Imagine this scenario. You have a number of openings, some for senior positions. Maybe you even work for a large company that's highly attractive for potential candidates. To manage the phone screens and interviews, you send out a pre-interview set of questions. There's a variety of questions, and the last one is about salary.

Stop right there. Do not ask the salary question. Ok, maybe you can ask it of someone with up to 5-8 years of experience. Do not ask the question of an almost-senior person, and certainly not a senior-level person.

Here's why. The senior candidate has compensation in many forms: money and stock are just two obvious forms. More senior people may have more freedom to set strategy, both for their domain and for the business itself. They may have learning opportunities that are not obviously covered in compensation. They might have specific time off or the option to take more vacation. Maybe they get to fly business class for flights of a certain duration. (I do; I wouldn't consider a job that made me fly coach over an ocean.) But senior people are not going to make these demands at the beginning of a salary negotiation. They want to discuss the context of the job with you, before they start asking.

If you ask the salary question before you've built rapport in a phone screen or in an interview, you're telling the potential candidate, "We want to save money on your position." Of course you do. But do you want to save money before you know what the candidate has to offer?

Be smart. Save the salary question for a real-time conversation with a technical hiring manager or a technical person. Too often, the HR folks don't know the value of all the compensation pieces; just the cost.

Salary is a complex issue the more senior the candidate. Don't make it an elimination question for a senior person, unless you really do mean to eliminate people based on salary. And, if you need to make it an elimination question, why are you looking for someone senior?

Labels: interview, salary negotiation

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 8:11 AM | link |

Last week, at the Agile 2007 conference, I ran a tutorial called "Hiring for an Agile Team." As part of the tutorial, I ask people to group themselves into threes, where one person interviews, one is the candidate, and one is the observer.

It never fails. An interviewer thinks they're asking one question, but the candidate hears something else. The longer the question, the more likely the candidate is to answer a different question.

The session went well, but with all the fire alarms, I didn't take my normal notes. I'm paraphrasing here what I think the interviewer asked and what the candidate heard:

Interviewer: Think back on your career. Can you tell me about a time you found yourself challenged? What did you do?

Candidate: Where have I failed?

The interviewer's question isn't bad; it's just a little much. Here's one way to make it more clear:

On your current project, have you noticed any challenges?

This is a closed question, and gives the candidate a chance to think. It's also time-bound to the recent past. And, it doesn't specifically ask for challenges to the candidate.

Assuming the candidate says yes, you can use this question next: "Ok, give me an example." Listen for that answer, and then ask, "Were you able to change the situation that caused the challenges?" Wait for the answer. Assuming a Yes, ask "How?" If a No, ask, "Can you give me an example on this project when you saw a problem and fixed it?"

If necessary, walk the person to the project before the current one.

If you keep your questions short and focused on current or most recent projects, you're more likely to hear an answer to the question you wanted to ask.

Labels: interview

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 12:22 PM | link |

A management audition is similar to a technical audition, but because the functional skills are so different, and because senior technical people may also require some management capability, I see these as two different kinds of auditions.

As usual, your mileage may vary. Here are some possible management auditions:

• Facilitate a meeting
• Give a presentation
• Analyze some budget information. Don't forget to ask what they would do with that budget and why
• Organize a project portfolio
• Develop an audition for a manager. (ok, that's slightly evil :-)

If you have other good ideas, please comment away.

Labels: audition, interview

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 1:30 PM | link |

In his comment, John asked about auditions for a business analyst. The audition will vary, depending on the kind of projects you do. Here are some possibilities:

• For a more serial lifecycle, you could ask a BA to help elicit requirements. You'd listen to the way the candidate interviewed, if the candidate interrupted the speaker, if the candidate asked meta questions.
• For a more agile lifecycle, you could ask the candidate to make user stories from bullet lists of requirements.
• For any lifecycle, ask the candidate to explain his or her favorite way to express requirements. Then take a product and ask the candidate to write down the requirements for that product.

Make sure your audition matches your environment. I might not have described something useful for you, so adapt my suggestions.

Labels: audition, interview

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 10:48 AM | link |

I'm planning to do a series on audition, and the first one is the idea that every candidate enjoys an audition of the hiring manager, team, and company. That's because every time you organize an interview, ask a question, or do anything at all, the candidate can watch you work. That's an audition.

Labels: audition, interview

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 11:43 AM | link |

I've been working with more and more senior managers (and executive recruiters), helping them assess their CxO candidates (CEO, CIO, CTO, Senior VPs, you name it). By the time someone's made it to the senior management level, they know how to make themselves sound good, so you can't ask the strength/weakness question, even if you wanted to. But you do have other choices.

As with all jobs, the job description is key. Let's assume you care most about strategic planning and the ability to turn those plans into tactics, succession planning, and general management style. Based on those qualities, preferences, and skills, here are some questions you could use.:

• "Tell me about your management style when it comes to strategy. Give me a couple of recent examples." Strategic thinking is an ongoing issue for senior managers. If all they do is one off-site every 19 months, they are not managing the strategic direction of the organization. When you ask for a couple of examples, you're allowing people to use last week's Operations Committee meeting, where they readjusted the product roadmap plus the quarterly strategic planning meeting, plus whatever else they have up their sleeves as examples.
• Follow up that question with, "Tell me about a time you changed strategic direction. Why did you choose to, how did you choose, and how did you carry out the changes.
• "Tell me how you make things happen in your current organization." Some senior managers work through groups of people, some give more specific direction to their managers. This question helps you learn whether this person prefers more group decision-making or one-on-one decision making. You'll need to ask more questions to see if your initial assumption is correct. "So based on what you told me about working with your OpCom, you tend to work more with each manager to set direction, and use the OpCom to bring the group together for information?"
• Some very young senior managers haven't had to do succession planning yet. But you can ask this question, "Have you ever planned for any management job's succession? What did you do?" and follow up, if the first answer was a yes with, "Have you ever planned for your succession? What did you do then?"
• Asking questions about general management style can be a little tricky. Here are some questions you can consider. "Tell me how you prefer to manage and give me an example." That's so open-ended, you need to be more specific and ask about the particular functional skills, such as giving feedback, coaching, organizing the work, and so on.

When you interview senior managers, do you look for something else? Let me know and I'll post more questions.

Labels: candidate, interview, senior manager

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 9:04 AM | link |

Over at Employment Digest, there's a post called The top 10 ways to bomb a job interview, aimed at candidates. But hiring managers and HR folks can be just as likely to bomb an interview. Here are my favorite ways:

1. Change your toddler's diaper while interviewing a candidate. Yes, this happened to me early in my career. The hiring manager changed the poopy diaper during our interview. I like casual workplaces, but that was too much for me. (No, I was not a parent yet.)
2. Interview a candidate in the lobby. The lobby might have been ok, but the traffic level and the interruption level was quite high.
3. Interview a candidate in the stairwell. Yes, I sat on concrete stairs in an unheated stairwell, wearing a nice suit when it was below freezing outside. I was shivering about 10 minutes into the interview. When I asked to move someplace inside, my interviewer said, "I can warm you up," and proceeded to hug me from the side. Ooh ick. (I extracted myself and ended the interview shortly.)
4. When the HR manager starts negotiating about salary and the candidate doesn't even know if he or she wants the job. One of my interviews started with the HR manager. The HR manager must have been under orders to keep salaries down. The first thing he said was, "You make too much money." I said, "Not yet. I'm looking for a raise from you if I come to work here." The conversation went downhill quickly. I left and called the hiring manager from reception, explaining I was leaving. He convinced me to wait 5 minutes, but it was hard to take anything seriously from those folks.
5. Use a panel interview to interview an extrovert. I do love to speak, so when a group of 6 people tried to interview me in one hour, I took control of the interview. I had a blast. I don't think they learned anything, but I sure did. I interviewed them.
6. Ask the candidate to sit in an uncomfortable or short chair. One hiring manager kept a short chair in his office, for other people to feel uncomfortable in, because they had to look up. I'm five feet tall; I look up at everyone. I complimented him on his choice of chairs and I thought he was going to have a stroke. (I actually meant it.) I've sat on lab chairs (good luck doing that in a skirt), and plenty of chairs that were too high.
7. Take the candidate on a walk around the facility without warning that you'll be going through manufacturing areas. Back in the days I wore nice suits and shoes, one hiring manager decided to take me on a plant tour. I was not dressed for the tour, and requested we postpone it. "But we always take people on a plant tour the first interview." "But I'm not wearing the right kind of shoes. I'll destroy my shoes if I walk in here." "What's more important, the right job or your shoes?" "A manager who cares about my safety." I left.
8. Invite a candidate to interview from 9:30-2:30 and ignore lunch. At 1:15, I asked the current interviewer what the story was about lunch, and he said, "That's not my job." I suggested we talk while I got a sandwich from the cafeteria. He looked worried. "Don't worry; I'll pay." I did, but decided these folks were too flaky.
9. Making a candidate wait for your staff to interview. I agreed to an 8am interview, because that's when the interviewers could start. I arrived at 7:50, and ended up waiting until 8:45, because no one came into work that early.
10. Making a candidate wait in the hall until the receptionist arrives. Same interview as above, but not only weren't the interviewers in at work, neither was the receptionist.

Have any more good bombs to share?

Labels: interview

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 2:22 PM | 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 |

A reader emailed me and asked, "how do I interview a manager who will be my superior?"

The short answer is the same way you interview peers. However, your feelings about your position or your potential boss' position (or even someone "higher" than one level above you) will certainly influence how you feel and how you interview.

First, recognize that an interview is not about power. It's about starting the introduction process between you and a candidate. Let's say that you're a developer and you're interviewing a project manager. What kinds of questions might you want to ask that project manager? Here are some questions that don't arise from power, but do arise from the getting-to-know you position:

• "How did you start your last project?" if you want to know how much planning/organizing this PM did before starting.
• "In your most recent project, have you had trouble with people asking for more features in the same amount of time?" (If the PM hasn't had this experience and you have this all the time, that's a huge red flag.) "How did you deal with it?" That answer should be a great jumping off point to more conversation.
• "Have you finished a project recently? What did you do to finish it?" I like to hear about release criteria, retrospectives, a celebration, but maybe your PM has other ideas. Again, this is a jumping off point for more conversation.

The key with interviewing managers is to work on making the conversation collegial, and even in terms of power. If the candidate tries to pull rank, you can be pretty sure the candidate will do that at work, not just in the interview.

Candidates are people, even if they are manager candidates.

Labels: interview, manager

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 12:01 PM | link |

Interviews and how they are set up reflect on the hiring manager and the organization's culture. If you want to read about some particularly bad interviews, take a look at Jerry Weinberg's most recent article on the AYE site, Getting Some Good Out Of Bad Interviewing. It's hard to believe, but every situation in this article is real.

Labels: culture, interview

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

I was reading Andy Tinkham's "Disproportionate amount of introverts in software testing" (post is now missing) and saw a comment that one person tends to discriminate for introverts in testing. I agree with the intent of the comment, that the hiring manager wants people who are organized and pay attention to the work. However, I don't believe any one personality type has the market cornered on organization and attention.

You can choose to discriminate for/against any number of personality types. Take a look at one of my previous posts for other possibilities.

Although I think the hiring manager is using introversion as a shorthand for his organization requirements in a candidate, I like the idea of looking for people who are organized and pay attention to the details, if that's appropriate for your group. I use behavior-description questions to ask about those characteristics:

• "Tell me how you approach testing a product." Listen for planning and organization activities. If this question is too vague, try:
• "How do you organize a product's testing?" Make sure you hear examples, how how the person would like to organize. If that question doesn't work, try:
• "Have you ever been in a position where the testing wasn't organized?...What did you do?"

I more often look for testers who are relatively flexible, who have multiple techniques for organizing their work, based on the product needs, and the reporting needs. If you need testers like that, great. If not, decide the kinds of activities you'd like to see the testers perform at work, not their personality types. You'll hire the people you really need when you think about the person's interactions and their output requirements, not their personality type.

Labels: discrimination, interview, personality type

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 6:55 AM | link |