Undocumented Features

More on Hiring

March 12, 2008 – 10:59 am

One of the courses I attended recently outlined some great tips on hiring that I thought I would share.  Here are five things you can do to get to know the person you’re interviewing better and make a better hiring decision:

1) Hire for attitude, train for skills

Any skill can be learned- that is, if you have the right attitude.  Look for people who are positive-minded, who want to learn.  Ask about their hobbies, how they learned their trade, and ask about major changes in their resume- what programming language did you use at job X?  at job Y?  What did you do to transition to the new language?  People who want to learn and enjoy learning will be glad to pick up new skills for you- in fact, you won’t even need to ask them to.  It’s who they are.

2) Listen to how they talk about their last job

Something obviously went wrong in their last job- they got fired, the pay was too low, there was no room to advance, they hated their boss.  Whatever the reason, people leave jobs because they’re unhappy and want to change things.  People are asked to leave jobs because someone else is unhappy with them.  What the interviewee tells you about the situation and more importantly their attitude about what went wrong will tell you tons about them.  Are they bitter?  Are they willing to talk about what went wrong?  Did they take anything positive away from it?  What did they learn from the situation?

Bad and/or difficult situations will arise for them at your company as well.  It’s just part of life.  How they deal with these things will matter to their growth at your company.

3) Know who and what you want

This one is actually all about you.  Prepare for the interviews by asking yourself exactly what kind of qualities you are looking for.  Ask yourself what skill sets you need.

For attitude, you must consider the type of job you are hiring for.  If you need someone to sweep floors, you frankly are not looking for someone who loves to learn new things.  That type of person will be bored soon, get distracted, not do a good job, and likely move on to something else soon.  You’re looking for someone who is happy with routine and does not care for change.  If you need someone to explore new technologies, you need someone visionary, driven to learn, and who seeks change.  It’s all about what fits the tasks you need the position to perform.

For skill sets, look for parallels to those skill sets just as much as the skill sets themselves.  If you need an object-oriented Perl developer (and I do), that skill set might be hard to find.  Experience in object-oriented programming, however, is not, and there are a number of similar and comparable languages that can transition well- PHP, Python, Java, etc.  Find someone with these skills and the right attitude about learning new things, and you’ll make a good hiring decision.

4) Ask the right questions

Once you have your list of qualities and skills you seek, sit down and make a list of questions.  What can you ask that will lead the person to reveal the qualities that you seek?  Ideally you want them to illustrate through what they say, not tell you.  Ask most people if they are intelligent and willing to learn, and they’ll tell you yes (obviously, since they want the job).  Ask instead about situations and stories that will reveal their relative desire, speed and interest in learning.

5) Take them out for speghetti

I have to admit, of all of these items, I’ve never tried this one.  At interviews, people are usually on ‘interview behavior’.  They have carefully chosen to say and do all that they can to keep control of your image of them.  Perform a brief interview, then take them with you out to lunch or dinner to complete the interview.  Don’t tell them in advance that it’s coming.  Take them somewhere for speghetti or some other relatively messy, sometimes awkward to eat food.  Observe how they handle the unexpected situation.  Some folks will be very cautious and careful.  Some will dig in and ignore manners.  Some will watch you and follow your lead.  Some will simply accept the situation and deal confidently with it.  Depending on the position, one or both of those last two attitudes are generally who you are looking for.  On the job, unpredictable things will occur. You want someone who deals well and graciously with those situations.

These are just a few tools to add to your interviewing bag of tricks.  I would love to hear more- if you have any ideas, add them in the comments!

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