I facilitated a roundtable at Boston SPIN last night, and one of the questions that arose was “How do I negotiate salary?”Compensation is not just your salary. This is your opportunity to think about how you make your life. Do you want more time off? Money for books? Training time and/or money? A different title? […]
Last week, at my PNSQC workshop, we talked about auditions. One of the participants said that when he auditioned testers, he asked each candidate how the candidate would test a stapler. Take a look at Mike Kelly’s answer. Bet you didn’t realize there were so many ways to test a stapler :-)So why is this
Dave Liebreich gave me feedback yesterday that I’d forgotten to include a template of a rejection letter (after the interview) in the book. Argh. I’ve started an errata page for this and other potential problems. A rejection letter has only three components: No. Thank you. Good luck with your job search. Write the no part first.
At a recent conference session, one participant explained that he assigned roles to people on a group/panel interview. He assigned questioning/listening roles. Here’s a way you could take it one step farther, assinging roles in similar ways to a formal inspection: Assign a moderator, someone to monitor the time, who’s asking which questions, and if
My publisher sent me email — the printer shipped them the book yesterday, so Hiring The Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science Of Hiring Technical People is available. Amazon still has it listed at the pre-release price. Dorset House, my publisher, has a page about the book. I’m so excited!Update as
Take a look at Personality for a psychologist’s view of using any personality test for hiring. I particularly liked these quotes: It means that our everyday belief that people are consistently “themselves” across a wide variety of kinds of circumstances is unfounded.Given enough time to understand a person’s situational patterns, and a reasonably clear description
I love it when the experts agree with me. So imagine my glee when reading, Against Types by Drake Bennet. The subtitle is “Personality tests are everywhere — from the workplace to the courtroom. But critics say the tests themselves don’t pass the test.” I don’t know anything about the academic personality tests used to
I decided to write a few articles on auditions. The first one is posted at Stickyminds, Watching Testers in Action: Auditions During Interviews. I received a request for someone to translate it into Russian. When he tells me it’s done, I’ll post the URL.
Some not very nice people are spamming my blogs with inappropriate comments, so I’ve turned off comments for now. Unfortunately, I only know how to make them all unseen, rather than than not post new ones. I have questions into my comments provider about that. I’ll turn commenting back on when I can make it
While perusing some of the Joel on Software discussions, I saw the pointer to “Mini-me” syndrome…a major hiring risk for companies. Heather discusses her concerns: Recruiting from certain schools can prevent you from hiring the best — because that recruiting limits your intake of candidates. It tightens your screen before you’ve even gotten to resume