Lately, I’ve been working with people who say they’ve looked for months to try to find just the right person. I believe them. When I ask where they spend their time, they inevitably say that they spend way too long interviewing people who aren’t quite right. And, it doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s […]
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 received a call from a recruiter-colleague yesterday, bemoaning a hiring manager who was waiting for the “perfect” candidate. “I’ve sent her 5 great candidates, but none of them are perfect. Doesn’t she have to fill this position?” Well, maybe not right away. And, maybe it’s not just technical skills that make a candidate a
Maybe you have a job or two open. You’re reluctant to pay more than you have to for a given position. I understand that employers want to get the biggest bang for their employment buck. I once consulted for an organization who had deliberately hired from the “bottom of the barrel.” (That was their phrase.)
I’ve been reviewing job descriptions from clients that are a laundry list of tools. Or, that ask for “significant experience” with a particular technology. No, no, no. People are not tools. They are human beings who have specific qualities, preferences, and technical and non-technical skills. When you think about those personal qualities, think about these
It’s now a hiring manager’s market. That means hiring managers can be picky and try to find just the right person for the open req. But, it also means that many applicants exist for each open req, and all of those people are applying for your job. How does a hiring manager find the right
I taught my “Hiring for Agile Teams” workshop at ADP today, and finally have words for something I’ve seen for a while. When I ask people to describe qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills, they say things like “easy-going” or “intuitive” or something else that describes behavior. Since I love behavior-description questions, you’d think this would
I’ve got election fever, I admit it. In the VP debate last week, the moderator asked a useless question: “What is your achilles heel?” (I’m probably paraphrasing the question.) Both candidates treated it as the weakness question, and didn’t answer the question. They each turned the question around to their strengths. What a surprise (not!).
Lisa has a nice post, How to Hire a Manager – A Time Tested Recipe. She’s close. I’m not so sure about the “humble” part, and I would add something like “advocates for team.” But the piece Lisa missed is integrity. Without integrity, the other qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills are useless. To be fair,
I led a 90-minute Hiring for an Agile Team workshop at AgileItx! this past week. I ask each team in the workshop to call out a candidate’s quality, preference, or non-technical skill that they look for in a team. One of the teams said, “teamwork.” Well, teamwork means a lot of things to lots of