Posts filed under 'manager'
I spoke with someone who wants a senior level management position. (He’s currently a mid-level manager.) I asked him about his experience with assistants. “I’ve never had one.”
Oh. Senior people have assistants because they need them. Other people need them, but our organizations have decided we can do all the grunt work ourselves. Don’t get me going.
A great assistant can make you or break you as a senior manager, because an assistant will make or break your ability to finish your work. That assistant can also make it possible for your managers to succeed or not.
A manager’s time is valuable, and while a manager can amplify the work of his or her staff, a manager’s assistant can *allow* the manager that time–especially time to think. When the assistant takes on the nitty gritty details, the manager is free to focus on the big picture or to dive deep where necessary. But you can’t do that unless you have a great assistant.
Great assistants can make the organization hum. Bad assistants can drop it to its knees. I was a project manager once in an organization where the assistant had her favorites. Luckily, I was one of them. I got what I needed: help from the facilities group, my contractors’ invoices were paid on time, I got the conference rooms I needed, and more. But she disliked one of my colleague project managers, and he didn’t get those things. He found it difficult to keep his projects rolling–not because of the technical work, but because of the environmental issues.
Turns out, he was fired later because he was a jerk 
She’d given her boss feedback about this guy (and feedback to his face) for several years, and finally stopped working with him when his jerk-iness got so bad it interfered with her ability to help other people. So she stopped helping him.
I stayed in touch with that assistant until she retired. For her entire tenure at this organization, she made the organization hum smoothly. Her boss made great decisions, because he had time to think.
August 19th, 2008
Lisa has a nice post, How to Hire a Manager - A Time Tested Recipe. She’s close. I’m not so sure about the “humble” part, and I would add something like “advocates for team.”
But the piece Lisa missed is integrity. Without integrity, the other qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills are useless. To be fair, she implies it in her post. But I like making it explicit, because then I can ask questions such as, “Have you ever been in a position where the company wanted you to do something that went against your integrity? What happened?” If you want to ask about what the person learned, ask, “What did you learn from that experience?”
It’s possible that less seasoned managers have not been in an integrity-binding position, yet. I have yet to meet a manager who’s been managing for more than a couple of years who has not been in this position. When I’ve been in a position to hire managers (or to be hired as a manager), I want to know how the candidate has performed while in the integrity bind, or how my potential managers have performed.
June 30th, 2008
Jurgen’s post, How to Select a Fine Technical Manager, along with the posts he responded to prompted this one. I’m not agreeing much with Jurgen today. I suspect it’s because we have very different experience. In my experience, only technical people who want to manage want to be managers–unless HR has screwed up the salary ranges. If the salary ranges don’t go high enough for technical staff to make a good living, they want to be managers to increase salary.
I addressed part of this question in How Technical Does a Project Manager Have to Be?. And the answers are similar for a people, not project, manager.
Technical managers need to have these technical skills: None.
Seriously, when was the last time you needed your manager to tell you how to solve a technical problem? Unless your manager is coaching you, the last time was when you only had a year or two of experience.
Technical managers need an in-depth understanding of the process by which the technical staff can perform the work. That may well mean an experience in where coding can trip developers up, where testers might have blind spots, how to help business analysts talk to the people who have requirements and how to translate those requirements into user stories, and so on. But the manager does not need to be the star of the group–and in many cases, the star is not interested in management, so makes a bad manager.
What’s way more important is all the interpersonal skills. Here are some from the chapter in Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers…:
- Provide effective feedback.
- Influence and negotiation skills.
- Problem solving and decision-making. Managers need to be able to solve problems and make decisions in the face of ambiguity.
- Delegation.
- Ability to manage things, such as projects or groups of tasks. Technical people don’t need supervisors; they need leadership, guidance, and effective decision-making, especially when faced with too many options or insufficient information.
- Ability to observe current state and choose another action to change state.
Jurgen goes on to say
Give the job to a technical person who never asked for it.
Well, I don’t buy that either. I have asked people who were critical of management if they wanted to try it. Some organizations make effective management just about impossible. I was a middle manager, had a technical lead who was critical of everything, and asked him if he wanted to try management for a few months. He lasted three months, and gave up. I told him not every place was as screwed up as that one, and to try management again later.
Potential managers need to want to work with people. They need to make decisions without enough information. They need to wean themselves off the technical work. They need to learn how to hire, give feedback, and all kinds of other management skills. (To see how great managers work, read Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management.) But they don’t need to be dumped into a management role, or think they aren’t good at technology and that’s why they’re managers.
BTW, if you’re wondering, I started my career as a developer, did some small-project management and people management starting once I’d been working a few years, still developing. I became a tester and took on a bunch of project management and coordination work because I liked it. After a couple of years, I became a full-time project and program manager. After a few years, I became a manager, then a group manager, then a director. Then, I went back to developing test code for a while, then a manager, then a consultant. Don’t think you need a linear career path. You can try management and return to your technical work if you don’t like it or if you’re not ready for more responsibility. But don’t try management unless you want to work with people. Management is a people-centric role.
May 27th, 2008
At the Better Software tutorial yesterday, several managers said their hardest problem was finding good people. If you haven’t started continuous recruiting yet, it’s time to start.Continuous recruiting is not just the “keeping your eyes open” part of recruiting, it requires your (and possibly your team’s) active participation. It means you bring a couple of hundred business cards with you to conferences, professional group meetings, they gym–anywhere you might meet people. When you attend conferences or meetings, you always carry job description flyers. You ask where you can post them, or have them announced. And that’s just the beginning.Continuous recruiting is a form of marketing. You’re marketing your company and yourself.Ask yourself why people would find it valuable to work for your company in your group. Have a good story to tell? Write an article. Give a talk (local or at a conference). The more visibility you have, the more likely you are to attract the passive candidates, the ones who are already employed. And the more you provide exposure to your team and company, the more likely you are to help people screen themselves in or out for cultural fit.
Labels: manager, recruiting
June 20th, 2007
A reader emailed me and asked, “how do I interview a manager who will be my superior?”The short answer is the same way you interview peers. However, your feelings about your position or your potential boss’ position (or even someone “higher” than one level above you) will certainly influence how you feel and how you interview.First, recognize that an interview is not about power. It’s about starting the introduction process between you and a candidate. Let’s say that you’re a developer and you’re interviewing a project manager. What kinds of questions might you want to ask that project manager? Here are some questions that don’t arise from power, but do arise from the getting-to-know you position:
- “How did you start your last project?” if you want to know how much planning/organizing this PM did before starting.
- “In your most recent project, have you had trouble with people asking for more features in the same amount of time?” (If the PM hasn’t had this experience and you have this all the time, that’s a huge red flag.) “How did you deal with it?” That answer should be a great jumping off point to more conversation.
- “Have you finished a project recently? What did you do to finish it?” I like to hear about release criteria, retrospectives, a celebration, but maybe your PM has other ideas. Again, this is a jumping off point for more conversation.
The key with interviewing managers is to work on making the conversation collegial, and even in terms of power. If the candidate tries to pull rank, you can be pretty sure the candidate will do that at work, not just in the interview.Candidates are people, even if they are manager candidates.
Labels: interview, manager
February 28th, 2007
For some unknown-to-me-reason, more and more hiring managers appear to be attempting to do their own recruiting. While I do encourage hiring managers to network and constantly be on the lookout for candidates, especially passive candidates, I can’t see how a hiring manager can effectively perform the management job and recruit for candidates.If you’re in the position of trying to find your own candidates, consider outsourcing the recruiting piece. You can hire a contract recruiter, someone who brings his or her contact list into your organization, works the phones and email, searches the web, and sources candidates for you. (You pay this person as a contractor, an hourly wage.) You can hire an external recruiter who will do the same and only cost you money if he or she finds a candidate. You can allow/encourage/train/hire an in-house recruiter (see Heather as an example of an in-house recruiter).
If you’re not sure where to look for recruiting help or other marketing help, take a look at HR Marketer. I discovered them via Recruiting.com. (In the interest of full disclosure, I’m in their HR experts directory.) And if you select an external recruiter, make sure you develop a great working relationship with that firm/person.
I’ll be the first to admit I am a neophyte when it comes to searching the web and marketing to source candidates. And if you’re a hiring manager, you should be too. That’s not the place you add value to the entire hiring process. You add value in job analysis, determining the interview team, who’ll ask which kinds of questions, how you’ll audition, how you’ll decide about candidates, what to make as an offer, checking references, and starting the person working in a way that makes sense. But not sourcing candidates. Leave that to the experts.
May 2nd, 2005
Louise Fletcher in What’s Your Email Address? says “Choose an address that is as bland and professional as possible.”
Well, I don’t know that I would categorize a professional email address as bland, but then, I’m a geek. But I absolutely agree with Louise about the suitability of the email address she referred to “sexyeyes…” You might be “wannabeaskibum.” Right, that will impress potential hiring managers and HR people. (Actually, if you wanna be an anything that’s not this job, why are you applying for this job??) Even an address such as “lovesdogs” isn’t sufficiently professional enough.
Hiring managers, if you see a candidate with an email address that’s not professional, it is information. But you have to be a little careful about what information it is. It does mean that the candidate didn’t take the time to acquire a professional email address. It could be that the candidate was so bowled over by your position that he or she didn’t want to waste even the five minutes it takes to obtain a free email address. Or, it could be that the candidate didn’t even think about the effect the candidate’s email name would have on you. Or, it could mean that the candidate wants to work with other people who have similar interests. You just don’t know.
Candidates, why take the chance? If you’ve gone to the trouble of creating a bang-up resume and this job looks great, why not use a professional email address? By professional, I mean an email address that doesn’t look like a hobby or a come-on (or anything else I wouldn’t even think of
Remember, your email address is part of the first impression people have of you. Make it a good one.
April 22nd, 2005
In a previous comment, a reader points to a resume that’s written like a cross between a cover letter and a resume. While the resume has a number of useful points, the resume is too quick to tell possible hiring managers what they are doing wrong. That dismissal of what hiring managers sometimes do also dismisses a possible partnership between the hiring manager and the candidate.
A partnership? That seems like an odd comment or expectation. Here’s why: Part of what candidates seek is a cultural fit with the hiring company — in particular, the hiring manager. What the hiring manager looks for is someone who can perform the work the hiring manager perceives is needed, and who can fit into the existing organization.I have to admit, I hadn’t thought about this notion of a partnership before, but when a position really fits the candidate (and vice versa), it does create a partnership. I’ll be thinking about this more… But in the meantime, whether you’re a candidate or a hiring manager, it’s worth your time to think that each person is doing the best job he or she knows how to do, and that each person’s goal is to treat each other with respect.
March 19th, 2005
Mike has a fine (and funny) piece on what to do (and a little about what not to do) as a candidate, Applying for a Java job - HOWTO. His major points:
- Your cover letter or email should be in readable English
- Your experience should be relevant
- Read the bloody job ad (his words, not mine)
- Do something, anything to stand out
- So you have experience, explain it!
- Lose the insanity
Candidates, employers do want to hire you. But they want to hire people who are (at least) close to being suitable for the job. Match your technical skills to open positions. Remember, you could be a hiring manager someday.
January 31st, 2005