One of the nice things about the social networking sites such as LinkedIn, is that they allow me to reconnect with people I worked with years ago. I recently re-met a colleague from my undergraduate days, and a colleague I worked with 25 years ago. I mentioned to one of these colleagues’ peers that I’d […]
In a recent workshop, one of the participants explained, “I like to ask personal questions to see if the candidate will fit in with the team socially.” Well, that’s an illegal discrimination. * in the US, but not in other places. (It’s illegal because if you reject a candidate based on their answer, you’re discriminating
I just read Penelope Trunk’s Quit work for a while to have kids. Your career will be just fine. I hope it’s true. I don’t understand how it can be true for highly technical people. I hope I’m wrong. I took off 3 months when each of my children was born. I didn’t want more
In his comment, Gregbo asks what I mean by “bad” judgment. Here’s an incomplete list: Frequent job changes, at least one job a year for several years Months of no discernible work or lag times between jobs. Titles that appear to move up and down the ladder. There are more, but those are the
Last week, I was working with a client in the Netherlands, talking about how to hire for an agile team. We started discussing how the management team reviews resumes. One of the managers said he looked for people under 40, because otherwise the candidate was “too old.” Well, I passed 40 a long time ago,
I received some great comments on Why Puzzles and Riddles Discriminate. Adam has a terrific list of the things he’s looking for when he uses “puzzles and/or brainteasers and/or random programs to test”: Do they give up right off the bat? Do they ask questions or sit silent pondering? Do they make different attempts or
At last week’s Agile 2006 conference, I led a tutorial called “Hiring for an Agile Team.” I made a statement that some of the participants challenged: Using puzzles and riddles discriminate against anyone who isn’t a (middle-upper class) white American suburban male. (I’d forgotten the middle-upper class part when I was leading the session.) So,
The war for talent is back on, according to Gretchen and Rob Merrill. Ok, I’ll buy that. I know fewer unemployed people and it seems as if people are finding jobs faster.But not all people. Those of us with gray hair are not finding it easier to find jobs. I have only anecdotal evidence, but
I was reading Andy Tinkham’s “Disproportionate amount of introverts in software testing” (post is now missing) and saw a comment that one person tends to discriminate for introverts in testing. I agree with the intent of the comment, that the hiring manager wants people who are organized and pay attention to the work. However, I
I was reading How Would You Design Bill Gates’s Bathroom? and realized that Microsoft discriminates for people who are visionaries, people who see the big picture. When they do this, they ignore the other types of people necessary for successful products and projects: the stabilizer, the firefighter, and the catalyst.Keirsey calls these temperaments by slightly