Hiring Technical People

Recruiting Trends Column About Writing and Speaking, Part 2 Posted

My column at Recruitingtrends.com has evidently been up for a while, but I missed the email telling me. Gotta clean out that inbox.

The column is: Using Writing and Speaking to Recruit Candidates, Part 2

You can’t leave comments there, so please do so here.

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Add comment March 28th, 2008

Can a Candidate Take “Criticism”?

I ran a workshop recently about hiring for an agile team, and one of the people learning to interview said, “I want a candidate who can take criticism.” I replied, “Don’t you mean feedback?” He asked, “What’s the difference?”

Oh, boy. Plenty. Criticism is when you you’re looking at a piece of code and you say, “This seems brain dead.”  But if you say, “I’m confused by this piece of code,” you’ve provided me some feedback. I guarantee you, you want candidates who can take feedback.

So, if you want to know if a candidate can take feedback, here are some possible interview questions:

• “Have you recently been in a position where someone reviewed your work?” (wait for a yes answer.) “What happened?”
• Offer to work with the candidate in an audition (possibly pairing) and review as you go.
• Ask for feedback on some of you work as part of an audition and see how the candidate provides feedback.
• “How do you know your work is good?” Wait and see where the question goes. You might be able to follow up with a question such as, “Is there a way you prefer feedback on your work?”

Asking candidates about their ability to take feedback is useful. Asking about criticism is not.

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5 comments March 26th, 2008

If You’re Hiring, Answer These Questions First

Joan Lloyd has a great post that I saw at Don’t turn down the new job before asking these questions by Joan Lloyd bizjournals.com. Her questions are:

* What specific results are you expecting in the first three months? Six? One year? How will you measure those results?
* To whom can I go for questions as I’m learning my responsibilities? How much time will you have to devote to getting me up to speed?
* Who are the strongest performers on the staff and would they be willing resources to help me with day-to-day questions and processes?
* What are the biggest problems that need resolution within the first six months? What has been done thus far? Who would I have to work with to settle these issues?
* Why have you gone to the outside to fill this position?
* May I meet some of the staff before making my final decision? That way we can make sure it’s a good fit from all perspectives.

If you’re a hiring manager, you need to answer these questions before you start interviewing, so you can answer a candidate. Yes, you need to answer them.

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2 comments March 4th, 2008