Phone Screen Article up at Stickyminds
My column, Detecting Great Testers before the In-person Interview is up. Leave comments here or there.
hiring strategy, HTP
January 2005
MPD
Clairvoyance and Pair-Work
I’m working with Esther this week on the book. We’re editing (and continuing to pair-write and pair-edit). Today, one of the things we addressed were the comments dealing with the people we name in the book. We hadn’t done a good job drawing our readers in to care about the people. So we’re fixing
HTP, Recruiter
Recruiters Need Functional Expertise Too
Heather has a great post, Recruiters who actually know what they are talking about. The piece that resonated with me: I can’t imagine doing a phone interview or discussing an open position with a hiring manager without having strong knowledge of the functional space. If you’re a hiring manager inside an organization, using an internal
hiring strategy, HTP
When is Time to Add Another Person?
I thought that most of my readers were inside large-ish organizations, where they had people to worry about the budget for them. But it appears that some of you are owners of or work for smaller (generally consulting) organizations, where you (lucky you!) make the decision about when to hire another person. There are two
MPD, multitasking
Managing Multi-Tasking in a Small Group
A reader sent me email with this question: “We have a group of four people (3 developers and a tester). We work on 4 products, releasing one about once a month (each product is released once a quarter). The developers are devoted to one product when they’re developing, but have to fix problems immediately if
HTP, job analysis
What Are You Offering in this Position?
I recently received an email asking me about salary ranges for architects and project managers. The author of the email wasn’t sure which job to take, and thought he’d make a decision based on money. Candidates, don’t make a decision based on money. Do what you love to do. Certainly there are people who are
management, MPD
The Quality Pledge
I just received this in email: Pledge Our company is completely and absolutely committed to quality. * * Except on time-critical projects and during adverse cash-flow situations. When else would you need to be committed to quality? (Not to zero defects, but to an appropriate level of quality for the product you’re trying to
consulting, MPD
Making Sure You’re Fit Enough to Work
I’m catching up with my blog reading, and discovered these two gems: Staying Awake has links to comparing the lack of sleep with too much alcohol. Since I’m a one-drink-one-drunk person (well, ok, not drunk, but certainly not sober), this one resonated with me. And via Steve Norrie’s blog, I discovered this oldie-but-goodie, Personal Chemistry
HTP, job offer
Solving the How Much Notice Dilemma
A colleague was wound up in knots. He’d been interviewing with a company where he really wanted a job. The job was a step up in responsibility, the product was “way cool,” and the commute was 10 minutes. His current job was a technology he was tired of, the company was in the decreasing sales
Articles
How to Hire Technical Managers
Hiring technical managers is different — and more difficult — than hiring technical people. When I hire a technical person, such as a developer, I look for design, implementation and debugging abilities as part of the candidate’s technical skill set. But when I hire managers, the rules are different. Technical managers don’t need to be