hiring

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Ready, Aim… Hire

When is a year of experience not a year of experience? When that experience doesn’t match your needs. Take my friend Zack for instance. A VP of Development, he recently came to me with a problem. “We hire the best people money can buy,” he said. “They have degrees and tons of experience. Why can’t […]

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Hiring in Alignment

If you’re like most IT managers, you have a couple of open reqs. You’d like to make the most of your reqs, and you don’t want to take a long time to hire. To hire the most suitable candidate who aligns with your strategy and needs, find candidates with relevant experience and then ask them

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Beyond Tool Use

© 2002 Johanna Rothman. This article was originally published in Software Development, October 2002. When hiring personnel, subject domain expertise, industry experience and software skills, combined with corporate culture simpatico, make for a well-rounded worker. by Johanna Rothman Jim, a hiring manager in search of a developer, is talking to Jane, a human resources recruiter:

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Crisis? What Crisis? A Contrarian Perspective

© 2001 Johanna Rothman. This article was originally published in Cutter IT Journal, June 2001. Software organizations take forever to hire technical people, we overwork them, our projects are late, we can’t get everything done. We must have a people shortage, yes? No. True, we have plenty of problems, but we have enough people to

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A Problematic Truth: You’re Too Valuable Where You Are

“No Fred, we’re not considering you for that promotion. You’re too valuable where you are.” How many of us have heard those words, or said them at least once to our staff? Sometimes, we use the “too valuable” phrase to avoid discussing problems with a staff member, problems you can bring out in the open

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More People Does Not Equal Better Projects

© 2001 Johanna Rothman “New England high tech jobs going unfilled” — headline in a recent Boston Globe “If you have more open requisitions than candidates, hire the ones who can breathe.” — Jerry Weinberg, private conversation Even the popular press has caught on to the software “crisis” of not enough people. The Globe reporter

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Hiring IT Staff: Asking the Right Questions

by Johanna Rothman. Originally published in Cutter’s Business-IT Alignment E-Mail Advisor, February 2, 2000. A number of IT alignment issues are related to the difficulties in hiring staff. Let’s assume you’re in “constant hiring” mode — you continually get resumes, interview people, and decide on whether to hire various candidates. But are you asking questions

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Asking Good Interview Questions

©2000 Johanna Rothman Many of us are in “constant hiring” mode–continually receiving resumes, interviewing people, and deciding on whether to hire various candidates. Are you asking questions that get you informative answers about your candidates? There are many potential kinds of interview questions and situations: closed, open, hypothetical, meta questions, auditions, and rhetorical questions are

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Planning Your Staffing Decisions

Abstract You’ve written the job description. You know just what you want in this employee. You have one tiny problem—you just can’t find that person. Now what? Sometimes you can continue to wait for the right person to come along. Sometimes you choose to hire someone with inadequate skills. In either case, you don’t have

Articles

What to Do When the Right Person Doesn’t Come Along

© 1999 Johanna Rothman. You’ve written the job description. You know just what you want in this employee. You have one tiny problem-you just can’t find that person. Now what? Sometimes you can continue to wait for the right person to come along. Sometimes you choose to hire someone with inadequate skills. In either case,

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