Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
I keep hearing about the “Skills gap.” There is no skills gap. There is a gap between what employers want to pay and what people are willing to work for. I read an article this morning that prompted this post: Talk of a skills gap in the labor market is ‘an incredible cop out’ Let …
In The One Question You Should Ask About Every New Job, Grant says, Ask people to tell you a story about something that happened at their organization but wouldn’t elsewhere. There are four categories of stories: The human-ness of senior management (or not) Promotion opportunities for anyone How the organization fires/lays off The consequences for …
Continue reading “Terrific Question for Assessing Culture in a Job Search”
I’m a big fan of auditions in an interview. (I have many posts about auditions in this blog.) However, some hiring managers and teams push interviewing and auditions too far. When you’ve had three interviews, and your interviewer asks you to solve a problem for them—again—is it a hiring issue, or are they asking you …
I retweeted a link to Here’s a Thing: There’s No Correlation Between a College Degree and Coding Ability. I was a bit surprised by some of the reactions to that link. One colleague said, “I question whether people who wait until a college assignment to learn to code have the same obsessive interest in the topic.” …
Continue reading “Do You Need a Degree to be Hired to Develop Software?”
Have you seen Nick Korbel’s series about hiring techies? See On Hiring Techies. There are several posts: Evaluate Potential, Not Accomplishments. He’s talking about evaluating qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills. Coding Challenge: A pre-interview audition. The cool thing is that they then discuss the audition in the interview. The Team Interview. I dislike panel interviews. …
If you are like many hiring managers I know, you don’t like to write job ads. You find them boring to write. When they are boring to write, many candidates find them boring to read. You don’t have to make your ads boring. Have you read Pradeep Soundararajan’s ad for his VP? Here is his …
Continue reading “Do Your Ads Reflect Your Job and Culture?”
Have you read The next thing Silicon Valley needs to disrupt big time: its own culture? If not, it talks about hiring processes where companies Hire people “just like us” Where candidates can’t tell they are on interviews Where, if you wear a suit, you might be disqualified, because, hey, we don’t wear suits here. …
Continue reading “How to Hire for Cultural Fit Without Becoming Insular and Mediocre”
When I was a young developer, my employers were hungry for talent. They hired women, as well as men. Of course, my first employer wanted to know what birth control I used, which was an illegal question at the time. I told them so. Fast forward to the 80’s, when I became a hiring manager. …
Continue reading “Hiring Trap: Don’t Hire Anyone Older Than…”
There are many hiring traps and shortcuts, especially for technical people. Partially that’s because too few HR people know about technical people. But, partially that’s because too many technical people think, “I have a job, I must know what it takes to hire well.” In my most recent management myth, Management Myth 27: We Can …
Back in More Interview Questions Not to Ask, Part 1, I said that hiring managers and teams should not ask irrelevant questions. Some of you here, and on LinkedIn and Facebook asked, “How do we answer these questions?” Here’s how you do it. If someone asks you “Who do you most admire and why?” use …
Continue reading “How You Answer Irrelevant Questions in an Interview, Part 3”