Recently, I spoke with a hiring manager. He wanted to make sure a person he thought was overqualified for a position stayed in the job for two years. (!!) He was asking candidates to commit to his job for two years in the interview process. If an organization can commit to a candidate for two […]
Another key piece of culture is understanding a candidate’s background and preferences around rewards: what do you reward, how do you reward, and when. Let me be clear: I am not discussing what the organization should and should not reward here, although I have plenty of opinions. I am discussing how to detect what the
I bet you’ve seen teams like this: people are quiet, reserved and thoughtful. They discuss issues in moderated respectful tones and words. And, I bet you’ve seen teams whose favorite word is “brain-dead” when discussing ideas or people, who seem to need to have high volume discussions, and are loud. I bet you’ve seen teams
Dave’s comments on my most recent post got me thinking about doing a series of posts about interviewing for cultural fit. In my recent talks about management, I talk about cultural fit. One piece of cultural fit is knowing what you can discuss and not discuss. When you interview people, especially managers, you can’t ask,
You may have noticed my most recent post was back in October (ouch). That’s because of the past 6 weeks, I’ve been out of town 5. With that much travel, something has to go, and some of my blogging is it. In any case, I hadn’t stopped thinking about hiring issues, I just momentarily stopped
Lately, I’ve been working with people who say they’ve looked for months to try to find just the right person. I believe them. When I ask where they spend their time, they inevitably say that they spend way too long interviewing people who aren’t quite right. And, it doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s
People often use my network to ask me for back-door references about people I know. Sometimes, I can help. Sometimes, I can’t. If I don’t know someone well enough to provide a reference, I don’t. For example, if I consulted at a client for a few days, I don’t know anyone well enough, other than
If you are hiring people now, you know that there are plenty of great candidates. How do you discover the best of them? Often, great candidates come to your attention because of their networking. That means if you want to be a great hiring manager, you need to pay attention to and cultivate your network.
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