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.

Labels: hiring strategy

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 7:22 AM | link |

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.

Labels: culture, hiring strategy

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 11:49 AM | link |

If you're a hiring manager, read Mike's Life Is A Hire Way: 5 Tips For Startup Hiring. Great ideas, Mike! (And not just for startups.)

Labels: hiring decision, hiring strategy, interview, recruiting

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 10:49 AM | link |

I'm doing a webinar series for Kennedy, starting this Thursday. See Building Effective Hiring Strategies & Job Descriptions To Match!. You can sign up for either or both. I hope you decide to join me Jan 18 and 25, 2007. (I'll be doing another series in May about how to use different interviewing techniques and how to teach them--assuming this series goes well.)

Labels: hiring strategy, job description, webinar

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 7:51 AM | link |