Recruiting Animal

Hire Programmers Who Love Coding

From: Justin James

A daycoder writes code 9 to 5, Monday through Friday and does not think about it outside of those times.

Daycoders won't be motivated to learn the best way of doing things and will just do what they've always done

Daycoders are also difficult to retain without a steady stream of raises and and perks since they are there for the money, not for the work.

During crunch time or on a project that requires tricky techniques, rare skills, you need someone who loves coding.

This passion will be obvious during the interview. Candidates who get excited when you talk about your project or who are talking about their past projects have it.

 

 

Programmers Have to Communicate Well

From a recruiter (edited):

Social media folks, web developers and UX designers don't just sit in front of the computer. They need to be able to sit down at a meeting and advise senior leaders on protocol for a new project.

Or they need to be able to pick up the phone and firmly and tactfully chew-out a vendor partner who's not delivering.

They might have the best portfolio or coding ability on the planet but if they can't interact with others, they aren't a fit for my clients.

So I'm not going waste my time emailing someone who isn't interested in talking with me on the phone. Maybe they're afraid to talk or they're just not used to it but no chat, no opportunity.

 

Don't hire mediocre people, says Patty McCord

From: Patty McCord

One day I was talking with one of our best engineers. Before the layoffs, he’d managed three engineers, but now he was a one-man department working very long hours.

I told John I hoped to hire some help for him soon. His response surprised me. “There’s no rush—I’m happier now,” he said. It turned out that the engineers we’d laid off weren’t spectacular—they were merely adequate.

John realized that he’d spent too much time riding herd on them and fixing their mistakes. “I’ve learned that I’d rather work by myself than with subpar performers,” he said.

The best thing you can do for employees is hire only “A” players to work alongside them. Excellent colleagues trump everything else.

 

Skills Trump Attitude Says Patty McCord

From: Patty McCord

Laura, our bookkeeper, was bright, hardworking, and creative. She’d been very important to our early growth, having devised a system for accurately tracking movie rentals so that we could pay the correct royalties.

But now, as a public company, we needed CPAs and other fully credentialed, deeply experienced accounting professionals—and Laura had only an associate’s degree from a community college.

Despite her work ethic, her track record, and the fact that we all really liked her, her skills were no longer adequate.

Laura reacted well: She was sad to be leaving but recognized that the generous severance package we were giving her would let her regroup, retrain, and find a new career path.

If we wanted only “A” players on our team, we had to be willing to let go of people whose skills no longer fit, no matter how valuable their contributions had once been.

Out of fairness to such people—and to help us overcome our discomfort with discharging them—we learned to offer rich severance packages.

 

HIRING FOR ATTITUDE

From: Richie Polis on Quora: http://tinyurl.com/qhdh5ko

Even if I could define "good attitude" (which I can't), I wouldn't waste my time trying to assess it in a candidate.

Apart from true psychotics, it's generally possible to get good performance out of someone with any sort of attitude, provided he is managed correctly.

When I worked for large companies some of my best performers were people who had been pushed out of other parts of the same company because of their "bad attitude".

The answer was generally some combination of managing their specific issues, coupled with structuring their tasks so that these issues had minimal importance.

 

WHEN EXPERIENCE IS A NEGATIVE

From: Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman

You can revolutionize an industry even if you know nothing about it. You have to be able to learn about it very quickly then try to solve an existing problem with some new technology.

To do that you need people who can learn quickly. Unfortunately, experience makes people think that know everything and that makes them no good.

NOTE: I found this suprising. They said that before they started Paypal they knew nothing of the financial services industry and had to learn it from scratch.

Naturals vs Hard Workers

From: Earl Pomerantz (edited)

There are lion tamers who are “naturals” - born lion tamers – and lion tamers who “know the ropes”. They try hard but the lions instinctively sense that. You see them checking their messages while these persistent wannabes attempt desperately to command their attention.

Even the layperson can intuit distinction between the naturals and the “not-born-to-its”.  One sends you home feeling exhilarated; the other – you may not be able to put your finger on it – but you somehow feel that something meaningful was missing. 

Annette Bening tries and does commendably well.  But, like the lion tamer to whom the lions pay only perfunctory attention, there is something missing.

If you’re me, possessing an ear attuned to the material’s potential, you can sense that the monologues deserve bigger laughs than the performer, lacking the “basic ingredient” is able to elicit. 

 

You can feel the audience wanting to laugh more – and Draper’s delicious observations meriting more – but Bening’s comedic insufficiencies turn potential home runs into opportunity-missing singles.

I mostly sat there, imagining which performer might “kill” in a similar situation.

 

Only 11% of Employees Have Passion

FROM: The Passion Puzzle at Work | TIME.com (edited)

Ira Sager reports on new research from Deloitte Consulting’s Center for the Edge indicating that “truly passionate U.S. employees” make up “a scant 11% of the workforce.”

Deloitte defines a passionate worker as one who hopes to have a lasting and increasing impact on a particular industry or function; actively seeks out challenges to rapidly improve performance; and looks for deep interactions with others and builds strong, trust-based relationships to gain new insight.

Heavy-handed, top-down organizations — those that “rest on command authority,” — don’t create the right dynamics for passion. Neither do paternalistic ones.

Peter Drucker wrote in Concept of the Corporation, “the solution of the problem... can only lie in giving [a worker] the responsibility and dignity of an adult.”

 

Is The Best Job Hunter The Best Candidate

From Joe Weinlick

Question: Is the best job hunter the best candidate?

Answer: YES.

The best candidates (1) have a good resume, (2) know how to present relevant skills and experience on paper or in person and (3) they keep an up-to-date online social profile.

Confused recruiters think it's their job to polish the candidate's resume and teach them how to act in an interview. It isn't.

Here's a comment from a successful business owner

Animal, is it worse to make a poor hire, or to fail to hire a top performer? Many top performers (the people who change the world) are "losers". The fact that they are losers means they have little stake in the present, nor much of an ego to protect and worry about. Having only A players is like having a portfolio of only blue chips; you wont likely outperform unless you have some flyers in there too. I like to hire winners, of course, but I also make some bets on some "losers" - people who dress badly, have spotty manners, are very confident, who don't know how to make small talk and follow conventional expectations. When I say loser, I don't mean actual loser; I mean undervalued asset.

 

How To Recognize Potential

From: Yishan Wong on Quora (edited)

Has a lot of book-knowledge about the field: they cared enough to study up on it even before they started getting field experience.

Grasps core concepts more quickly than even more experienced peers. (It would be nice to have an example of what he means).

Puts in extra time.  Sometimes, pure effort and personal energy is the sole differentiating factor in performance.

Cares about small, key details.  Exceptional performers care about details that others ignore. (Comment: Smart people don't get caught up in irrelevant details. How do you tell the difference?).

Has a lot of good ideas on how things can be improved.  Good ideas, not just ideas.

Easily identifies other experts around them and pays attention to them (either actively or quietly) looking for top-performing role models for examples of how to grow.

From: Garrick Saito (edited)

They ask a ton of questions.

They arrive early and stay late.

They adapt very quickly.

They welcome problems and view them as challenges

They are honest about what they do not know

They consistently outperform their peers

 

From: J. Mike Smith

 

Check out the research on high performers (Anders, Dweck, Duckworth) and you'll see that most strong performers have applied practice, curiosity, multiple strategies and grit.

- They are curious

- They persevere (can they stick with stuff even when it's not so hot)

- They willing to try different strategies when they hit roadblocks.