George Dinwiddie asked me a question in email, “Why do companies hire junior-level contractors? I feel bad about spending the company’s money trying to teach these junior contractors to be better software developers. A junior-level direct hire makes sense, as you expect them to be around long enough that the education pays off. But a junior contractor seems like a total waste–training someone for the benefit of a later engagement, probably with another company.”
Sometimes, I just don’t understand the money games companies play. It’s “cheaper” in terms of money outlay to hire junior contractors, because you don’t pay benefits. But, you also don’t receive the value of the money. You’re investing in a person who can’t possibly stay long enough for you to get the payback.
The problem is you can’t measure a single person’s costs or productivity. You hve to remember that it’s the team’s cost and the team’s productivity. Any new hire will reduce the team’s overall productivity. That’s one reason I advocate assigning a buddy for a while, so only one person is directly affected by questions.
But it takes anywhere from 6-12 months for people to become effective in an organization. How long do your contractors last? Many organizations (in the US) have a rule about eliminating contractors in a year. If you’ve hired junior contractors, you’ve just wasted the money you spent for a year on that contractor, and reduced the productivity of the team.
If you believe you need to hire junior contractors, think hard about what you and the team will get out of them.
I met a software developer recently, who studied physics as an undergrad. He’s now working in an IT organization on financial processing software.
He’s part of the interviewing team for his organization. They’re trying to hire 6-7 more developers before the end of the year. He told me, “I like to ask a question about physics, to see how smart the candidates are.” I asked him how many candidates he’d rejected due to his question. “Only 2 out of 5.”
Ouch. He rejected 2 potential candidates not because of an answer that’s relevant to the job, but to an answer that is irrelevant to the job.
Instead of asking a question that you think will get you information about how smart a candidate is, ask questions that really tell you what you need to know.
“Tell me about a time you had to learn an application quickly. What did you do?”
“Tell me about a time you had to bring someone else up to speed on a system. What did you do?”
“Tell me about a time you got stuck on a problem. What did you do?”
All of these questions are much better than asking a candidate about physics, art history, Spanish, or anything else you took in school. And, they’re relevant to the job.
Don’t ask about physics. Ask about job-relevant experiences. You won’t be falsely rejecting potential candidates. And you won’t be opening yourself up to a lawsuit about discrimination. Ask about issues relevant to the job you have open now, not experiences you had in school.
Jason Yip’s Hire squirrels instead of turkeys has a link to a discussion of Harvard’s hiring of Faust as the new president. Looks like Harvard got smart and thought about cultural fit, and those critical influencing and negotiation skills. (See my other post A Perfect Example of Insufficient Cultural Fit.)On the other hand, read Seth Godin’s Sheepwalking, where he describes people putting in time at their jobs, instead of being creative and solving problems.The first part of a smart hiring decision is to know what non-technical qualities, preferences, and skills you need. That’s why you need to think about the deliverables and activities the employee will perform on the job. (That’s why I put so much emphasis on the job analysis.) Technical skills are easy to train. Finding people who can solve problems and do the hard work you need them to do–that’s hard. And that’s what’s necessary for a smart hiring decision.
Dave Liebreich gave me feedback yesterday that I’d forgotten to include a template of a rejection letter (after the interview) in the book. Argh. I’ve started an errata page for this and other potential problems. A rejection letter has only three components:
No.
Thank you.
Good luck with your job search.
Write the no part first. Don’t apologize; just write something like this: “Your experience doesn’t fit our needs at this time.” Then, write the thank you part, “Thank you for interviewing with us.” Finally, write the good luck part, “Good luck with your job search.”The reason I write the no part first is simple: if you haven’t called the candidate with an offer, the candidate knows you don’t want to hire him or her, but anything other than the no at the beginning can raise a candidate’s hopes. I don’t want to disappoint a candidate more than necessary.
I love it when the experts agree with me. So imagine my glee when reading, Against Types by Drake Bennet. The subtitle is “Personality tests are everywhere — from the workplace to the courtroom. But critics say the tests themselves don’t pass the test.”
I don’t know anything about the academic personality tests used to diagnose mental illness. But I do know about and use MBTI in my work. For example, I find it useful to know if the person I’m dealing with is an I, Introvert or an E, Extravert. If the person is an I, I’ll tend to write down the issue first and give the person a chance to think before we speak. If I’m dealing with an E, I block out time to talk to the person. I use the same amount of time; I spend it differently. And of course, I use the other axes of MBTI as well. I see hiring managers and HR staff misusing MBTI when they assume a person can only act in one way. Just because I’m an E doesn’t mean I don’t know how to think and write without speaking. I prefer speaking first but I can speak later.
Types are just one aspect of a person — a person’s preferences, not the only way that person knows how to act. If you ever saw me manage a project, you might think I was an SJ, given the level of detail I sometimes use for my lists. But I’m not. (NT here.) Does that mean I can’t be a good project manager? Nope. It means you should ask me behavior-description questions, such as “How do you manage the complexity of a project?” to understand what I think complexity is, and what I actually do. (BTW, in my highly non-scientific study of answers to that question, SJ’s ask “What aspect of complexity?” and NT’s answer.)
Understanding a person’s type can be useful when creating and maintaining a good working relationship — but not for a hiring decision.
In It’s the People, Stupid!” David Hornick quotes an unnamed friend discussing hiring (it looks as if it’s a startup):
[T]he best advice I have for you is this: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES make any one of your first ten hires anything less than an outstanding, 10’s from all judges, blow your head off superstar. Then tell them to hold the same standard for their first ten hires. And so on. In every case where I’ve filled a seat under time pressure instead of waiting for the right person, that seat-filler has done far more damage than waiting another few weeks to hire ever would. It’s just *never* been worth it.
I agree. I wrote a little about the people factor here.
Some hiring managers use certifications to filter resumes. I specifically caution against that practice in the book. I’m not a fan of certifications. Michael Schrage’s column Hiding Behind Certification is another article about why certifications are not a good predictor of job success. Here are two quotes I particularly liked:
“The truth — as we all so bitterly know — is that the IT world is filled with certified, credentialed and accredited idiots.”“…the real value of credentials and certifications like CMMs and MBAs is not that they indicate greater skill, but they signal to the market that these individuals and organizations will jump through hoops to demonstrate how much they care about being seen as top-notch. … the willingness to procure credentials can reveal more about attitude than aptitude.
Although Schrage is talking about IT, his observations aren’t limited to IT. Unless you’re talking about licenses which require some sort of an apprenticeship, certifications are no way to screen resumes or make a hiring decision.
but I can speak later.