Hiring Technical People

A Little Humor from Comedy Central

I’m in Israel now, getting ready to work with a client tomorrow. When I travel, I watch CNN, and in Israel, I see the international edition. Jon Stewart had a funny segment on his show tonight, American Resolution: New Job. It shows a candidate doing everything wrong. I practically fell off the bed laughing. Enjoy!

Add comment January 28th, 2006

Some Templates Posted

I may not have been blogging much these days, but I have been busy. I’ve posted three templates to my website.

• Job analysis template (in pdf)
• Job description template (in pdf)
• Job advertisement template (in pdf)

As with all templates, the key is in the writing. I’m still organizing m site, so if you want to see the page with all the templates, it’s here. Enjoy!

Add comment January 25th, 2006

A Job Description is Not an Ad

Lisa Haneberg, in her post, How do we define a job - Part 2, develops a prototype for a job posting. She does a great job. She starts with a main attractor, adds in the essential qualities, preferences, and skills, and talks about who should not apply.A job description is not an ad. Posting a job description is not the same as posting an ad. If you’re not posting ads, why not?

It’s not easy to write an ad (although I did devote a whole chapter to it in Hiring the Best …). But you need to write an ad to attract the most suitable candidates, and to prevent the unsuitable candidates from applying.

Here’s the template for an ad. The real key for compelling ads is to work on the writing.

Add comment January 25th, 2006

The “Why Did You Leave Your Last Job” Question

Hiring managers love the ‘Why did you leave your last job’ question. As an interviewer, too many people are willing to tell all, and those stories explain a lot about a candidate.Anthony in Been Fired Lately? says it’s not a big deal–everyone’s been fired. And for many candidates, I would agree. But here are things I’ve heard as a hiring manager:

• “Well, I didn’t like the work my boss gave me, so I stopped coming in.”
• “I had too much school work, so I stopped working.”
• “I didn’t agree with my boss.”

I like asking the question to see what kind of an answer I get, to see if it’s something I want to check in the interview or in the reference.

And for the record, I was fired twice and laid off once. The firings were called layoffs, but since I was the only one laid off, I’m pretty sure I was fired. I have not had to fire myself yet

1 comment January 18th, 2006

What’s the State of Your Job Descriptions?

In description prescription, Don Blohowiak asks the question, “How much of a factor do you think job descriptions are in influencing what people do at work all day?” (None is his cynical answer :-)Part of the manager’s job is to review those job descriptions during the year and see where people are outperforming their description (and there will be places they are), and continually monitor any underperformance (and then provide prompt and effective feedback).

An aside: do you know how to write job descriptions? Should I post my job analysis template?

2 comments January 17th, 2006

Behavior-Description Questions for Senior Staff

I always thought it was easier to ask senior managers and senior technical staff questions, because they had so much experience. But especially with managers, much of their experience is about judgement calls and the way they make decisions. So, I’d ask about that. But from some questions I’ve received recently, I’m in the minority of enjoying interviewing senior staff. Here are examples of questions I’ve asked in the past:

• Give me an example of a time you had to choose between two alternatives you didn’t like. What did you do? (I’m looking for someone to say they didn’t limit themselves to two options. Or if they did, I’m looking for how they made the decision.)
• Has there been a time you felt your ethics were challenged by something your management wanted you to do? What happened? (Anyone who’s been in a senior position or has been working at mid- and upper-management levels for any amount of time has been in a position like this. I want to see them admit it, and say what they did.)
• Have you ever been in a position to provide feedback to an employee who wasn’t working out? What did you do?
• Have you ever had to fire someone? What were the circumstances? What did you do?
• Have you been in a position to coach or mentor someone? What did you do? When do you choose to take on coaching or mentoring? (These questions work for managers and senior technical people alike.)

Asking senior people behavior-description questions provides you a way to have a conversation about real experiences, and to see if the circumstances around those experiences are relevant to your context.

1 comment January 13th, 2006

A Rant About Judicial Hearings

The Alito hearings this week made me cringe. If you watched or heard any of them, you saw senators orating, leading, and in general asking ridiculous questions (both sides). Why didn’t anyone ask either of these two sets of questions:

• Have you been in a position to have to rule against the executive branch? What did you do? What factors influenced your judgement?
• As a judge, have you been in a position to rule on Roe v. Wade? What happened in that case?

Why didn’t the senators ask these questions? Alito is a smart enough guy to know that his personal opinions are not supposed to matter, and that he doesn’t have to supply his personal opinions. But he should have been willing to discuss his judicial responses to the facts of a case.

Back to hiring technical people and managers in the next post.

2 comments January 13th, 2006

Analyzing a Job Two Ways

Dave Liebreich has a post Job Descriptions Made Easy, where he describes the value of following the job analysis template in Hiring the Best …and a technique to use Tinderbox to see the job analysis. Cool.

Add comment January 4th, 2006