Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
The nice folks over at Paysa interviewed me and posted the interview at: Expert Interview Series: Johanna Rothman of www.jrothman.com. I had a chance to wax eloquent about a number of topics: mistakes people make in recruiting and hiring, and the job search. Enjoy!
I’m a big fan of auditions in an interview. (I have many posts about auditions in this blog.) However, some hiring managers and teams push interviewing and auditions too far. When you’ve had three interviews, and your interviewer asks you to solve a problem for them—again—is it a hiring issue, or are they asking you …
I’ve given webinars and talks about hiring for cultural fit for years. A couple of weeks ago, I was in Waterloo/Kitchener, Ontario. When I spoke for Communitech, I updated my talk, Hiring for Cultural Fit. It’s easy to get cultural fit wrong. It’s more difficult to get it right. I hope you enjoy the slides. BTW, …
Have you seen Nick Korbel’s series about hiring techies? See On Hiring Techies. There are several posts: Evaluate Potential, Not Accomplishments. He’s talking about evaluating qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills. Coding Challenge: A pre-interview audition. The cool thing is that they then discuss the audition in the interview. The Team Interview. I dislike panel interviews. …
Cesar Abeid interviewed me, Project Management for You with Johanna Rothman. We talked about my tools for project management, whether you are managing a project for yourself or managing projects for others. We talked about how to use timeboxes in the large and small, project charters, influence, servant leadership, a whole ton of topics. I …
I was reading IDEO’s Culture of Helping. Especially if you are hiring for an agile team, you want to hire for helpfulness. Do You Have a Helpful Culture? Notice, that it’s not about expertise or competence. The most helpful people are people who were trustworthy and accessible. When you hire for the cultural fit of …
See Three Tips to Streamline Your Hiring, Part 1, Three Tips to Streamline Your Recruiting, Part 2, and Three Tips to Streamline Your Phone Screens, Part 3 to see our story to here. When my client talked about his interviews for developers, he said, “I interview people on the phone and then ask the candidate …
Continue reading “Three Tips to Streamline Your Interviews and Auditions, Part 4”
You’ve landed the interview. Congratulations! Now what? Make sure you can discuss your value in detail. If you haven’t done so, review your value as in Four Tips to Defining Your Value. For each and every interview, you want to research the organization and prepare for the interview. You want to understand the questions they …
Continue reading “Job Search Trap: Not Preparing for Each Interview”
There’s a comment in Interview Questions for Program Managers. What should I do if I have experience relevant to being a program manager, but I haven’t been a program manager? How do I answer these questions? (I had posted a number of potential questions a hiring manager could ask a program manager in that post.) …
Continue reading “Transitioning to a New Role: How to Interview”
I saw this post on Twitter, The 3 Interview Questions You Should Ask to Instantly Gauge Fit. I got excited. Oh, maybe we do have questions that address cultural fit. No such luck. More stupid irrelevant and hypothetical questions. I am so disappointed. If you are a candidate and an interviewer asks you these questions …
Continue reading “Three Interview Questions That Don’t Gauge Cultural Fit”