In Rethinking a Management Decision, Kevin Salwen reflects on when it’s appropriate to hire someone with a cut in pay.
As I’ve moved further along in my career, I realize that there are a whole host of jobs that are just plain better than what people have now….Now, I’m wondering how much I would allow someone’s salary to shrink in a similar situation. Is there a cutoff? 10%? 20%? I’m wondering.
This is great question for hiring managers who are concerned that a candidate who was paid more won’t be willing to take, or more importantly, stay at a job at a lower salary. If your position is challenging for a candidate, let the candidate make the call. In my experience, candidates self-select themselves out of bad-for-them offer situations.
Tweet This Post
April 28th, 2004
Sorin asks another great question:
“So please enlighten me : how do you decide, with only interviews/auditions, whether a candidate will be a good addition to a team or a disruptive element“
I’m assuming you’ve already asked questions such as, “Tell me about the project you’re on now. … What’s your role on the project? … How much of your time do you work with other people? … How do you work with them? … What have you learned from working with (so-and-so)? … What one thing will you do again? … What one thing won’t you do again? … Why?” or some other combination of closed and behavior-description questions to establish this person’s experience working with others. You’ll learn from the candidate by listening to these answers. Oh, and don’t forget to ask how people work with their office-mates. I may have been hired once on the basis of how I maneuvered my office-mate into cleaning up his part of the office 
Once you’ve asked those questions, reconsider how you create technical auditions. Certainly, you need a technical audition for any candidate you’re considering. An audition where someone works alone — debugging, designing, testing, writing, whatever — will provide much more information about a person’s approach to technical problems than any other technique. But maybe you haven’t considered an audition for how people work with each other. This audition is trickier to create, but certainly worth the time you invest.
Let’s take Sorin’s example, of wanting to know whether a person can work well with others or prefers to be a loner. You could create an audition in at least these ways:
- Invite the candidate to pair-work. I’ve done this as part of a second round of interviews, after the person has performed an initial technical audition and has passed the first round of interviews. “We’d like to see how you perform as if you were working here. We’d like you to work with Pat and pair-design (or test or write or whatever).” Work with Pat in advance to set up the most suitable product situation. (If you have product where the candidate needs a clearance or to sign a non-disclosure, consider using open-source products for this part of the audition.)
- Ask the candidate to participate in some way that mimics the area you’d like to investigate more. If you want to make sure a developer works well with others, ask him or her to participate in a design or code review. You’ll need to provide enough background material for the candidate to be able to intelligently participate.
- Consider an extended audition. Especially if the candidate doesn’t have a lot of experience working with people professionally, consider a temporary-to-permanent position. Hire the candidate as a contractor for a specified period of time (8-12 weeks) and provide feedback every week, especially about those interpersonal skills you’re concerned about. (I realize that while this is common in the USA, other countries’ labor laws may not make temp-to-perm an option.)
The key when creating an interpersonal skills audition is to consider which interpersonal skills you want to examine. You’ll create auditions differently if you’re looking for general communication skills than for facilitation skills.
Once you decide how to create the audition, you’ll have work to do. But, once you’ve invested the time to create the interpersonal skills audition, you can reuse the same audition repeatedly.
Tweet This Post
April 25th, 2004
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 other qualities, preferences, or skills you may not realize you want in a candidate. If you don’t realize you want these in a candidate, you won’t ask about them.
You’ll need to evaluate your environment. In Sorin’s other comment, he said “a hiring manager should look for is the ability and willingness to learn”. I haven’t met a technical environment in which those qualities weren’t necessary. But what if you find someone who knows your technology now, understands your product, has the requisite functional skills, but is not willing to learn a lot more? My answer is: it depends. It depends on how desperate you are for a candidate who can be productive tomorrow, at the expense of the high probability you’ll have to hire someone else in a couple of years.
What’s most important is to consider the qualities, preferences, and skills you require in candidates. Sorin’s right, the perfect candidate doesn’t exist, but knowing the kind of person you want is necessary, so you can make the most appropriate decisions. I have a bunch of qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills listed in my book. (Here are some: initiative, flexibility, tasking preferences, goal orientation, how the person takes on responsibility, teamwork and collaboration skills, facilitation, oral and written communication skills, curiosity, perseverance.) In Buckingham and Coffman’s First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
, there’s an appendix of what they call “talents.” I’m traveling right now, so I don’t have access to their book for examples. As you consider these qualities, preferences, and skills, you’ll need to consider which few are essential and which are desirable. Then you can ask the candidate questions about the essential and desirable skills.
If a candidate can’t meet your environment’s needs for your essential qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills, then drop the candidate. (Yes, be nice Because how a person works is as important to their success in your environment as their technical knowledge.
Tweet This Post
April 13th, 2004
See Esther’s article on Hiring for a Collaborative Team. (Yes, Esther was one of my book reviewers.)
Tweet This Post
April 5th, 2004