Interviewing New Grads
My most recent column for Fast Company/Inc’s hiring center is Interviewing New College Grads. Leave comments here – Enjoy!
HTP, interview
HTP, job analysis
Diversity, Curiosity and Innovation
Via Curious?, I found Give Curiosity and Chance. Here’s a telling quote From a hiring perspective (you just knew this was coming, right?), hiring managers are in love with deliverables and narrowly defined requirements. Look at job postings these days and you’ll find a litany of mandatory experience and skills. Innovation requires curiosity. And, it
HTP, network
Making the Most of Your Network
I’ve said before that networking is critically important to finding a job and finding candidates in Use the Power of Your One-on-One Network. A colleague of mine has just sent me an email explaining her predicament, I am currently looking for a job and networks are important to me. If you are interested in the resume
MPD
Seeing What's Going On
Clarke Ching’s post, Functional Blindess, reminded me to post the ways I know about how to see the current state in a project or in an organization. For projects: Ask to see a demo. Can you see anything at all? If you can’t see the results of prototype tests, unit tests, some kind of
MPD
Recording of my Nine Steps to Becoming More Agile
Roy Osherove taped my talk, “Nine Steps to Becoming More Agile” at the Israel Agile group meeting a couple of weeks ago. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the quality of the recording is. The recording isn’t perfect, because I walk back and forth across the room when I speak. I didn’t remember
HTP, interview
Another Take on Puzzles in Interviews
I thank Keith Ray who forwarded this gem to me from the XP mailing list: “Puzzles are fantastic. They’re an instant way of figuring out whether you want to work for the organisation or not.” — Adrian Howard When I teach interviewing, people tell me they like puzzles because they think they’re watching how people
MPD
Personal Lessons Learned from an Around-the-World Trip
I returned from my wonderful around-the-world trip last Friday afternoon. I didn’t try to work until Monday, but I realized today that I was still Asleep at the Wheel. I attempted to use a new-to-me configuration management system (Subversion). In my befuddled state, I managed to use some CVS commands instead of the Subversion commands.
HTP, interview
“Tests” are Not Useful
Because the cost of a bad hire is so high, some organizations are resorting to a variety of psychometric tests to determine if it’s worth interviewing and possibly hiring a candidate. If you, like me, are suspicious of tests, take a look at The Einstein-Clavin Effect by Wendell Williams. My favorite quote: … controlled research
management, MPD
Six Steps to Effective Feedback
I was reading You Are Possibly Very Annoying and realized I hadn’t posted Esther‘s and my six steps to effective feedback. (This is in the management book, starting publisher editing.) Here they are: Make sure you’re giving feedback about the work or the working relationships. Especially avoid clothes and other personal appearance issues (unless
Articles
Getting Ahead
I was talking to a relatively young developer the other day, and I asked him about his career plans. “Oh, I don’t do career planning myself,” he said. “I wait until my manager talks to me.” Oops. While it’s true that some managers are interested in and want to coach you through your career planning,