George Dinwiddie pointed me to this great column, Fired With Enthusiasm. I have a talk that I’ve given at a bunch of Software Development conferences, called “Successful Software Management: X Lessons Learned,” where X started at 8, and is now up to 16. Lesson # 11 is “Fire People Who Can’t Do the Work.” I […]
I recently spoke with a recruiter who told me, “I just can’t seem to find agile candidates. No one has “stand-up meetings’ listed on his resume.” When you’re reviewing resumes, it would be nice to find some keywords so you could see if the candidate has had agile experience–but it’s unlikely. However, implementing a few
“I need another tester for my team” – Test Manager “I’m looking for a developer/architect/someone senior for my team” – Development manager Two managers, two teams. Although each manager has a group he calls a team, the teams are quite different. The test manager has a pool of people whom he assigns to projects in
If you’ve been hiring for a while, you probably have a list of questions you like to use with candidates. I certainly do. So let me ask you, “Can you give me an example of a time when you wanted to learn more about a candidate, and your questions didn’t seem to work?” Notice what
Hiring technical managers is different — and more difficult — than hiring technical people. When I hire a technical person, such as a developer, I look for design, implementation and debugging abilities as part of the candidate’s technical skill set. But when I hire managers, the rules are different. Technical managers don’t need to be
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. Your staff holds the key to some of the best hires you’ll make. Learn how to extract value from their connections. Employee referrals are an excellent source of hiring leads. And if you’ve been hiring for any length of time you already know that. Almost every organization has some employee referral
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. You don’t have to be an artist to put together a presentation that wows them. Normally, I speak to hiring managers, but this column is for candidates. If you’ve been working for more than a few years, or have moved, it’s easy to lose track of previous managers or peers. And
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. This column was originally pubished on Stickyminds.com Summary: Resumes only tell a portion of a candidate’s story just like caller ID doesn’t always reveal the caller’s complete identity. Screening candidates over the phone can help extract more of the person’s story if you ask the right questions. In this week’s column,
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. Sometimes there’s no time to use the usual hiring process. When you’re in a crunch, you need new thinking. Imagine this scenario: you’ve just discovered there’s a high-risk/high-return project. It won’t take long, but it will take people you don’t have right now. Is there a way to hire people to
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. Defining the people who fit your projects You’ve probably heard the adage, “Hire for attitude, train for skills.” There’s a good reason to do so. Hiring for attitude means that you won’t have to fire people who don’t fit into your culture. But that still isn’t easy. Finding people who can