I recommend against panel interviews. As a candidate in my session at the AYE conference said, “I love panel interviews. I get to run the interview. I only have to be “on” for a couple of hours, I get to decide what to say, and I can manipulate the interview so that it serves my […]
I was a reference for a senior manager the other day. A lovely HR person called and asked me a bunch of generic questions about the senior manager. Unfortunately, she didn’t ask me any of the important questions. It sounded as if her reference check was a standard set of questions, usable for anyone in
If you manage people, at some point, you’re going to deal with titles and job descriptions. Here are my perceptions about the constraints on titles: Make sure the titles for developers, testers, writers, anyone who performs project construction are parallel. That is, don’t have junior testers unless you also have junior developers. Make sure the
Here’s a list of the top ten questions interviewers ask. (How do they know??) I really like the way these questions are framed in behavior-description style. I have a nit to pick with question 2: What did you like best and least about your previous job? I don’t think that’s a question about administrative and
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
A colleague described his interviewing setup this way: “We work in a high-pressure environment. So when we interview, we sit 4 or 5 people across the table from the candidate, and throw questions at the candidate. If they can live through the interview, we hire them. The only problem is, we can’t keep people past
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
I had lunch a few days ago with a colleague who spent almost two years looking for a job. He’s happily employed now, and told me his secret weapon: “All you need is a business card. “When he saw my surprise, he explained. “To effectively network, you need to give people your email address and
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