At SD West last week, one of the folks in my talks asked about how to hire a Scrum Master. First, don’t do this: Don’t look for a CSM. A CSM means the person has taken a 2-day workshop where he or she may have practiced some pieces of Scrum. There is no guarantee that […]
John Cook pointed me to this gem: a second look – generosity 3. It’s the story of a fake audition that was dissatisfactory and how another real audition helped the author get a great job. Avoid those fake auditions. People don’t perform as well as they would in more real circumstances.
I had a lovely email conversation with someone who wanted to hire a firm to perform phone screens. That just makes no sense to me. Here’s what happens when a hiring manager performs the phone screens: When a hiring manager creates a phone screen script, the manager refines the essentials of the job. Based on
In the comments to Why Hire Junior Contractors?, one of my recruiter colleagues, MN Headhunter, asked a great question: …if we do not hire junior developers how they gain the experience to be a senior developer? I was not clear enough in my original post. I believe in hiring a diverse team, especially in diversity
George Dinwiddie asked me a question in email, “Why do companies hire junior-level contractors? I feel bad about spending the company’s money trying to teach these junior contractors to be better software developers. A junior-level direct hire makes sense, as you expect them to be around long enough that the education pays off. But a
Many hiring managers are looking for initiative, especially for agile team members. (In agile, the team members self-organize, which means they are looking for ways to do work better and to solve problems without requiring management’s involvement.) I was thinking about initiative how to look for it, and I realized that at least some people
One of the nice things about the social networking sites such as LinkedIn, is that they allow me to reconnect with people I worked with years ago. I recently re-met a colleague from my undergraduate days, and a colleague I worked with 25 years ago. I mentioned to one of these colleagues’ peers that I’d
Jack Vinson writes in New Grad Hires: Ready and Willing, but Are They Able?, The solution is to hire people who have the general skills, capability, and/or experience you need and then train them in the missing aspects. That’s the way it has always been. For technical staff, expect to spend time helping them develop
Joan Lloyd has a great post that I saw at Don’t turn down the new job before asking these questions by Joan Lloyd bizjournals.com. Her questions are: * What specific results are you expecting in the first three months? Six? One year? How will you measure those results? * To whom can I go for
SlackerManager agrees with me in his How do you hire great people?. I said Hire for Intangibles; You Can Teach Technical Skills. It’s a person’s attitude, passion, and ability to work with other people that counts.