One of the top posts on this site is Interview Questions for Project Managers. I bet some of you are interviewing for program managers, too. Here’s a little guidance for how to interview for those jobs. A program manager is a strategic job. Remember, a program is a collection of projects where the business value
I just completed writing a series on agile recruiting for Dice.com. Here are all the posts: What is Agile Anyway? How Tech Teams Manage Workload in Agile What the Heck is Kanban? Agile Culture and Recruiting–Hiring Geeks That Fit Five W’s of Agile Recruiting I hope you enjoy these posts. Tell all your recruiter friends!
Are too many job descriptions over-specifying what they need? I read these two posts: Shooting Ourselves in the Foot Isn’t an Effective Engagement Strategy and Top 3 Hiring Mistakes to Avoid. Both posts discuss poor job analysis. This is the issue of How Many Essential Skills Do You Require? Over-specifying a job is bad management and
I saw this post in ere.net, Do You Look for Cultural Fit or Innovation, as if you could somehow separate the two. Oh my, the confusion about cultural fit abounds. Let me set the record straight. Cultural fit is NOT about a person’s preferences outside of work. It’s not about what you would to a
Shane Hastie, my sometime coauthor, and sometime co-teacher, interviewed me for InfoQ about Hiring Geeks That Fit. We had a great time, and the interview shows it. I hope you enjoy the interview. One of the things I say in the interview is, “Hiring should be a team sport, too.” I’m speaking at Agile Boston
I will be at Let’s Test the week of May 20. I am offering a version of my new hiring workshop, Hiring For Your Team: Culture Trumps (Technical) Skills. If you will be at Let’s Test and you have not yet decided which tutorial to take, I invite you to take mine. I just finished
Did you read The Jobless Trap? In it, Paul Krugman asserts we are creating an underclass of long-term unemployed. This is what really stood out for me: This could happen because their work skills atrophy, but a more likely reason is that potential employers assume that something must be wrong with people who can’t find
I’m rearchitecting Manage Your Job Search (again). One of the things I’m doing is working on the introduction, explaining to people why they need to consider agile and lean as a system in which to work on their job hunt/job search project. I’m selling agile and lean to people. The reason you want to consider
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
After I posted my culture series for job hunters, I saw What Your Culture Really Says. (Hat-tip to Andy Lester who pointed me to it.) This is critical: Culture is not about the furniture in your office. It is not about how much time you have to spend on feel-good projects. It is not about