Hiring Technical People

Hiring Mistake #1: Hiring Tools, Not People

November 1st, 2004

As part of an interview, a reporter asked me what the single biggest mistake managers make when hiring. Unfortunately, I see three common mistakes:

• Hiring based on a tools checklist (some number of years of Java or WinRunner or some other tool) as opposed to hiring someone who can adapt his/her knowledge to the products at hand. This is the biggest one I see.
• Hiring for the future instead of the present. (I see this one almost as much.) Hiring someone who the manager thinks will have the skills to grow into a new/different role in the future. This is different from hiring to create the future.
• Not considering how a new hire will fit into (or not!) the team. People are not just a collection of technical skills. If they can’t get along with the rest of the team, it can be close to impossible to use their technical skills to move the work forward.

I’ve written before about not hiring tools, but hiring people here. If you see a laundry-list job description, go back and separate all the technical skills into the categories that deliver value to the people with whom this candidate will work. And, remember to think about the non-technical skills, such as responsibility, adaptability, initiative, how quickly someone can learn your product, communication skills, all that stuff.

I’ll address the other two mistakes in later posts.

Tweet This Post

Entry Filed under: hiring strategy, technical skills