Several weeks ago, the nice folks at FogCreek interviewed me. It’s here: Technical Hiring and Cultural Fit – Interview with Johanna Rothman. The interview ranged over many topics: Cultural fit Diversity What to do when you look for a job Much more I hope you enjoy it. If you want to read more about how […]
In Hire for Cultural Fit: It’s Time to Add Women, Pt 1, I wrote about the need to add women to your team, and what you could do. But just hiring women isn’t enough. You need race and age diversity, along with personality diversity to get the best products out of your teams. Back when
In the blogosphere and in the press, there is an increasing notice about the lack of women in technical fields and management positions. Here is some data: Why women leave tech: what the research says by Sue Gardner. Read Visualizing Silicon Valley’s Lack of Diversity. Notice that tech is overwhelmingly white and male. It does
We often think about a succession plan for managers. But, if you’re not thinking about a succession plan for your technical team, you’re falling prey to local shortages, and hiring the same old kinds of people. You’re not getting diverse people. That means you may not be able to create innovative, great products. It also
Have you read The next thing Silicon Valley needs to disrupt big time: its own culture? If not, it talks about hiring processes where companies Hire people “just like us” Where candidates can’t tell they are on interviews Where, if you wear a suit, you might be disqualified, because, hey, we don’t wear suits here.
I read Technology’s Man Problem in the New York Times this weekend. I thought those days were long gone—but they’re not. Since when is it acceptable to make any comment about anybody’s body part at work? Hello? Are we in the 7th grade? I thought “men” were past that. The gentlemen I know are past
When I was a young developer, my employers were hungry for talent. They hired women, as well as men. Of course, my first employer wanted to know what birth control I used, which was an illegal question at the time. I told them so. Fast forward to the 80’s, when I became a hiring manager.
I was reading Interview Questions: Hiring Experts Reveal Their Favorites. Some of them are quite good. But some of them? Not so much. Here are the ones you should avoid, and why: Who do you most admire and why? What is your passion? If you could do anything, what would be your ideal job? Why
So I’ve spoken about women and other kinds of traditional diversity, personality and experience, new grads, and now it’s time to discuss a difficult topic. What about “overqualified” people? People who have tons of experience are looking for jobs. Too often, hiring managers don’t want to hire them because the manager thinks the candidate will
I recently had a conversation with a gentleman at a conference, where he said they hired “to raise the bar”. I asked him what he meant by that. He started discussing the mean of the capability in the team. Well, if you’ve hired for zero diversity, you might be able to discuss the team’s mean.