I gave a talk at the Philly Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise earlier this week about managing the project portfolio. I was talking about people who start thinking at the 50,000 foot level (like me) and people who start thinking at the blades of grass level. We both move up and down, it’s just where […]
I recently led a workshop on Hiring for an Agile Team. We discussed diversity and I explained my position: the more complex the problem, the more personality and experience diversity you want on your team. That’s because different approaches to solving problems and backgrounds help the team see what their options are. I once worked
I’ve been at the PMI Regina PDC this week. I did a general session talk Monday, and am leading a two-day estimation workshop through tomorrow. Andy Nulman had a great riff on normal vs. abnormal employees. You can see a clip of it here. Warning: racy, not completely clean. If you think of normal as
The third biggest hiring mistake I see is when hiring managers don’t consider cultural fit issues with candidates. I don’t mean small/large company, although that’s a common question hiring managers ask. Here are more cultural fit issues: The personality diversity of the team. If you have a team of introverts (not uncommon), think about that
Take a look at Personality for a psychologist’s view of using any personality test for hiring. I particularly liked these quotes: It means that our everyday belief that people are consistently “themselves” across a wide variety of kinds of circumstances is unfounded.Given enough time to understand a person’s situational patterns, and a reasonably clear description
I love it when the experts agree with me. So imagine my glee when reading, Against Types by Drake Bennet. The subtitle is “Personality tests are everywhere — from the workplace to the courtroom. But critics say the tests themselves don’t pass the test.” I don’t know anything about the academic personality tests used to
Shawn Taylor, in his article Mismatching workers, jobs a costly mistake, (free registration required) has an astounding US statistic: employers lose a total of $105 billion a year by failing to recognize the talent that’s in front of their face. That’s a lot of money. Taylor’s article goes on to discuss the usage of tests
In his provocative article Nasty People, Robert Sutton says ” Managers who belittle and oppress one victim after another shouldn’t be hired.” Amen! If you’re not sure how to avoid hiring nasty people, try these techniques: You can try to ask the candidate about the last time he or she lost his or her temper
I was talking to a hiring manager recently, and she said, “I’d like to get another developer just like Stan.” Well, Stan is a good guy and a talented developer, but why look for someone just like him? The manager explained, “I’m staffing a particularly risky project and with someone just like Stan, I know
I’ve been musing over types of people on projects lately. This morning, my husband and I exhibited two common types: the serially, walk-through-the-whole-thing-systematically type (hubby), and the big picture, can’t-wait-to-see-it-put-together type (me). See Do Your Interview Questions Discriminate For or Against Your Needs? for more information. Mark’s a Guardian (SJ in MBTI terms), I’m a Rational (NT