to think.

4 commentsAugust 19th, 2008

Entry Filed under: manager

How I Manage Comments

Some of my readers appear to be new to reading and commenting on blogs. Here’s how I manage my comments:

• I moderate (personally) all the comments. That means I read them and approve them
• Any comment that has content, I approve. I don’t care who writes it.
• If I read a comment from anyone and it has an advertisement in it, I delete the comment, write to the person and encourage that person to resubmit without the advertisement.
• I mark comments with just ads as spam.

I don’t take ads on this blog, by design. I am happy to have people with content-ful (or even partially content-ful!)  comments to post their urls in their comments. But don’t just take comment space to advertise to my readers. I won’t approve those comments, and I will not let you do it.

Back to the real topics now.

1 commentAugust 15th, 2008

Entry Filed under: blog

When Someone Offers Help, Accept It

I was talking with a junior colleague recently. He can’t find a job. I offered to help network with him. He said no, he’d look for a job himself.

Big mistake. If someone offers you help networking, take it! No matter who you are, how many years of experience you have, how sure you are you can get a job by yourself, take the help.

3 commentsAugust 14th, 2008

Entry Filed under: candidate, network

Hire Junior Employees; Think Harder About Contractors

In the comments to Why Hire Junior Contractors?, one of my recruiter colleagues, MN Headhunter, asked a great question:

…if we do not hire junior developers how they gain the experience to be a senior developer?

I was not clear enough in my original post. I believe in hiring a diverse team, especially in diversity of experience, and diversity of personality type. That includes junior developers (and testers and analysts and whatever other kinds of roles you need for your team). I encourage you to make that kind of diversity part of your hiring strategy.

Junior staff have a lot of possibilities to offer your team, which is why it’s worth hiring them: energy, a willingness to tackle any kind of work, maybe some ideas you haven’t considered, and more than I can think of right now.

But they do require training, which is why hiring a junior employee makes sense. To me, hiring a contractor as an extra pair of hands, when those hands need to be trained, doesn’t make much sense. But hiring employees–especially junior staff whom you can grow–that makes a lot of sense.

4 commentsAugust 11th, 2008

Entry Filed under: hiring strategy