At the last Software Management conference, one senior manager said that he always did a “dirt-bag” phone screen. He asked his administrative assistant to call the candidate with a bunch of reasonable questions and make sure the candidate treated her nicely. She asked questions such as basic skill questions, when the candidate was available […]
In my Interview Candidates One-on-One post, Christian explained how he’d done some pair interviewing. The lead interviewer and the safety-net is one technique for pair interviewing. When two people, obviously a lead and a safety-net interview me, I tend to talk just to the lead and not to the other person. I don’t think I’m
In some ways, I’m a Luddite. I don’t feel as if I can evaluate a candidate without a paper resume. So imagine my surprise when Keith told me about this video resume website.I have these problems with video resumes: It’s slow. I can read a resume much faster than I can watch a video. We
Hiring mistakes are common. Too often, we don’t consider in advance what our critical criteria are, and we make mistakes. Here are some I made early in my management career: I hired a prima donna developer, because I didn’t listen to my gut telling me he was wrong for our culture. The rest of the
I’ve long been a fan of phone screens, to make sure I only invite candidates for an in-person interview who are a reasonable fit for the job. Now that online services and some recruiters make candidates list every technical tool they’ve ever seen on their resume, it’s hard to tell who’s actually qualified for the
I was reading Andy Tinkham’s “Disproportionate amount of introverts in software testing” (post is now missing) and saw a comment that one person tends to discriminate for introverts in testing. I agree with the intent of the comment, that the hiring manager wants people who are organized and pay attention to the work. However, I
Dorset House has announced the pre-publication availability of my book, “Hiring Technical People.” Here’s the blurb: Hiring technical people is one of the most critical and difficult tasks that a manager can undertake. This book takes the guesswork out of hiring, and diminishes the risk of costly hiring mistakes. With the aid of step-by-step
If you’d like to hire people but you can’t because you have no open reqs, take a good long look at the people you do have. Are any of your staff prima donnas, “indispensable”, or just not doing the work? If you have people who aren’t being successful, you have several choices: Make sure you’ve
I interviewed once for a QA Manager job. The position was supposed to run the SEPG and chair the corporate quality improvement team. The position was supposed to hire auditors to assess the organization against the CMM, and hire testers to test the product. In addition, the position was supposed to define test plans, and
In Laurent’s Hiring and Testingpost, he wondered why we spend so much time in the up-front stages of hiring. Why not use the probation period that seems to be the law in France, and is part of many companies’ stated HR procedures?A bunch of reasons: as managers, we need to give substantive and useful feedback