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. […]
In Michael’s comment to When Candidates and Interviewers Disagree About “The Answer” he raised a critically important point: how much does the the candidate know about this issue and how hard will the candidate push to make sure that the interviewer hears his or her side of the issue? First, let’s separate the two issues
Hiring mistakes are common. Too often, we don’t consider in advance what our critical criteria are, and we make mistakes. Here are some I made early in my management career: I hired a prima donna developer, because I didn’t listen to my gut telling me he was wrong for our culture. The rest of the
Every so often, I hear managers say things they vowed they’d never say when they were technical contributors. (Yeah, parents do that too, but that’s not the topic today 🙂 Here are a few of my favorites with their translations: “We have expertise in that area.” Translation: We have no idea what you’re talking about,
In a previous post, Attracting Suitable Candidates, Laurent caught me being vague. In Screening Out, he points to a great skit, where the technical people are talking about people skills but the HR people are talking about tools and technology.Too many recruiters just don’t get it — that software is much more people and perseverance