Ok, so you’re all nodding your heads saying, “JR, why wouldn’t I ask about what’s important? Do you think I’m an idiot?”No. You are absolutely not an idiot. You may not remember to ask about everything that *is* important. A colleague on Jerry Weinberg’s Shape forum was discussing a problem she had with a new employee. New employee lasted a day and a half, discovered she had more unemployment benefits due, and left. Just walked off the job. Colleague and I are both flabbergasted.Now I’m not going to ask a candidate, “Would you rather work than receive unemployment benefits?” because that’s broadcasting a correct answer (”I’d rather work, of course”). Instead, I’d ask a behavior-description question:
- “Tell me about a time you’ve faced a difficult decision about your work.” Then listen to the answer. Listen for: choices about coming to work, choices about ethics and integrity.
- “Have you ever run out of work to do?” When someone tells me they never run out of work, I’m suspicious of their environment or their approach to their work. I tend to follow up with something like this:
- “How do you know you’re performing the most appropriate work? Give me an example of a time you made some choices.”
Responsibility, ethics about work, and initative are important to you, no matter what the job is. They are much more important than the language, operating system, database, design or test technique. It’s harder to ask about things like responsibility. And it’s much more important.So, ask about what’s important. Your employees will be happy you did.
February 28th, 2003
Auditions are an interviewing technique that lets you watch the candidate in action. Actors audition for parts, why shouldn’t technical people audition for their work?Here’s how to develop an audition:
- Define the behaviors you want to see in an audition. You can’t see everything about a person, just a 15-30 minute snippet, so define the behaviors you need to see. Sometimes you need to see debugging, designing, or testing behaviors. Sometimes you need to see facilitation and conflict resolution behaviors. For project managers, you may need to see how the PM juggles different requirements from numerous stakeholders. Think about the stresses of your organization and define the few behaviors you want to see.
- Think about how to create a work situation in which you can see the behaviors. For technical work, you can use a piece of your code or product for design, debugging, testing, writing, support behaviors. For more soft-skill behaviors, consider designing an experiential simulation, with the help of an expert. Unless you have experience designing simulations, don’t do this on your own.
- Try out the audition on someone already working at your company. Make sure they can complete the audition in half the allotted time. If it takes someone already familiar with your product or environment the full time to complete the task, a candidate will not be able to succeed.
Then you’re ready to use the audition on a candidate.When you give candidates an audition, explain the audition to them. Explain the idea of auditions in interviews, and that there is no pass or fail, you’re looking at how they work.
February 27th, 2003
If you’re looking for a job, make sure you describe the benefits of your work to potential employees. Especially if you’ve been performing staff work such as QA or process improvement, try to quantify the benefits of your work. Here are some examples:Instead of saying “Led process definition” consider:
- Managed process improvement project, leading to meeting project deadlines
- Facilitated process improvement discussions, leading to reduced cycle time for three projects
- Worked with managers to define the process to reduce defects. Customers gave us a quality award.
- Define customer retention process. Changed customer retention from 55% to 75%, with an increase of revenue of xxx%
If you’re working in process improvement now and aren’t quantifying your effect on the company, it’s time. Learn how valuable your work is now. Then update your resume with quantifiable information.
February 26th, 2003