I’ve been in email contact with Pradeep Soundararajan for a few months now. He was recently at a conference in Toronto, and has posted his The (bad) state of software testing interviews in India, which includes a pdf of a talk he gave about interviewing. He has several wonderful ideas, including: Candidate and interview myths […]
I ran a workshop recently about hiring for an agile team, and one of the people learning to interview said, “I want a candidate who can take criticism.” I replied, “Don’t you mean feedback?” He asked, “What’s the difference?” Oh, boy. Plenty. Criticism is when you you’re looking at a piece of code and you
A behavioral audition is one where you want to see some specific candidate behaviors. Management auditions typically fall into this category. But especially if you’re hiring for an agile team, you might want to see how a candidate exhibits behaviors, such as coaching, feedback, how the person participates in a standup meeting or in a
A management audition is similar to a technical audition, but because the functional skills are so different, and because senior technical people may also require some management capability, I see these as two different kinds of auditions. As usual, your mileage may vary. Here are some possible management auditions: Facilitate a meeting Give a presentation
In his comment, John asked about auditions for a business analyst. The audition will vary, depending on the kind of projects you do. Here are some possibilities: For a more serial lifecycle, you could ask a BA to help elicit requirements. You’d listen to the way the candidate interviewed, if the candidate interrupted the speaker,
If you’re thinking about auditions, consider a “technical” audition for any of your open positions. A technical audition provides you a little insight into a candidate’s functional skills. If you’re hiring a developer, ask the candidate to extend a design, or find a problem and design a solution. You could ask a tester to test
I’m planning to do a series on audition, and the first one is the idea that every candidate enjoys an audition of the hiring manager, team, and company. That’s because every time you organize an interview, ask a question, or do anything at all, the candidate can watch you work. That’s an audition. Labels: audition,
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
Take a look at HBS’s Working Knowledge, Hiring for Executive Intelligence. Some quotes that rocked my world: IQ test questions don’t assess the practical, on-your-feet thinking skills needed in business. What’s more, these tests have been repeatedly accused of racial and gender bias. Yet, despite these very real shortcomings, IQ tests are still a better predictor
I received an email from a reader today, along with an outline of their hiring process. They spend about 6-8 hours with each candidate, most of which is a series of auditions. They spend maybe an hour with behavior-description questions. These folks have an atypical problem—they’re hiring for consultants, so they need to know how