It's hard to find a company bigger than 30 people that doesn't have its HR Department - even if it consists of just 1 person. And the name itself is of secondary meaning: some call it Human Resources, some prefer People Operations, Human Capital, etc. Regardless of name I think that the bigger the company, the less existence of such a Dept makes sense. Why so?The work usually associated to such units is of a wide variety: Performance Mgmt, Talent Mgmt, Recruitment, Compensation & Benefits, Employee Relations, Growth and Organization Development, Employer Branding, .... But nearly all of those areas…
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There's no point in re-inventing the wheel. We all walk in the footsteps of industry pioneers & use the legacy of their lessons learned for our advantage. However ... Think for yourselfI hate mindlessly copying "industry standards" & "best practices". Software Engineering varies so heavily & is so contextual that what (IMHO) works best is crafting your own solutions to solve your own specific problems (by MAPPING others' experiences onto your own environment). This involves three critical steps I call: Awareness -> Understanding -> ClarityAwareness is all about asking the proper questions, relentlessly exploring the reality (instead of acting…
Yupp, apparently I'm completely nuts. Demand in software engineering job market went through the roof (seems about to reach stratosphere) & I ... not only do not snatch everyone with 10 fingers and a basic understanding of "ifs" & "fors". Actually, I ask candidates to ... do homework, before they come for an interview. Seems like some sort of a ... ... modern recruitment harakiriBut it's not as crazy as it sounds. Firstly: obviously it does not apply to all kinds of positions - works best for senior (or self-declared "senior" ...) candidates, roles with a very wide autonomy or ones which would require operating…
This article is all about tech recruitment interviews, but in particular: why tech skills are necessary but not sufficient, what are open questions used for, why you should always have your own questions (that make sense ...), that without high "work-awareness" you're not credible, during the interview we'd like to hear about "you", not "them" ... and why you should always remember about something to back your declarations up with.Recruitment in IT is in a pretty poor shape these days: spam offers coming in herds "out-of-the-blue", incompetent recruiters who don't bother to understand who they really look for, poorly engaged leaders…
In this article you'll read about: cost of desperation in IT recruitment, what's one of key requirements if you want to move "from good to great", what does Kent Beck think about bad programmers, why "just letting her/him go" is much more a big deal than one may think and what the word "recruitment" truly stands for. I've actually planned to publish something completely different today, but we all know them - stubborn, relentless thoughts that just won't let you go until you share them with the wider public. So, here it is,…
TL;DR - educating a specialist takes time, money & effort - w/o a guarantee of final payoff. Maybe it's the time to get back to traditional apprenticeship model to secure educator's position & make job market more sane? On several occasions I've evangelized the advantages of sensible, organic growth over opportunistic, aggressive head-hunting. And I haven't changed my mind, but it'd be stupid to ignore risks & flaws of the model I recommend. Imagine the following scenario: You have a small software house. Your team puts a lot of time & energy in filtering out the most talented…
Disclaimer: Some (over)sensitive readers may find this post offensive. Arrogant. Elitist. Oh well. Bozo effect (aka Bozo explosion) - gradual descent of (once unequivocally high) average employee's competence level (overall: skillwise, intellectual, attitude, etc.), usually due to lowered recruitment standards, departure of key people or general organisation culture degradation. Bozo effect is usually accompanied by ignorance - subjects lack the awareness of the downfall. The past glory is still alive & vivid in bozos' life (even if they didn't contribute to it themselves) - in fact they completely miss their present mediocrity as they've made themselves believe they keep…
Last few years have turned IT recruitment market into blood-spattered area of gore, violence & ruthless brutality - it's not just that acquiring new talent is hard, expensive & time-consuming: demand keeps raising, so competition gets even more fierce over time. I have observed one interesting side effect that accompanies this trend: The gap between companies that do IT recruitment right & the ones who slack behind TENDS TO INCREASE consistently. This is especially visible during various industry-specific events, when you can see the difference with your own eyes ... Rock ... Smarties who get the idea of what engineers expect &…