Recently, I had one of our recruiters suggest that we “lower” the bar in our recruiting practices.
She suggested that our process was too detailed, was made up of too many steps and was too hard.
She said “I work with companies a lot bigger than yours – and their hiring process does not have as many steps as yours does.”
At first, I really didn’t know how to take her comments.
What was she really saying???
Was she really being honest? Did she really want to work that hard for her commission?
I did give it some thought, but frankly I didn’t think about her comments for very long.
We look for top talent because we need top talent. Our clients are demanding. They expect for us to bring new and fresh ideas to the table each and every day.
They expect for us to be technically competent. They expect our people to be trained on the latest technologies. They expect that we know what we are doing and bring proven experiences that have been successful for our other clients.
They expect for us to be able to communicate – both in writing and verbally.
They expect for us to be able to deliver projects on time, on budget and be able to handle, with class, the various stresses that occur during the normal software development project lifecycle.
So, for the last 2 1/2 years, we have been defining and refining our hiring practices so that we “test” candidates on the various needed skills discussed above.
As a potential new hire, we will run you through a comprehensive screening process. We want to understand to the best of our ability if this is a good fit for us – and you.
If it’s not, that’s not good for you, me or our client.
We have not and will not lower the hiring bar. In the end, it’s just not worth it – for anyone.
November 20, 2011 at 12:12 pm |
I agree except we need to make sure we apply the same due diligence to hiring of project manager. They should have software development exp at very least to match the skills of the highly technical folks being hired
November 22, 2011 at 12:54 am |
To add – my bro recently told me about a guy who wrote a good article about hiring the right kind of people. The point was:
- He had a hard core interview process with computer science questions, etc.
- Years down the line he looked back and realized: the ones that did the best on the interview were disappointing
- The best employees he had were the ones that were passionate about what they did, the ones that really liked technology and considered IT work rewarding on a personal level
To me this is what makes most sense: if you are passionate about what you do you are most likely going to care about it, and the difference between a guy that cares about his work vs. the one that does not…..does not fit into this little comment box