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Straight Eight

Wednesday, 13 January 2010 14:54

Eight essentials to make the right hiring decisions.

1. Define. Say short, say sweet. Keep it simple. Specify roles and duties.

2. Study. Do a study of your best people (past and present) and find out what characteristics they have in common. One of the best ways to do this is by using a tool called the Profile XT. The Profile XT is much more than an assessment. It gives you customized Job Match patterns, suggests relevant interview questions, yields a percentage match when comparing a candidate to your top performers, provides a detailed positive analysis of the individuals you assess, and can provide thousands of "experienced" Job Match Patterns for use in developing your own patterns. With this tool you will come up with a job match pattern that will provide a benchmark for prospective candidates.

3. Demo Pit. Get your prospective job seeker to demo his skills for you. Give him a short assignment. Assign a desktop in your office to him and ask him to execute a piece of code if you’re looking for a software geek, ask him a to source a few profiles from a database site should you be looking for a recruiter, ask him to make a couple of live cold calls impromptu to judge his selling skills should you be looking for a business developer. The key is to get every interviewee into the demo pit so that they can showcase their skills while you take notice.

4. Double Trouble Check. Mistakes can lead to disasters. To avoid making a disaster of yourself, you need to look back at people you’ve hired in the past (who didn’t work out for your organization for whatever reason) and ponder upon what common problems did you encounter? What traits or qualities are you SURE you NEVER want again?

5. Think Tank. Setup a Think Tank. Get a couple of your peers, seniors, juniors, cross functional staff to casually interact with your prospective employees. Always remember you’re no Superman. At the risk of being terribly clichéd, I’d like to reinstate, you can’t quite judge a book by it’s cover. Involve people you trust to talk to your potential candidates.

6. Interview. Interview. Interview. How many interviews will you hold for each candidate? Some companies hold several interviews for the short list of three to five candidates. The first might be with HR and yourself. The second may be with the department manager and the third might be after you’ve done an assessment or two. Assessments will always pinpoint areas you may want to question or clarify with the candidate.

7. The GIGO Terminology. In the interviewing stage always swear by the GIGO terminology. Garbage In – Garbage Out. GIGO is used primarily to call attention to the fact that computers will unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data and produce nonsensical output. It was most popular in the early days of computing, but applies even more today, when job seekers can spew out mountains of erroneous information in a short time simply because they’ve mastered the art of scoring in interviews. Spare yourself that extra time and extra thinking. Skip the clutter. Ask the right questions. Make the right decisions.

8. References Galore. Always ask for, and check references. A very small percentage of employers do this. Look over the list of desirable talents and skills you’ve identified as well as the ones you know you want to steer clear of. Develop a list of four to five specific questions you’ll ask those references. If you don’t get acceptable answers from the referees, it may be a clue that this applicant is not someone you want to hire.

1. Define. Say short, say sweet. Keep it simple. Specify roles and duties.

2. Study. Do a study of your best people (past and present) and find out what characteristics they have in common. One of the best ways to do this is by using a tool called the Profile XT. The Profile XT is much more than an assessment. It gives you customized Job Match patterns, suggests relevant interview questions, yields a percentage match when comparing a candidate to your top performers, provides a detailed positive analysis of the individuals you assess, and can provide thousands of "experienced" Job Match Patterns for use in developing your own patterns. With this tool you will come up with a job match pattern that will provide a benchmark for prospective candidates.

3. Demo Pit. Get your prospective job seeker to demo his skills for you. Give him a short assignment. Assign a desktop in your office to him and ask him to execute a piece of code if you’re looking for a software geek, ask him a to source a few profiles from a database site should you be looking for a recruiter, ask him to make a couple of live cold calls impromptu to judge his selling skills should you be looking for a business developer. The key is to get every interviewee into the demo pit so that they can showcase their skills while you take notice.

4. Double Trouble Check. Mistakes can lead to disasters. To avoid making a disaster of yourself, you need to look back at people you’ve hired in the past (who didn’t work out for your organization for whatever reason) and ponder upon what common problems did you encounter? What traits or qualities are you SURE you NEVER want again?

5. Think Tank. Setup a Think Tank. Get a couple of your peers, seniors, juniors, cross functional staff to casually interact with your prospective employees. Always remember you’re no Superman. At the risk of being terribly clichéd, I’d like to reinstate, you can’t quite judge a book by it’s cover. Involve people you trust to talk to your potential candidates.

6. Interview. Interview. Interview. How many interviews will you hold for each candidate? Some companies hold several interviews for the short list of three to five candidates. The first might be with HR and yourself. The second may be with the department manager and the third might be after you’ve done an assessment or two. Assessments will always pinpoint areas you may want to question or clarify with the candidate.

7. The GIGO Terminology. In the interviewing stage always swear by the GIGO terminology. Garbage In – Garbage Out. GIGO is used primarily to call attention to the fact that computers will unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data and produce nonsensical output. It was most popular in the early days of computing, but applies even more today, when job seekers can spew out mountains of erroneous information in a short time simply because they’ve mastered the art of scoring in interviews. Spare yourself that extra time and extra thinking. Skip the clutter. Ask the right questions. Make the right decisions.

8. References Galore. Always ask for, and check references. A very small percentage of employers do this. Look over the list of desirable talents and skills you’ve identified as well as the ones you know you want to steer clear of. Develop a list of four to five specific questions you’ll ask those references. If you don’t get acceptable answers from the referees, it may be a clue that this applicant is not someone you want to hire.

Dr. Aadil Bandukwala

Chief Evangelist

Talent Onions

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IT-Parents

Wednesday, 13 January 2010 11:26

By R K Patil

Does the title sounds strange? May be, many of you might say ‘yes’. While we are all aware of the much hyped “IT-professionals” or “IT-people” or ‘software engineers” I wanted to highlight some of the under currents in our society. The reason to write about this to expose a social evil that is driving the middle class and the upper-middle class folks crazy.

If one were to attend any social gatherings, functions, marriages, birthday parties etc I am sure you will come across lot of parents who want to boast that their daughter/son is working for one of those big IT/software names at places most likely to be Bangalore, Poona, Hyderabad, Noida etc.

If you stick to the party conversation a bit long I am sure they will tell how their children make frequent trips abroad, how cosmopolitan she/he is in their behavior. If the listening party also happens to be a proud parent of IT-Kid then you can imagine how the conversation steers.

So it is a kind of playing one-up-man ship in social strata for the folks. However there is another part of the story that one will come to know, if the conversation ends up in a friendship and one gets to share more information about their “IT-kids”. This time the story revels how the parents are missing their kid’s presence at home or during festive season. If the It-parents happen to be nearing 60 years of age then there is a chance to hear how even grand-children company is also missed. Some of them will complain about how their kids are staying away from family traditions, how their daughter-in law enjoy the new-found freedom at the expense of being an obedient “ghar-ki-bahu”. In most cases parents end up complaining more than what they have at present. One can sense somewhere the hollowness in spite of having everything!

If one were to sit back and analyze, it is these same parents who encouraged their sons/daughters to take an IT job and nothing else. The sole reason being one gets paid like nobody’s business and of course they can have lots of stories to share in their social gatherings! These very parents made sure that their daughter/son’s natural likings (for career) are systematically sacrificed and set him/her for an always-winning-shining world. By the way I am not against a materialistic world however a balanced life is always cherished.

I come across a lot of budding engineers who happen to be influenced and continue to be guided by their parents dictates for their career choice. In many cases parents go to an extent as to which company their child should work for! It is a story that many a times these very own parents are really IT-illiterate (I am not joking… You can test this out). The parents do not know anything about what their ward is doing in their profession. They simply happen to see the name of the firm/company for which their ward works in a paper advertisement or might have heard in their social gathering or some of them happen to own few shares of the company J

The result is we have youngsters hopping jobs even for paltry salary hike of one thousand rupees or for a short visit (read it as on site project) to a customer who is in Thailand! While this kangaroo hop of jobs continues for few years (by the time they have achieved some maturity in their career) one realizes that they have gained no real knowledge of their domain. Sooner one becomes a victim of global recessions as markets are never known to be kind to non-skilled IT-people!

I do come across a lot of IT-folks who have dared to challenge the dictates of their parents and opting for a sensible career path… but alas it is very difficult to sustain a social pressure to look for greener pastures when the parents and fellow team mates are busy in counting rupees/dollars and shopping in malls.

If only the “IT-PARENTS” look at reality and try to help their sons/daughters to make a sensible choice without being over-bearing parents then we can see some bright spots in the IT-generation coming of age.

The author RK Patil, CEO of Vayavya Labs has over 17 years of industry experience in the domain of Telecom, Embedded software and Semiconductors. For the last eight years he was co-founder of two starts ups in the technology domain where he has held various positions in engineering, marketing and management.

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