Big news! I’m thrilled to announce that Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People is available in PDF from Dorset House. For those of you who sent me private email, I will try to email you to let you know over the next week.
So I’ve spoken about women and other kinds of traditional diversity, personality and experience, new grads, and now it’s time to discuss a difficult topic. What about “overqualified” people? People who have tons of experience are looking for jobs. Too often, hiring managers don’t want to hire them because the manager thinks the candidate will
I hear this story again and again. A hiring manager can’t find the right candidate. Why? You would think it would be easier to find great candidates, because so many people are out of work or are looking for better jobs. But that’s exactly why it’s so hard for hiring managers to find people–there are
I received a call from a recruiter-colleague yesterday, bemoaning a hiring manager who was waiting for the “perfect” candidate. “I’ve sent her 5 great candidates, but none of them are perfect. Doesn’t she have to fill this position?” Well, maybe not right away. And, maybe it’s not just technical skills that make a candidate a
I recently had a conversation with a gentleman at a conference, where he said they hired “to raise the bar”. I asked him what he meant by that. He started discussing the mean of the capability in the team. Well, if you’ve hired for zero diversity, you might be able to discuss the team’s mean.
It’s tempting to look for candidates with lots of experience for your open positions. But at this time of year, and through the fall, consider looking for new college grads. Not just because I have a daughter who just graduated, but because new grads offer you an opportunity to steer people without a lot of
I recently led a workshop on Hiring for an Agile Team. We discussed diversity and I explained my position: the more complex the problem, the more personality and experience diversity you want on your team. That’s because different approaches to solving problems and backgrounds help the team see what their options are. I once worked
There’s a push in the agile community to recognize women and see if we can’t get more women on agile teams. Whatever you think about the program, the goal is a laudable one. Hiring women creates a diversity that is difficult to match with an all-male team. Women tend to bring more collaborative skills and
I’m teaching PSL this week with Esther and Jerry. I met one of the participants for the first time yesterday morning, and he thanked me for writing the Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers book. I thanked him, and asked what he liked the best. He said that the advice about thinking about the attractors for
Maybe you have a job or two open. You’re reluctant to pay more than you have to for a given position. I understand that employers want to get the biggest bang for their employment buck. I once consulted for an organization who had deliberately hired from the “bottom of the barrel.” (That was their phrase.)