Joyce Crane’s article, Crossing honesty line in job search can have dire consequences talks about the consequences of lying on a resume — and getting caught. It’s not worth it. Don’t lie on your resume or in an interview. So how do you best position yourself? By practicing your stories of what you’ve actually done […]
Uh oh. I’m seeing laundry list job descriptions. You know, the kind of job description that so carefully bounds the job with so much technical tool skill, that no one could fit the job. If your job descriptions are laundry lists of tool skill, reconsider how you’re describing the job. I like to think about
I was reading How Would You Design Bill Gates’s Bathroom? and realized that Microsoft discriminates for people who are visionaries, people who see the big picture. When they do this, they ignore the other types of people necessary for successful products and projects: the stabilizer, the firefighter, and the catalyst.Keirsey calls these temperaments by slightly
Via the Boston Job Works blog I found this piece on Hiring in Times of Anger and Fear. The points Jack Thomas makes are great, and can be summarized by making sure you keep your self-esteem, follow through on commitments, and maintain your sense of humor. All easier said than done.If you’re looking for a
In Workplace boomeranging, Jason Butler reports on his experience returning to a previous employer: “I found my previous experience at the company beneficial in minimizing ramp-up time; if you already have a reputation and you already know all the players, you can get right to work.”If you’re looking for a job, call all your ex-bosses
In response to my last blog entry, Questions for Hiring Architects and Designers, Dave Smith wrote this: “I took a slightly different approach when I was a hiring manager. Instead of canned set of questions, I would get the candidate to a whiteboard, pose a vaguely-stated, open ended design problem with no “right” answer, then
How do you differentiate true designers and architects from other software developers? This may be the hardest question to answer, and the most necessary. A real designer or architect, someone who doesn’t just hack a bunch of software together, is worth more to your company than you can pay him/her. A real designer or architect
In previous hiring tips, I suggested you ask behavior description interviewing questions and perform auditions. I haven’t discussed hypothetical questions yet, because they can be difficult to frame well. In response to my current Stickyminds column about how to improve tester performance. Suzan Noden said she uses this as a question: “how would you test
One hiring manager loves this question: “If you had a magic wand, and three wishes, what would they be?” My three wishes deal with enough money to buy a sailboat, paying someone else to drive my kids to their doctor appointments and lacrosse games, and buy books whenever I want. I don’t want to tell
In Hiring Tip #5: Ask Behavior-description Interview Questions, I suggested that hiring managers learn how to ask behavioral interviewing questions. Behavioral questions assume that people’s behaviors don’t change; that people reapply those behaviors to new situations. If you’re looking for a job, learn how to answer these questions.Behavioral interviewing questions ask you questions about how