Imagine this scenario: You’re a development manager in a small organization. You have a product and a couple of customers. Over the course of the next year or so, you add a few more developers and a few more customers. And, your customers want to know when you’ll improve the quality of the product, because […]
Larry Summers has been ousted as the President of Harvard. (I’m based in the Boston/Cambridge area, so you can imagine the news coverage here.) If you look at the facts, it’s clear to me, he was canned because he didn’t fit the culture of the institution. (See the USA Today editorial and the Time article.)I
I just posted Hiring For Team Fit. Please post comments here.
Tester extraordinaire Mike Kelly pointed me to Interviewing the Interviewer: Beyond Getting the Job. If you’re a candidate, you should read this. Dave lists a bunch of questions that help a candidate see the culture of the organization. And yes, I’ll take this as another ding to post my cultural fit article.
Contents: This month’s Feature Article: Providing Effective Correcting and Reinforcing Feedback Announcements =-=-=-=-=- Feature Article: Providing Effective Correcting and Reinforcing Feedback So you can’t stand the way Bonzo checks in his broken code on Friday afternoons. Or, Cecile has such bad breath no one wants to work with her. Or, you’re not sure how to
I’m doing a webinar for Kennedy Information Systems next Friday, Dec. 9, 2005. The webinar is Detecting Cultural Fit Issues. It’s updated from the webinar I did in February. Please use the Kennedy link to register for the webinar. And for those of you who are wondering, I’m fine, just crazy-busy, which is why I
Auren Hoffman has an intriguing post, It is too risky not to take a risk, suggesting that people take what appears to be the “risky” job rather than the safe job.I see it differently. I don’t see jobs as risks, but as opportunities. I tried to select my jobs based on where I would learn
In a previous comment, a reader points to a resume that’s written like a cross between a cover letter and a resume. While the resume has a number of useful points, the resume is too quick to tell possible hiring managers what they are doing wrong. That dismissal of what hiring managers sometimes do also
The third biggest hiring mistake I see is when hiring managers don’t consider cultural fit issues with candidates. I don’t mean small/large company, although that’s a common question hiring managers ask. Here are more cultural fit issues: The personality diversity of the team. If you have a team of introverts (not uncommon), think about that
Recently, I spoke with a senior manager who’d outsourced new development to a non-local group. The development team has worked together in the past, and knows each other well. However, they are used to working on mature products, where you can actually write down the requirements and have them stand still for a few months.