The Regenerate Web

Maybe you have a job or two open. You’re reluctant to pay more than you have to for a given position. I understand that employers want to get the biggest bang for their employment buck.

I once consulted for an organization who had deliberately hired from the “bottom of the barrel.” (That was their phrase.) And, oh my goodness, they got less than what they paid for.

Getting to a release was a nightmare. And, because many of these folks were on H-1B visas, the people were desperate to keep their jobs. They would agree, as in say yes, to anything, because it meant they could stay here legally and keep working.

When the mix of work changed from commodity (keep the system going), to innovation (the market is changing, quick we need to change what we do), the technical staff was ill-prepared to deal with the changes.

Now, you don’t have to go outside the US to find not-highly-competent people. They exist here. We don’t need to import them. But the point is, the management in this organization had deliberately hired people they thought would be easily cowed, would be virtual slaves, and could do the minimum work for minimum pay.

Do a job analysis first, and know: what kind of hiring are you doing? Highly paid people can be competent for you–and they can be incompetent for you. You need to look at the environment in which people work, look at the problem, to find people who can learn the problem space and the solution space, and who can get along with others.

Don’t just look for the cheapest people. Look for the people who can do the work. Think about what you are hiring for, and pay for that expertise.

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I like to work with recruiters. I’ve used them in the past. I refer people to them. But I am missing something here.

I just got off the phone with a recruiter. He was using some kind of a phone, either VOIP or a cell phone, but it cut in and out. I had to spell someone’s name for him twice. He didn’t hear me. I finally stopped the call because I couldn’t stand it. Stupid recruiter trick #1: Use a phone that makes someone unable to actually converse with you.

The other trick happened last week. A recruiter emailed me, looking for an “agile developer.” He said “rate is based on velocity.” This is so wrong in so many dimensions, I thought I had misread the email. I asked him. Nope, that’s what he meant. His reply, “Our client is not basing the rate on experience, but on how well and efficient the candidate’s code is.  Velocity = Productivity. ” Stupid recruiter trick #2: not understanding agile and pushing the hiring manager to explain what the manager is really looking for.

OMG. I thought that with the depression/recession, stupid recruiters would be unable to keep their jobs. I guess not.

Recruiters and hiring managers: personal velocity is meaningless, especially on an agile team. The team works together to deliver features. If you persist in measuring people’s productivity, they will game the system by always estimating stories as slightly larger than they are, or breaking stories down into tasks and assigning very large numbers to those tasks.

I won’t be referring people to these guys. TSTL. (In fiction, that’s a character who is Too Stupid To Live.)

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I read a lot about speakers practicing authenticity. (Huh?) All the suggestions seem reasonable, yet contrived to me: act interested in your audience, use your current location in your speech, remember to thank people at the end of your speech.

If you don’t want to be a speaker, don’t. If you do want to be a speaker, you may do those things, because they make sense. You don’t do them to practice authenticity, you do them because if you love speaking, you do it. You are authentic because you care about your job.

It’s the same thing with interviews and thank you notes. If you love your job, and you’re interviewing candidates, you don’t have to remember to thank people for coming in for the interview. You don’t have to remember to thank people for their time at the end of the interview–you’ll do that because you are an authentic human.

If you’re like me, you need a little checklist/reminder at the beginning of the interview process to stop work-as-normal, and start interviewing. I don’t need to remember to smile, I need to remember to put away the day’s work and focus on the interview. As a hiring manager or team member, you might need some other remembrances.

And, if you’re a candidate, and you liked the interviewer, the team, the organization, by all means, send a thank you note. If you have questions, ask them. If you have concerns, and they are minor, say you want another conversation.

But if you have major concerns or don’t want this job, say so. Or, don’t write a thank you note. Don’t write a fake note, saying you want the job when you don’t.

Authenticity is a necessary part of interviewing–from either side. So, don’t practice authenticity–be authentic.

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I was reading, Nervous about an interview? Try this! and thought, hmm, I’ve said something like that before, haven’t I?

I have, but in slides (for my Hiring for an Agile Team tutorial and workshop and in my other workshops) and in person, but not on this blog. So, let me say it here:

Good interviews are conversations. Period.

Good interviews do not surprise people. Good interviews build rapport with a candidate, learn about a candidate, preferably with behavior-description questions and auditions. Maybe with hypothetical questions. Maybe with a meta-question.

But good interviews should make a candidate (and an interviewer) think, not sweat.

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I’ve been talking with a colleague who is looking for a job. He’s comparing two senior engineering jobs.

At one interview, it was clear that the manager makes all the technical decisions. No, the manager doesn’t code anymore; he makes all the technical decisions though, for a 12-person group.

At the other job, it looked as if my colleague might be the most senior person there. The other folks are young and smart, but just don’t appear to have the same amount of experience he has.

I asked him who he would learn from, at each job. He immediately answered the job with the younger group. Why? Because the manager in the first job would prevent him from learning.

He said something like this (I’m paraphrasing), “When managers don’t manage, and make all the technical decisions, they make it harder for the team to grow and for people to learn.”

So hiring managers, remember, the interview works both ways.

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Andy Lester has written a great book about finding a job you love in any market. He thinks it’s just for technical people, but he’s wrong. It’s for anyone who wants to find a job that he or she can love.

The first section is all about preparing to interview: knowing what you want in a job, creating your resume, building your resume in Word, html, and text. Yes, your potential employers may want more than one version, so write it and make sure it looks good in all three versions. In the section called “Finding Your Job,” Andy says,

“Your most important tool in finding a job is relationships with other people.”

He’s right. And, the chapter about building your network, creating and building relationships has great ideas about how to build your network in a variety of ways.

I love the section called “The Interview and Beyond.” Andy’s advice shines here. From clearing your schedule, to all the other preparation (selling the interviewer on you, answering tough questions, compiling and bringing a relevant portfolio, which questions you want to ask), the idea is that if you are prepared, the interview is now on your terms. (He’s got a great sidebar on how to shake hands.)

Chapter 9 is called “Handling the Tough Interview Questions.” Here, Andy delves into what to do and, especially, not do. In the section, “The Tough Questions”, Andy provides examples of what not to say and what to say when you encounter the “Tell Me About Yourself” question. With Andy’s empathy for the hiring manager and the candidate, his advice is targeted for candidates to prepare in ways that make sense.

Andy doesn’t stop there. The chapters “After the Interview” and “Staying Hirable” are gems, too. In fact, you should buy this book and Chad’s The Passionate Programmer, as part of your New Year’s actions to improve your overall skills.

You can buy  Land the Tech Job You Love on Amazon in hardcopy only. Or go to the Prag site and buy it in hardcopy or a variety of softcopy formats.

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A bunch of my not-happily-employed colleagues (some are unhappy, some are unemployed) are in the enjoyable place of considering job offers. One of them asked, “How do I know it’s a good offer?”

You have at least two options I know of, to evaluate salary options: Payscale.com and Salary.com. (If you know of other free sites, let me know and I will post links to them.) You put in your experience, location, salary and see where you are with respect to their databases. You can see where you fall in the range of people and salary. Armed with that information, you can decide if your salary offer is a good one.

Assuming you have a salary you like, consider a start date. Do you want a week between jobs? I don’t always recommend that. If you know you want some long weekends in the summer, why take a week in the winter? If you know you want some conference time, take your week later for a conference. You may not need a week now. If you don’t, don’t take it. Your hiring manager will be thrilled you wanted to start faster.

Even in a down economy, you have options for negotiating salary and start date.

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A colleague is putting his resume together for the first time in several years. “I’ve been at the same desk, working for the same boss, on the same projects for the last three years. But my company has changed names at least four times in that time. What do I say?”

Here’s the way I like to see the company names on a resume:

month/year, CurrentCompanyName, city, state. (Previously known as CurrentCompany-1, CurrentCompany-2, CurrentCompany-3) YourJobTitle.

Unless your responsibilities have changed, you’ve had one job.

Hiring managers: don’t ding candidates on what looks like job changes. It isn’t the candidate’s fault the company management sold/bought the company.

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Heather pointed to How to Use LinkedIn in Your Job Search. Holy moly. I had no idea.

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When I transitioned to WordPress a couple of years ago, I did not go back and tag all the posts with categories. I have finally done so.

Oh, I did not change all the links, so some links to older posts go to the archive for that month. If you find one and email me, I will fix it. Otherwise, I’m assuming you aren’t bothered by having to search the monthly archive, or you’re not reading those old posts.

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Dave Larribee has a great post, The High Cost of Losing a Developer. (Discovered via an ericlandes tweet)

Dave suggested it might take a couple of years investment in terms of salary to make a developer productive. My experience is that it takes about 6 months of that developer and some number of months of other people. You can short-cut some of that cost by:

• Creating a buddy system when you hire or move a new person into a team
• Providing training about the code, the product, the process
• Go to conferences so you can see what’s going on in the industry
• Creating learning opportunities as a group each week or so, such as a lunch-and-learn
• Starting a reading group and read a chapter in a book and discuss it once a week

Informal training is great and has little cash cost. The person explaining what’s going on will take time away from his or her work to prepare, and the other people benefit tremendously. Reading groups have a small cost.

I’m always surprised when people tell me that they want to keep their per-head cost of training under some number. That number is generally less than a person-day of loaded labor.

I’m also surprised when people tell me they can’t buy books because they are “too expensive.” Publishers have sales all the time (see the current Prag sale), and sometimes Amazon sells my books so cheaply I don’t understand how they make money. If a company thinks books are too expensive, they haven’t thought about the cost of ignorance.

Good recruiters cost more out-of-pocket money, but are worth their cost if they bring you candidates that fit the role.

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