Last week, I was working with a client in the Netherlands, talking about how to hire for an agile team. We started discussing how the management team reviews resumes. One of the managers said he looked for people under 40, because otherwise the candidate was “too old.” Well, I passed 40 a long time ago, […]
Based on my Reviewing Resumes for an Agile Team posts, I wrote a column for Stickyminds, Recognizing Agile Candidates. You can leave comments there or here.
I hope that when you read these posts, you came to the same conclusion I did. It’s almost impossible to detect from a resume whether or not a candidate is accustomed to an agile project, or could work on an agile project successfully. Keywords, especially, are useless when it comes to reviewing resumes. So what’s
So, if you were looking for a developer or a tester or a business analyst (or a whatever role) for your agile team, what qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills might that person have? And, is there a way to recognize those characteristics in a resume? Here’s a potential list of qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills.
As Esther says in her fine comment, There are lots of ways to do all these things — and sometimes teams do all the “practices” but still don’t meet the principles. Exactly. And it’s very hard to see the principles under the project when you’re reviewing a resume.Here’s a statement I’ve seen on lots of
Once you’ve seen some evidence of a lifecycle, look for the practices the candidate has used on projects. To be honest, I can imagine seeing one or two of these on a resume; certainly not all. Test-driven development (likely to be on a resume) Unit testing (likely to be on a resume) Pair programming (likely
I spoke with a recruiter yesterday about how to hire people for an agile team. Her client had suggested she look for people with XP experience, and that candidates have “stand-up meetings” on their resume. Oh no. Looking for agile people is much more than keywords.If you’re recruiting for an agile team member, first, decide
A few weeks ago at the “Hiring for an Agile Team” session, the group generated a number of behavior-description questions. I promised I would post them, so here they are: “Tell me about a time you made a mistake.” Using the context of shipping/releasing a product late: “What did you change?” (Notice the past
Last week at the Agile conference, a participant in my “Hiring for an Agile Team” session asked how to know if the people she was interviewing–who had no experience as part of an agile team–might actually work in the team. As she said, “I can’t wait for the perfect person. I can train, but I
Christian Sepulveda has a lovely post, Guidelines for Being a Strong Job Candidate. Some of his gems (these are all from his post): A prospective employer has no attention span whatsoever. You are selling yourself to an employer. What would make it a “no-brainer” to hire me? Notice his emphasis on communication skills given that