Hiring candidates | blog.RedRockResearch.com…

Hiring candidates | blog.RedRockResearch.com…

You said, “I have hired people to discover that every day at 5:30 they need to pick up their kid from daycare. This obligation makes them incompatible with leading a team that may require them to stay late and fix a critical problem.”

1) If you usually need your people staying late it means your organization is not a good place to work. (Maybe your candidate will not accept your offer).

2) As a father that usually picks up the children from school, I am even more focused than the rest of my colleagues at the office. I have to leave everything ready for the time I leave. (I think this is possitive).

3) A team manager/leader does not need (in my opinion) to be present for the team members to work. In my teams, people are usually very professional and very commited with the objectives, so I have no problems with the time I spend in the office with them: daily stand-ups and one or two pair-programming sessions (1-2 hours each) are enough for a daily basis. (True, I sometimes do some work at home, but things I can do asynchronously with the rest of the team).

I like the way you expose your points and for the rest of your post I think you have listed most of the issues, but I would like to read how such an interview would be seen from the candidate’s point of view because sometimes putting in someone else’s shoes gives us more insight on the issues.

Just one more thing: I have participated in a couple of interviews for project managers that were played as a role-playing. This gave us much more information about the abilites and attitudes of the candidates, although it is more difficult to put into practice than a standard interview, of course.

Best regards,
JMB

I remember reading an article written by Ted Turner, Owner of CNN, AOL, etc, where he mentioned that he was a C+ student in high school. He says that during those school years he just didn’t see the point in applying himself. Once he finished school he realized that he was really good at making money. He applied himself and became wildly successful.

On the other hand, if you have ever attended a high-school reunion have you seen many suprises? My own high-school reunion (almost 20 years now) produced almost no suprises. The student body president was a physician, the student body VP was the US embassdor to Vietnam. The football players were in Iraq fighting Desert Storm, and the parking lot crew was in the corner smoking away. Not many suprises.

You’re right that you can’t predict future performance based on past performance in every situation, but stastically you’ll have fewer suprises if you use that as your benchmark.

People are good at different things, and this is OK. A good manager will match employee strengths to the areas where they are needed the most.

I liked you comment about being 90 minutes late and still getting the job. It reminded me of a job I got once, after unknowingly interviewing with a bird turd drop on my suit. True Story!

- I think there is a lot more to it. I’ve seen people not perform well for numerous months (even more than a year) all because they just hated their job. People don’t want to do things well when they don’t like doing them.

- I’ve seen instances where employees fought with a boss, later bought part of the business and got rid of the boss because he was the real problem. That being said, even if the person is valuable, I don’t want people on my team that don’t gel with the rest of the company.

- Many former employers will not tell you information about a person other than that they worked there. It’s a policy. They don’t want to get sued over some situation that is unfounded because of bad blood from a manager that leads to a person not getting a job.

- It is illegal to not hire someone based on family situations, so you need to be careful intentionally digging for information of that sort.

- I was 90 minutes late for a job interview once (time mixup) and still got the job. Stuff happens. Don’t make a decision on one event because you could be missing out on a super employee. Call them in for another short interview or two to see what happens. Remember, you’re going to spend 8-10 hours a day with this person (more than your spouse) after only one or two meetings?

My two cents. Thanks for writing this post.