Now that it’s a hiring manager’s market, I’m hearing that a number of interviewees are hearing questions such as “Why do you want this job?” or “Why Should I Hire You?” Hiring managers: that’s a shorthand question. You know what it means, but your candidate may not. You’re looking for ways to know if this […]
I’ve been at the PMI Regina PDC this week. I did a general session talk Monday, and am leading a two-day estimation workshop through tomorrow. Andy Nulman had a great riff on normal vs. abnormal employees. You can see a clip of it here. Warning: racy, not completely clean. If you think of normal as
It’s now a hiring manager’s market. That means hiring managers can be picky and try to find just the right person for the open req. But, it also means that many applicants exist for each open req, and all of those people are applying for your job. How does a hiring manager find the right
A number of my friends of long standing and colleagues are looking for jobs. (Friends of long standing is another way to say old friends without calling them old 🙂 They all have over 20 years of experience. The way they used to find jobs–through recruiters–is not working. Sure, recruiters have some openings, but most
So the economy isn’t so hot right now and you’re looking for a new job. Not the easiest of circumstances. You’re calling people to network. You’ve updated your resume. Maybe you’ve even called me. I looked for you on LinkedIn, but I can’t find you because your name is Tom Smith and there are several
I read a bunch of blogs, and Evolving Excellence is consistently good. I was struck by this post, Homozygosity – That’s The Problem!. I had never heard of homozygosity before, so I looked it up. According to Merriam-Webster, it’s having the two genes at corresponding loci on homologous chromosomes identical for one or more loci
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
Several of my colleagues are concerned by their “back-door” references, or unintentional references. They’ve gone on interviews, felt as if they’d aced the interview, were told “we just need to check references” and boom, they are out of contention for the job. One colleague was told, “Oh those people you worked with > 10 years
I was working with a client recently, and one of the managers declared, “What we really need are a bunch of innovators. All of our open reqs–let’s hire some innovators.” Well, there’s a little bit about creating an environment in which innovation can flourish (e.g. ending the multitasking, giving people a little slack time, building
Way back in November, I taught a half-day tutorial called “Hiring for an Agile Team” at Agile Development Practices. The participants had several questions I thought you might find useful. Several participants wanted to know how a candidate would deal with challenging others and taking “criticism” during the workday. They had these questions: Tell me