Category: business

Categories
business

Interviewing Candidates – What Your Questions Say About You

It’s no secret that an interview is a two-way process, at the same time when you are asking your candidate a question and evaluate their performance based on responses the candidate across from you doing exactly the same. Your questions, your reactions and even your body language can tell candidate a lot about you – and shape up his next response.

There are a few things to be aware of. Sometimes you don’t want to pass along anything at all and put on your “poker face”. If your candidate is any good he will immediately realize that and figure you are hiding something. What is it that you are hiding he doesn’t know, but it can make him either too nervous and uncertain if he even gets anywhere near what you are looking for, or too confident that you are trying to hide something bad about the job itself and, as a result, such candidate will pass on your offer even if it is better than your competitor’s.

There are no set rules, of course, but there are few cases that pretty much outline the major mistakes hiring side made during the process. I happened to be interacting with either business that was hiring or coaching the candidates so I have sort of first-hand information on each account.

Case 1: Business advertised a managerial position with some hands on skills required. At the beginning of the interview process candidate was assured that position requires about 30% of actual hands-on process as there are other people who handle it. However, the technical part of the interview was so detailed to one particular aspect of hands-on operations that candidate immediately assumed that this part will be his engagement 100% of the time. As a result, candidate has turned down the job offered to him.

Case 2: During the interview process the hiring manager repeatedly advised candidate on his skills as an interviewee instead of concentrating on actually interviewing the candidate on skills pertaining to the job – according to candidate’s account such comments added up to about 30% of the overall interview time. As a result the candidate has turned down the next round of interviews suggesting picking up someone from the kindergarten so that the hiring manager can fully embrace his father-role in the game.

Case 3: The interview with the hiring manager was immediately followed by two more separate interviews with two members of the team. Questions that two team members were asking, aside from basic concepts, revolved around the same technical problem presented in two slightly varied ways. Candidate decided not to proceed with the interview with third team member on the assumption that the team is looking for a solution to a problem, not another team member, and was using the interviews to extract some fresh ideas from candidates.

Case 4: Business advertised a position that had a split responsibilities between managing outside vendors and hands-on work in house. On the last round of interview he was asked the question of which part of this dual-hat wearing position he would appreciate more, to which he responded that ultimately he would be interested in managing the processes 100% of his time. Business, after very long consideration, decided to go a different route and hire two people to handle both aspects separately. The candidate was not offered a job, since business considered him overqualified for hands-on job and not having enough experience for managerial role.

Case 5: Recruiting company approached a candidate with a consulting position for an undisclosed company that was conducting a “discreet candidate search to replace one of the workers”. The interview, done by one of the consultants, consisted of basic questions on technology as a whole and complaints about the person being replaced. Most notable complaint was “he works like he’s playing chess, sitting there, thinking”. Given that the work required significant amount of mental labor it was very strange that one of the main issues with the worker that was being replaced was that he isn’t typing as fast as the other consultant. Obviously, the candidate turned down the position with words “I don’t want to get fired for needing to stop and think”.

As you can see, there are a few early signs that business is not ready to make a move on hiring a candidate right now or even do not know which qualifications of the candidate are most important. A well prepared candidate can spot these signs and decline a job even though you might want him for your company. Here are a few stop signs that, while not definite red flags, but are taken as “proceed with caution” signs. You might want to avoid them when hiring.

– Hiring manager saying “We will hire when we’ll find the right candidate” – tells the candidate you are not ready to make a move so he can move on.
– Interviewers asking “Have you ever worked with _some tiny little niche of the responsibilities_?” – tells candidate that’s all you really care about.
– Interviewers not asking anything except very basic questions when interviewing for anything above very junior level or asking about minute details without assessing conceptual understanding first – tells candidate someone wrote those questions for you and all he has to do is guess the right answer.
– Interviewers asking for specific area of knowledge or resolution to specific problem while disregarding anything else – tells the candidate you are looking for a solution to an immediate problem and he may not work for you as long as you promised him he would.
– Interviewers asking questions directly from “Worst 100 interview questions” book without even realizing it – tells candidate you simply don’t know what you are doing.

Categories
business

Collaborate or Die – Why Collaboration Is Important To Small Business

“Anyone who uses the phrase
‘easy as taking candy from a baby’
has never tried taking candy from a baby.” –
R. Hood

Let me start with a personal story. I have an acquaintance who’s freelancing as web developer. More on a creative side, less on programming, but essentially the same web development and web design as we do at Zealus. We’ve known each other for quite some time. This person (let’s call him John) oftentimes asks for my help on projects just to drop me off a few hours or days later. The typical conversation goes the same every time – first a phone call for help, brief description of the project and (almost) begging because John has overestimated his capacity or knowledge. I spend about an hour explaining and pointing out at least two acceptable solutions. John thanks me in the warmest terms. In about 10 – 12 hours (usually early next morning) he’s calling me again to discuss more ideas or ask more questions which takes up another hour. During this conversation John would offer me either to take the project completely off his hands, have me equally involved or make other advances – usually to make me divulge as much thinking as I possibly can regarding my approach to solving his problem. Then, out of nowhere, he would come up with completely different scheme of things that simplifies the problem to one single bare bone and makes my role in a project completely redundant. With elevated cheer and almost theatrical (in a bad sense) happiness he says something about how happy he was to be able to find such a simple solution and how he’s going to nail himself, since it will be so simple. With all that said he hangs up for another year or so.

So why do I always fall for his cries for help. Obviously, I’ve seen this go through time and time again. I know the story inside out and can even predict what his simplified solution would be. How come I keep giving up my time for this schmuck?

Well, first of all, any such story pretty much always ends the same – John has never landed a job from the client he needed someone else’s help with. So I am not the biggest looser here. There are, however, certain takeaways from any such situation that I think are worth spending my time on.

First – it’s a good Q & A practice. You would think you’ve had enough practice answering your other clients’ questions, but you would be wrong. Practice makes perfect, practicing on someone your income doesn’t depend on is saving you money. Think about that for a second – you are getting a free target practice session to polish your Q&A skills topped with fuzzy warm feeling that you are trying to help somebody.

Second – it’s a collective brain storming. Even a way less qualified person that you are is capable of coming up with inventive idea you didn’t think of, twice so – in creative environment. Listen before saying something is the rule of thumb. It’s like digging for diamonds in the rough, but some diamonds are well worth it.

Third – it is good to train your brains on someone else’s problem. Your brain actually functions differently (with a lot less stress) if you don’t have to solve the problem. So you end up with really good ideas and solutions for things you still may encounter in a future – but at least you will be prepared well in advance.

Fourth – I get to hear what other crazy requirements people have for services similar to mine. This way I can think of/create something in advance and beat my competitors by over-delivering before they even start talking. Think about this – if everybody out there wants a forum installed (which actually was the case a few years back) you can do your home work and pair up with great forum developer or designer who specializes in forum skins. When the time comes and you get asked to add a forum to your client’s site – you don’t go on a desperate trip to find someone capable of doing things at any cost, you go to a person you pre-screened for this job already.

Fifth – and the last one for today – is the simple fact that I am selling myself to John every time he asks me something. He may do this for a different reason (to extract information) but what he ultimately hears is that I can do this job for him better than he can do it himself. When the time comes and he gets that big fat client that he would not want to drop at any cost – I’ll be there.

As you can see, even these little things are well worth the trouble, let alone other perks (free coffee?). This is why collaboration – even if you cannot understand or realize its benefits right away – is always better. Once you start collaborating with your peers, you turn them into your agents, instead of head-on competitors. More on that – in the next post, stay tuned.

Categories
business technology

Work Computer Is Not Dead

There is an interesting read on O’Reilly Radar today, called “Why the cloud may finally end the reign of the work computer”. The author, Jonathan Reichental, Ph.D., brings up an interesting topic – what if workers were allowed to bring their own computers to work. This will bring costs of support up. But since the advent of the cloud it won’t matter: “With the application, data, business logic, and security all provisioned in the cloud, the computer really does simply become a portal to information and utility.”

As far as I know (and I have only worked in IT for 15 years) there are two major factors that push companies to provide their own computers to workers: data security and maintenance costs. Somehow it is widely believed that if you scare your users into believing that all those viruses are out there hunting for you only because you are not “doing work” and if you stick to software on the company-issued hardware then you are magically safe. No virus will touch you because you are “doing work”. The company data is safe because we all “doing work”.

Let’s talk about data security first.

Scene 1.
When I work as a consultant at the company bringing my own laptop is either highly encouraged or required. If I am an employee at the same company, bringing my own laptop may result in what they call a “disciplinary action”. Oh, the irony.

Can you steal sensitive company data? Yes, especially if you are a contractor and therefore have less ties with a company. Just copy whatever the hell you want on your very own contractor laptop and do whatever.

Scene 2.
HIPAA-compliant institution, no one (including consultants) is allowed to use anything, but bulk, ugly and oh-so-last-century laptops provided by IT department. Each laptop has a (disabled) hardware encryption chip and a hard drive encrypted by some software. Yep, that’s how clueless the IT department is, but that’s not the point. Every single useful web site is blocked by the firewall – web mail, hosting providers, you name it. What do you think the chance of BYOC there? Zero or less.

Can you steal sensitive company data? Still yes – just take your laptop home a few times and don’t connect to company’s VPN when you hook it up. Even if CD burning or USB writing is disabled – you can still e-mail pretty much anything on your laptop to your own self.

As you can see there is little of what you can do from an IT prospective that would ensure the safety of the data. There is nothing technically sophisticated in each scene. The safety of the data relies not on technology, but on people employing it. Once C-level executives figure that out (in only hundred years or so) – no one would care what is it that you are using to get your job done.

Now, part two, maintenance cost. That’s a real one, boys and girls. It is indeed true that company buys hardware at a special discount, so if you see that brand new Dell for $600 your company may be buying the same exact model for anywhere between $300 and $500 – depending on company size, aggressiveness of Dell’s sales person and myriad of other factors. It is also a big deal to support all this hardware and it’s no joke – with all the in-house applications it becomes a nightmare to test that brand new billing system developed in shiny .NET 4.0 on your Accounting 5-year old clunkers.

Here comes the cloud, as the author of the original material says, and everything is magically working again. I say – it worked a long time ago without any cloud – just recall magic words “remote desktop”, “citrix” or even ancient “application server”. Yep, I remember environment with 50 users running the same DOS program on the server via some sort of remote terminal connection – each got their own instance, of course. Today, with virtualization, it so damn easy to have a truly unified workstation across any number of workers – it’s not even worth discussing. Just do it, back it up each night and fuhgeddaboudit.

See, ma, no hands. I mean – no clouds. Bright and sunny. And, what’s the most important part of it – no data leaves the company, even if you DO take your laptop home. Some added benefit of security, right?