81–90 of 373 posts
A successful sports team should hire the best, even if that's what everyone else is trying to do too.
I really agree with the sentiment of audition projects. The interviews I have enjoyed the most all involved some sort of take-home project, although I have never been paid for one. On that note, how expensive does it become for a startup to dole out many interview projects across a wide range of candidates? I think a better strategy would be to conduct preliminary interviews and then based on some granularity, assign…
When you're looking for someone to install hardwood floors for you, do you ask them do the doghouse for you first, before you decide to hire him?
In my past of applying for jobs as a designer, I had companies that would ask for take home tests. I always refused and of course didn't get the job. Conversely, other companies I worked for offered freelance positions (probation) before settling onto full time which I thought was far more effective and fair method at evaluating me as a long term candidate.
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>A surprising number of people can't code a loop in the languages on their resumes. I guess you can reach two conclusions from that: 1) A surprising number of applicants are totally misrepresenting their abilities – either through deceit or wild ignorance. 2) Something about your interview process makes a surprising number of people unable to perform at their normal level – from nervousness, unrealistic and artificia…
Misrepresenting abilities ... yes, I did that in my first job interview. The job posting said PHP, HTML, MySQL skills. Well, I knew HTML well enough but my PHP and MySQL skills were from a few side projects doing copy-paste-modify with PHP BB's code base to make my own web app, which I never did finish. So I only kinda/sorta knew those languages. But then at the end of the interview I was given a coding challenge to…
Employer: First job out of school pay, requires four years of experience in our exact tech stack.
Candidate: Sure I'm willing to take first job out of school pay (BTW, just graduated in May). Yeah, totally have 4 years of experience, and what do you know, it covers exactly your tech stack!
In the spirit of this advice, if you are serious about really finding the best people, you should offer very comprehensive severance packages as part of every offer -- on the order of 6-10 months of salary, possibly even "grossed up" so that it results in at least 6 months of salary after taxes. Instead of spending money on needlessly complicated hiring processes, with back and forth phone calls, panel Skype intervie…
Automattic does something interesting from what I've read. They have you work there as a trial for 1-2 months while keeping your full time job. This is probably pretty stressful but you get the ability to work with the candidate while not asking them to sacrifice their livelihood if things don't work out. Needless to say, it seems a lot of people don't get hired after the trial.
My current company doesn't hire the best, but instead focuses on people who enjoy making impact in a small team, share the same vision and have a bit of an entrepreneur in them. We don't quiz people or give them tests. We just sit down with them and start talking tech. The results are really amazing and make for a great place to work because everyone feels like the project they work on is their baby.
In the spirit of this advice, if you are serious about really finding the best people, you should offer very comprehensive severance packages as part of every offer -- on the order of 6-10 months of salary, possibly even "grossed up" so that it results in at least 6 months of salary after taxes. Instead of spending money on needlessly complicated hiring processes, with back and forth phone calls, panel Skype intervie…
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Here's a problem with audition projects: I would never be able to take part in one, since my current job contract has a clause forbidding me from simultaneously working for any competitor in the same field. (This is a German job contract; I don't know if such clauses are common in the US or elsewhere, too.) So in order to work on an audition project, I'd have to be unemployed already.
Talk with your solicitor. A lot of companies like to include such clauses in contracts even if they're not legally enforceable, particularly in the case of US companies operating in a country with relatively strong workers' rights like Germany.
Also: Give the "not-the-best" people a chance to develop. The CEO of one of my past clients, a consulting company, always said: "You can teach everyone to be a great programmer". And he put his money where his mouth was: He hired people with no programming experience (even with no university education) and personally trained them for several months . Also, senior people in the company were encouraged to also help the…
"You can teach everyone to be a great programmer"
You can train most people to do most tasks. With a modicum of natural inclination, competent. With a bit of interest, good. With a willingness to work hard, very good.
However, you can't ever train greatness. You can't make it by any method - only they can.
Your broader point is good though. The most predictably effective way to end up with top talent that works well in your structure is to help it develop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A surprising number of people can't code a loop in the languages on their resumes. I guess you can reach two conclusions from that: 1) A surprising number of applicants are totally misrepresenting their abilities – either through deceit or wild ignorance. 2) Something about your interview process makes a surprising number of people unable to perform at their normal level – from nervousness, unrealistic and artificia…
Misrepresenting abilities ... yes, I did that in my first job interview. The job posting said PHP, HTML, MySQL skills. Well, I knew HTML well enough but my PHP and MySQL skills were from a few side projects doing copy-paste-modify with PHP BB's code base to make my own web app, which I never did finish. So I only kinda/sorta knew those languages. But then at the end of the interview I was given a coding challenge to…
I work in the "boring" old insurance industry, based in the midwest. I love reading articles like these, and as I read them I get excited and say to myself "yea!" and "spot on!". But they seem to center around startups and Silicon Valley. The truth is, when it comes to building, maintaining, and supporting internal, line of business apps, management isn't even pretending to look for high end talent. They want predict…