When I teach interviewing skills, I ask the workshop participants what they want to learn in the workshop. I’m always amazed at how many people say “interpret body language.” I expected people to focus on listening for behavior-description answers to questions, not body language. Interpreting body language is difficult. Imagine you’re sitting across a table
I received a pointer to Write and Get Hired today. And like most busy people, I didn’t read the blurb. Maybe the article will work for you, but I don’t find verbalizing my goals to be helpful. I do find writing them down helpful. But you can write and get hired. Write an article for
My Stickyminds column, What’s on Your Not-to-do List? is posted. Please do leave comments there (or here if you like). This column is based on one of the ideas in Behind Closed Doors.
“I need another tester for my team” – Test Manager “I’m looking for a developer/architect/someone senior for my team” – Development manager Two managers, two teams. Although each manager has a group he calls a team, the teams are quite different. The test manager has a pool of people whom he assigns to projects in
We talk blithely about the “crisis” in software development or IT. But most of the time, that’s just projects over schedule, over budget, and under featured. Real project crises are about people. I heard that one of my clients died today. She was a young-ish project manager. I’d never met her in person (she
Esther and I are editing (the next-to-final pass, we think) the book this week, integrating comments from our reviewers. We are very fortunate; our reviewers provided wonderful feedback. And some of the feedback we’re not going to use — at least, not in this book. One of the hardest things to do, whether it’s
I spoke at Boston SPIN last night, and facilitated the hiring initiative roundtable before the main presentation. One of the roundtable participants explained that he was looking for entry-level testers. And, since no one (okay, not quite no one, but almost no one) teaches testing in college, he wanted to develop an audition to see
I’ve changed a few things about this blog: I enabled each post to be its own archive. You can click on the title or on the “link” in the byline. You should be able to use the little email icon to email a blog entry to someone. Please let me know if you find any
I maintain the AYE web site as part of my responsibilities this year for the conference. I post the news, the new articles, and do the general updating. Monday, I posted one of Don Gray‘s articles, Shifting the Burden – Whose Monkey Is It? Except, Don and I had both made a mistake. Don
Last week, while driving to/from parents and funerals (my folks are fine), I had several long talks with my sister, who’s looking for a job. She’s the best salesperson I’ve ever met. She’s great at selling, and stays friendly with her clients over the years. She stopped selling in high tech about 16 years ago