Job Hacking

Defining 'Superstar'

"Words are like a certain person
who can't say what they mean
don't mean what they say."
- Wordy Rapinghood, Tom Tom Club.

One of my pet peeves are words or phrases that are overused to the point that nobody knows what they mean. Example, Rockstar - Looking for a Rockstar Python Developer...

So, I was a little cautious about, Know Your Saturday Night Live Role and Shut Your Mouth <#1> -"The Superstar"...

Fortunately, Kris goes a bit beyond using the term 'Superstar' and actually defines it in a way which makes it easy for those responsible for hiring and running a team to salute the flag.

Good food for thought - Thanks Kris!

A thought on panel interviews, and if you act now...

HR Capitalist has a nice post about panel interviews.

Like most things in life, it's fairly clear that execution matters a lot. And, I like Kris's notion of splitting the middle by using both a panel interview, and 1:1s in the recruiting process. I'm a big fan of panel interviews, but I also know that there are things that one does not unearth about a candidate in a panel interview. Likewise, the candidate doesn't get a good handle on your company/org until they've seen the group working together. Gotta do both.

There are three bits in this article that really deserve additional attention from small company leaders, particularly if you don't have a pro like him on your staff.

First, TRAIN your people on how to do interviews. Especially if they are young up-and-coming Developers. They need the help on this. Plus, if you train everyone on the process and you're consistent in what you train them on, you're more likely to have consistency in the people you hire. 

Second, track everyone's decision for every candidate they interview. You know, assuming you want great people on your team.

Third, if you are the Leader of Pack, and you don't have the HR Pro in the background forcing the meek 'n mild to come forward and ask questions, you gotta take on this role. And yeah, you gotta evaluate your team members on their ability to interview, too.

Business, Recruiting, same-same

Seth's got a nice post, If you could meet one person...

You should read it because it's a good read for most any business purpose, and it's equally good for your thoughts about recruiting.

Think about it this way, most good recruiters know that they typically don't find the candidate through a direct call to one of the members of the ideal group of candidates. In other words, I usually don't find the Sr. SDE I'm looking for by direct contact to Sr. SDEs. I find them through referrals from a QA Lead, or a Program Manager, etc.

Additionally, you may well want to hire one key person to your team in 2009. And you know exactly who that person is. So, you might want to start chatting up people around this person.

Sometimes we discover that the most direct route is not a straight line.

Teachers and Quarterbacks (and Developers?)

Malcolm Gladwell has a follow-up post to his New Yorker piece, "Most Likely to Succeed".

Both the original post and the follow-up are worth the read, especially if you have to hire people.

I've been thinking a bit about both these posts as it relates to hiring Developers, or any technical talent, really.

First, I'll posit that there is no firm out there which is phenomenal at hiring Developers. What would it take to be phenomenal at hiring Developers? Here's a short list: 1) Your firm would not hire below-par Developers; 2) Your firm would never miss in hiring the best Developers; 3) The Developers you do hire are successful and happy at the end of 18 months (this last one probably crosses over into the leadership realm, too). 

Second, although there are some firms trying things to make their recruiting process work better, I've yet to see one that really addresses this issue. The most logical attempt I've seen at this are firms that try to address this through contract-to-hire processes, but the downfall there is that Developers who want a FT gig don't want to sign on as a contractor because they are rightfully concerned with going down the path of becoming a serial contractor.

What to do? Here's a possible answer:

• Start with your usual recruiting methods
• Get sharp on your Developer tests, e.g. have the candidate work through an actual problem from your recent past and see what they come up with.
• Do proper follow-up, formal background checks, informal background checks, etc.
• When it comes time to make the offer, give the candidate a slightly low of market offer, with the promise of a salary bump that puts them over market in 90 days if they meet their 90-day objectives. Obviously, you'll need to have SMARTe goals in place that both you and the candidate agree to for this to work properly.
• Finally, mentoring is a big success factor, especially for new-to-commercial-software-development Developers. Factor this into your Dev team planning.
• Disclaimer: I'm not an HR Lawyer, and I've not consulted an HR Lawyer on this idea. I've presented this as an idea, and nothing more. There could be a conflict between this 90-day probationary period and a firm that practices 'at will employment' because the 90-day period as stated above could be a contract depending on how it's worded, and would be at odds with an 'at will employment' statement. There are obvious ways around this, like having the employee sign an employee handbook that states that they are employed 'at will' on their 91st day. Again, I'm not an HR Attorney, so proceed with this straw-man idea accordingly.
  

Want a simple way to improve your recruiting?

No?

O.K., really, you do. And you probably want to do it with minimal fuss, muss and cost. Here's a simple method articulated in the by HR Capitalist, Kris Dunn, Dude, I'm digital, but you can't ask me to only use email to communicate with you.

The method is simple. At each point in the recruiting process, state the odds that you'll be able to hire the candidate and have them join your team. It's a lot like the process that sales people & business development folks use to assess the odds of closing a client/deal.

A simple list of the key inflection points in the recruiting process:

• Read resume
• Phone Screen
• 1st round of interviews (should probably also put in odds of success for each interviewer of the candidate)
• 2nd round of interviews (iterate on this as necessary)
• Reference checks
• Verbal offer
• Written offer
• Starts on the agreed-to date

Basically, any point at which you touch the candidate or their peeps for purposes of understanding their fit for the role you should state revised odds. Also, track these in a simple spreadsheet, or what-have-you.

Kris's point about the email bit has a lot of layers to it. For my process, I look for changes in the communication protocols. Do they always use email? If they switch to the phone, what is that indicating? Maybe they only get in touch with me during the day, but after the 1st round of interviews, they are reaching out to me at all hours - could indicate a heightened awareness.

If you track this long enough, you'll probably start finding items that are helping or hurting your process. Maybe every time Joe interviews a candidate, they drop off the radar completely. Or, if Jennifer interviews, the candidate is much more interested in the opportunity.

Hiring Manager: Recruiting Record Retention

There have been a number of moments during my professional life when someone who has a very impressive pedigree has not followed through on the basics, and it tripped them up.

The first time this occurred was when a very smart guy, who had a Harvard MBA along w/several other much more impressive advanced degrees, told me that the firm he was running was getting audited by the State. Turns out, his HR record keeping was a disaster. He did not have I-9s for ANY of his employees, he had not kept their resumes, etc, etc. He was smart enough to clean it up, though. ;-)

Now, many of you in start-up land are running without the benefit of FT HR help. Or an Auditor to check your records. Do you know how PAINFUL an audit by any governmental agency is? How much TIME it consumes?

A bit of help on your recruiting records: The U.S. Federal Gov't requires that you keep all candidate resumes for the period of 1 year. For those candidates over 40, it's 2 years. Since you can't legally ask a candidate's age, the likely best solution to this is to hang on to all resumes for 2 years. That is, unless your lawyer comes up with some other way to address this.

Additionally, you need to keep your job ads/postings for a period of 1 year.

What, you don't have a record retention policy?

Hiring Managers: What are your biases?

I was speaking w/a well-known Technology Startup Exec the other day, and he brought up a highly compelling recruiting topic: Biases.

Biases can totally and irretrievably torpedo both a good candidate and an otherwise good recruiting process.

A short list of biases I've seen in action: Must have a C.S. degree, must not have a C.S. degree; Must be from a top-5 C.S. school, must not be from a top-5 C.S. school; Should have a background at a startup, should not have a background at a startup; Want them to be from Amazon/Microsoft, don't want them from Amazon/Microsoft. Getting a sense for this yet?

And that's just from the Hiring Manager. When you start to include everyone in the interview loop, well, it adds up!

Cutting to the chase, there are a couple of general things you need to get clear on that will help reduce your risk to unreasonable bias. First, what are the demonstrable skills you need in the role? Second, what should this person have accomplished to this point in their career to be ready for this role? Third, how will you identify these points in the interview process?

Then, there's the one big thing, the one big mistake most people make in an interview, and they don't even know they are making it!

The one big mistake is in making a decision about hiring the candidate in the first few seconds of the interview, and it's the worse kind of bias (other than the EEOC kind: race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability and retaliation for reporting and/or opposing a discriminatory practice). You can identify that you've made this error if your interview questions go down the path of confirming your already-made decision. The simple way to avoid this is to have a standard list of questions you ask all candidates for a given role. Yes, you need to ask all these questions regardless of how good or bad you think the candidate is at the beginning. This will help you to truly uncover the key pieces of information you need to make the best hiring decision for your team.

Why you should pay attention to the exit

Marcelo has a very interesting post up regarding the anniversary of his departure from Microsoft.

The most remarkable part: The comments. Where other speak about their very similar experiences.

Why is this important?

Because of your re-tread program.

Huh?

A re-tread is someone who leaves a company and then, some time later, returns. Usually, because they were recruited back into the fold by some very good recruiters. The thing is that when someone leaves a company, they don't really ever leave it. That experience is always with them, whether they'll admit to it or not. As a recruiting method, re-tread recruiting is a very cost-effective way to 'find' great talent of known quality.

Additionally, you never know how your career or those of others are going to play out. Be nice, be courteous, especially when laying off, and you'll be amazed at the end results over time.

Another kind of reference

We really do live in interesting times.

I've been getting hit with a different kind of reference of late. Here's the way it goes:

"Dave, our financial backers have asked us to drastically reduce our burn rate, and I've got to let a bunch of people go. There's some deadwood in the lot, but there is this one guy who really is good, but his role doesn't fit with our immediate future. Since you're in a position to help, and because I know you're on the lookout for great talent, I thought I'd bring him to your attention. Could you please find a new home for him?"

If you're a hiring manager and get one of these, run, don't walk, and take a close look at this person. Chances are, they might be exactly what you need.

You like games, so do you want to be part of an experiment?

Games are so very important for our lives. When you think about it, most of how we learn involves playing games.

A buddy of mine who lives in L.A. has founded a new game studio that's focused on creating MMO learning games for kids.

Trouble is, he needs a Lead Developer. A Lead who has experience creating game software, and who also knows their way around MMOs.

If you know someone like this, could you please let them know about this role?

Like I said, this is an experiment, and I appreciate your help!