“I need another tester for my team” – Test Manager “I’m looking for a developer/architect/someone senior for my team” – Development manager Two managers, two teams. Although each manager has a group he calls a team, the teams are quite different. The test manager has a pool of people whom he assigns to projects in […]
I spoke at Boston SPIN last night, and facilitated the hiring initiative roundtable before the main presentation. One of the roundtable participants explained that he was looking for entry-level testers. And, since no one (okay, not quite no one, but almost no one) teaches testing in college, he wanted to develop an audition to see
I was speaking with a colleague the other day, and he told me about an audition he’s been using for developers for years: asking them to implement a String-Copy function in the language in which they’ll be developing. Some of their reactions are telling: Some have said, “Why? The language has it?” Some have worked
If you’ve been hiring for a while, you probably have a list of questions you like to use with candidates. I certainly do. So let me ask you, “Can you give me an example of a time when you wanted to learn more about a candidate, and your questions didn’t seem to work?” Notice what
My Inc./Fast Company column is up: Put Your Candidate to Work. Please leave comments here. When I write columns for a site or magazine, I discuss the areas to write about with the editor. What the editors originally wanted was a here’s-how-to-use-your-intuition article about hiring. I explained that was a bad idea, and I would
Because the cost of a bad hire is so high, some organizations are resorting to a variety of psychometric tests to determine if it’s worth interviewing and possibly hiring a candidate. If you, like me, are suspicious of tests, take a look at The Einstein-Clavin Effect by Wendell Williams. My favorite quote: … controlled research
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. This column was originally pubished on Stickyminds.com Summary: Resumes only tell a portion of a candidate’s story just like caller ID doesn’t always reveal the caller’s complete identity. Screening candidates over the phone can help extract more of the person’s story if you ask the right questions. In this week’s column,
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. If your agile projects are like most of the projects I’ve encountered, they started because a bunch of people already in your organization decided they needed to use agile techniques to be successful. Those projects have been successful, and now it’s time to hire more people. Now there’s an even more
I had dinner recently with someone who said, “We put our candidates through the wringer. First we test them, then we interview them, then we give them another test.” I spoke with someone else whose manager wants an extensive role play to pit candidates against each other (sounds a little like The Apprentice to me).
In Handwriting and Your Job Search, Maya refers to It’s All in the Handwriting. Maya, you’ve been had. I wrote about this on the Bostonworks HR blog, see Debunking Graphology.Graphologists (if you can even honor them with a scientific-sounding name) are selling snake oil. I bet your handwriting looks a lot like your mother’s, or