People

I’ve been interviewing candidates quite a bit lately and I must admit that I quite enjoy the process. I get to meet new people and learn about how they work, and things they’ve worked on, and about technologies that I haven’t used or haven’t heard of.

At Intelliware we usually conduct two separate interviews: the first is a personality/fit interview intended to answer the questions, “Can we work with this person, and would they be happy here?”. The second interview assesses their technical chops.

This piece from the New York Times touches on a subject that I’m passionate about - the challenges of hiring good people. Deep into it, it mentions that:

“…the most proven method, Dr. Lewin said, is a referral from someone already working there. Current employees know the culture, he said, and have their reputations and their work environment on the line.”

The big data thing is a cool, tech solution, but really it’s referrals that matter.

Troy Hunt’s Ghost Who Codes ignited something inside me. Initially I was a little insulted because I don’t have much of an online presence apart from my blog and my Twitter account. There are many reasons for this but in the end it doesn’t matter.

You see, as much as I respect Troy, I think he’s missing the point.

The best developers rarely apply for advertised jobs. They’re hired through their network and are never on the market. They’re members of The Guild; they’re the fat guys who know C++.

If there was one piece of advice I could give to someone considering a career in software development it would be: Learn to f$%@cking type! Knowing how to touch type is the single most valuable skill that a developer can possess.

Typing allows you to concentrate on what you’re coding rather than how to get the characters on the screen. In other words, you’re able to think about the code rather than thinking about where to find the letters on the keyboard. Jeff Atwood and Steve Yegge both make the same point.

Deploying a sufficiently complicated application into a corporate environment involves navigating a sea of paperwork, getting all the appropriate “approvals” in place, co-ordinating with department managers to get time slots from their staff, and so on.

Knowledge silos

On Release Day all the right people from the various departments - DBAs, application server administrators, server administrators (both Windows and Unix), desktop support, storage experts - are all sitting in their cubicles at the allotted time waiting to check their checkbox, waiting to mark their task as Done, so they can catch the 5:31pm train home.

Recruiting is difficult. Most of the top talent already have jobs and are rarely in the job market. As a recruiter (or a headhunter, or a talent scout) these are precisely the people that you should be trying to attract.

There are a few simple guidelines that might help you generate genuine interest in the role you’re trying to fill.

1. Try to build relationships with candidates, not just a contact database. I need to know that you are someone I can work with and can be trusted to be discrete. Let’s have lunch together.
2. Proof-read your email.
3. Give me a detailed description of the role including the actual company name and location. Leave out the technology buzzwords - truly great developers can operate effectively in any landscape
4. Do not ask me to send you “an updated copy of your resume in MS Word format”. I don’t know who you are or what you’re going to do with it; what happens if you unknowingly send my resume to my current employer?
5. Be discrete. Don’t call me on my work phone. When you call my cell phone always ask first if it is OK to talk and listen to my answer. If I say no then just say, “OK, let’s talk later” and hang up.

Following these simple rules will dramatically increase the quality of your candidates and get a higher response rate to your communications. Who knows, you might even make more money because you’ll be able to consistently deliver the candidates that nobody else can find.