cultural fit

hiring strategy, HTP

What Google Has Learned About How to Hire People

Have you read this New York Times article, In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal? It’s an interview with Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google. There are several points that are critical for you to read: We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who […]

HTP, job analysis

How Many Essential Skills Are You Demanding in a Job?

When I taught that one-day workshop in Sweden, one of the questions we discussed was the number of essential skills to list in a job analysis, and by extension, the job description. Too few essential skills, and you don’t differentiate your position from anyone else’s. Too many, and you over-constrain the role. Surely, there must

HTP, interview

What Are Your Favorite Interview Questions?

I have an article coming out soon in the next Prag Magazine about some questions to never ask in an interview. I thought I’d let you know so you could warm up your fingers to quick click on the magazine. And, then I saw this article, 14 Revealing Interview Questions. Some of the questions are

HTP, job analysis

What Scrum Master Are You Hiring Posted

I have another article posted on InfoQ: What Scrum Master Are You Hiring? I’ve noticed that many organizations are calling certain positions Scrum Masters, and they might be Scrum Masters, but to me, they are anything but. You need to do a job analysis first, and name the position second. This is all about cultural

hiring strategy, HTP

Can’t Find People? Root Cause Why

There’s a great article that George Dinwiddie pointed me to, If There’s a Gap, Blame It on the Employer. It’s a nice companion piece to John Sumser’s entire series, Skills Gap: The Series. Here’s what this means for people in technology: Hire based on how well people fit into your team. Yes, this is cultural

Books, MPD

Hiring Geeks That Fit is Available at the Pragmatic Bookshelf

Drum roll please… I am very pleased to announce that Hiring Geeks That Fit is also available at the Pragmatic Bookshelf! I self-published the book at leanpub, and announced it over on Hiring Technical People, and have been writing about it in my newsletter for a few months. And, not everyone knew about it. I

Agile Job Search, HTP

What Culture Do You Want in a New Job? Part 3

In Part 1, you thought about your culture, and built your lists. In part 2, you developed your questions, and thought about the data you wanted to gather. You started with closed or behavior-description questions, so you had a place to start the conversation. Now, in part 3, you’re going to think about when to

Agile Job Search, HTP

What Culture Do You Want in a New Job? Part 1

One of the things I suggest in Manage Your Job Search is to think about your culture when or before you start interviewing. How do you do that? An organization’s culture is made of these three things: What’s okay to talk about? How do you treat people? What do you reward? You can’t just ask

cultural fit, HTP

Is Your Manager Candidate Authentic?

One of the best things about the comments on my Vistage blog post is that they are getting my juices flowing. I’ve already stated I don’t like assessments, that I prefer auditions. See Creating Auditions for Senior Managers for more details. The question about current industry standard for cultural fit got me thinking. I don’t

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