I’m at the SHRM conference in Chicago this week, courtesy of Dice.com. I blog for them, and am working on an agile recruiting series. Watch for it, in the coming weeks. I read this piece, The War for STEM Talent is a Lie. I agree. Until we do all of these things: Hire the people […]
One of the most difficult parts of project portfolio management is deciding how to rank the projects — that is, determining which projects should be done now, later, and, most importantly, never. There are several ways to rank a project portfolio. Each is useful in specific situations and not so useful in others. But all
I was talking with a client recently, who was professing his desire for younger candidates. “Can anyone older than 35 or 40 really know anything?” was his concern. I sat there, a little nonplussed. “How old do you think I am?” I paused. “No, don’t answer that. Just remember that age is not the issue.
Dave Larribee has a great post, The High Cost of Losing a Developer. (Discovered via an ericlandes tweet) Dave suggested it might take a couple of years investment in terms of salary to make a developer productive. My experience is that it takes about 6 months of that developer and some number of months of
I wa just reading recent grad frustrated by job search, and want to highlight something many candidates, even experienced candidates, forget: Remember, a hiring manager is going to spend maybe a minute (or less) on the initial scan of your resume. What do you want her to see in that minute — a list of
George Dinwiddie asked me a question in email, “Why do companies hire junior-level contractors? I feel bad about spending the company’s money trying to teach these junior contractors to be better software developers. A junior-level direct hire makes sense, as you expect them to be around long enough that the education pays off. But a
In my recent consulting (workshops and assessments), several technical staff and their managers have told me they’re not sure they are being paid what they’re worth. I ask “How do you know?” They tell me all the ways they’re working for the organization and how much that benefits their managers. I ask the next question,
I received an email recently from an engineer who was considering a job at a non-profit. They offered him a much lower salary than he was expecting, because they were a “non-profit.” Some people are slimeballs, even if they work at non-profits. A non-profit has revenue. A non-profit pays salaries and benefits to its employees.
I was speaking with a project manager the other day, who’s looking for a job but does not have a PMP certification. He was worried, so I asked him how he presented himself to potential hiring managers and HR people. He said, “I don’t have a PMP, but I’ve been really successful managing projects for
Experience and Education makes the point We hire people to complete tasks and run functions (not really–we employ talent to create value, but I?ll try to stick to the point). He goes on to say The problem is, both of these (years of experience and education) are unreliable measures of whether someone can do a