Set Godin, in his The ever-worsening curse of the cog says something profound: The end result is that it’s essentially impossible to become successful or well off doing a job that is described and measured by someone else. I still think managers can describe parts of a useful, non-cog job. But jobs where a person’s […]
The second biggest hiring mistake I see is to hire for the eventual future — but not to create the future from the current reality. I see this mostly when hiring managers and senior staff. Here are some examples: A CTO knows he needs a program manager to manage multiple releases and release operations, so
Recently, I spoke with a senior manager who’d outsourced new development to a non-local group. The development team has worked together in the past, and knows each other well. However, they are used to working on mature products, where you can actually write down the requirements and have them stand still for a few months.
Sorin’s comment got me thinking. How do you make the decision that a candidate’s technical skills aren’t worth the candidate’s lack of relationship, communication, listening, or some other soft skill? Esther was talking about collaborative teams, so someone who won’t or can’t collaborate is not going to work in your environment. But there are
If you’re like one of my readers, you only have two reqs and a perceived need for three people. It’s hard to know what to do, when you only have enough money for two people and want three (or any other case where you have N reqs and N=1 (or more!)) people. Here’s one technique
David, a reader, recently asked for tips about reviewing resumes. Here they are: Read the resume from the top to the bottom. Don’t start somewhere else. Candidates try to grab you with the cover letter or resume. Let them. If there’s an objective, read it. But don’t believe it. Seriously, how many objectives say, “challenging
In a comment on my last post, Roy asked if I could elaborate on what I mean when a candidate runs the interview. Here’s what happened to me at one interview years ago: I arrive on time for the interview, wearing a suit (hey, it was the early 80’s, that’s what we wore). The interviewer
I interviewed once for a QA Manager job. The position was supposed to run the SEPG and chair the corporate quality improvement team. The position was supposed to hire auditors to assess the organization against the CMM, and hire testers to test the product. In addition, the position was supposed to define test plans, and
I’ve been working on an article for about a year now, trying to discuss how to decisions about which kinds of testers to hire when. The only good thing about working on an article that long is that I’m finally learning how to describe what I mean (I think). I’d like your feedback on these
I was reading How Would You Design Bill Gates’s Bathroom? and realized that Microsoft discriminates for people who are visionaries, people who see the big picture. When they do this, they ignore the other types of people necessary for successful products and projects: the stabilizer, the firefighter, and the catalyst.Keirsey calls these temperaments by slightly