How To Not Hire A Job Applicant
My colleague at Datamation, James Maguire, wrote an excellent article yesterday offering 10 tips on "how to not get an IT job." It's a clever twist on the old job-hunting advice genre.
It also got me thinking about the other side of the coin, for just as thousands of IT pros on any given day are looking for jobs, thousands of organizations out there are desperate to fill positions. Indeed, attracting (and retaining) top-flight tech talent is more critical than ever, yet many organizations are unable to close the deal because of hiring-process blunders. So here are my 10 tips on how to not hire an IT job applicant (some of which are based on personal experience):
1. Make sure the job's responsibilities are unclear. There are plenty of ways to do this. Some good phrases to use:
3. Trash the person who previously held the available position. This communicates clearly to the applicant that, if hired, he or she also may be slimed at some point in the future.
4. Make the applicant wait at least a half-hour past the appointed interview time. This ensures that the applicant knows that you are either disorganized, rude or consider the position to be filled a low priority.
5. Eat at your desk during the interview. This also happened to me, about 10 years ago at Computerworld. (That's right, I'll name names.) It's best if it's a messy sandwich, reeks (tuna is effective here) and you chew with your mouth open.
6. Make it clear in the interview that you're reading the applicant's resume for the first time. Nothing squashes an interviewee's excitement more than the feeling that he or she is just some anonymous schmuck to you, as opposed to someone you're really excited about interviewing. Well, except for No. 5.
7. Take personal calls during the interview. The longer and more trivial, the better. Make sure you turn your back to the applicant. Also personal experience.
8. Have only an HR person do the interview. No explanation needed.
9. Be absolutely inflexible about benefits. Sure, some organizations will negotiate with applicants over things like vacation time, telecommuting, etc. You can avoid that Pandora's box by just saying no. Here's an excellent deal-killer: No vacation time for the first six months, or even the first year. This is a newspaper industry staple that easily could be adapted to the world of IT.
10. Be evasive about your company's financial health and market strategy. Nosy job-seekers don't need to know everything. Besides, it's not like you can predict the future.
I hope this guide will help your organization in its efforts to not hire the very best IT professionals.
It also got me thinking about the other side of the coin, for just as thousands of IT pros on any given day are looking for jobs, thousands of organizations out there are desperate to fill positions. Indeed, attracting (and retaining) top-flight tech talent is more critical than ever, yet many organizations are unable to close the deal because of hiring-process blunders. So here are my 10 tips on how to not hire an IT job applicant (some of which are based on personal experience):
1. Make sure the job's responsibilities are unclear. There are plenty of ways to do this. Some good phrases to use:
"We like people who can do a little bit of everything."2. Bait and switch. The applicant comes in to talk about the job he or she applied for, but you talk instead about this other job that's available. Not one, of course, that pays more than the job the applicant was interviewing for. This has happened to me.
"I can give you some idea now, but things change fast around here."
"Once you're on board we can figure it out."
3. Trash the person who previously held the available position. This communicates clearly to the applicant that, if hired, he or she also may be slimed at some point in the future.
4. Make the applicant wait at least a half-hour past the appointed interview time. This ensures that the applicant knows that you are either disorganized, rude or consider the position to be filled a low priority.
5. Eat at your desk during the interview. This also happened to me, about 10 years ago at Computerworld. (That's right, I'll name names.) It's best if it's a messy sandwich, reeks (tuna is effective here) and you chew with your mouth open.
6. Make it clear in the interview that you're reading the applicant's resume for the first time. Nothing squashes an interviewee's excitement more than the feeling that he or she is just some anonymous schmuck to you, as opposed to someone you're really excited about interviewing. Well, except for No. 5.
7. Take personal calls during the interview. The longer and more trivial, the better. Make sure you turn your back to the applicant. Also personal experience.
8. Have only an HR person do the interview. No explanation needed.
9. Be absolutely inflexible about benefits. Sure, some organizations will negotiate with applicants over things like vacation time, telecommuting, etc. You can avoid that Pandora's box by just saying no. Here's an excellent deal-killer: No vacation time for the first six months, or even the first year. This is a newspaper industry staple that easily could be adapted to the world of IT.
10. Be evasive about your company's financial health and market strategy. Nosy job-seekers don't need to know everything. Besides, it's not like you can predict the future.
I hope this guide will help your organization in its efforts to not hire the very best IT professionals.
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Excellent article! I have another couple for you, also based on personal experience:
11. Make sure you scowl or frown whenever the applicant answers a question. This ensures that they feel very uncomfortable during the interview.
12. Mention that the previous person left because they didn't get on with the same person that the applicant will be working with. If necessary, dismiss it with a racist comment about it being a cultural issue; sound baffled when the applicant suddenly becomes very weary about joining.
I skipped straight to point #1, and missed the title was how HOT to hire...
Kinda confused me for a sec.
People in IT should be familiar with projects which are kludged together. An assembly of pieces which really don't work well as a unit. What typically happens is that at some point a rewrite from scratch is required, hopefully with some thought as to fitness for purpose.
The hiring process is a process that is in a similar state. It never was guaranteed to find top-flight talent of any kind.
Even though most hiring processes were adjusted to make certain kinds of discrimination less likely, the hiring process is full of places where discrimination of any kind can take place. It is full of secret algorithms that nobody can debug (psychological side of HR and hiring). It requires the obfuscatory presence of "salesmanship".
What is worse, is that it is full of people specially trained in this arcane assembly of functions. Hiring needs a rewrite from scratch, and the specially trained people will need to be retrained. The closed-source functions of interpersonal relations should probably be replaced with open-source at the same time.
How about: Fill the job requirement with every computer language, operating system, database, application, middleware product, and hardware brand the last employee ever touched and require 10 years of experience in each. Pair that with a salary offer appropriate to a new college grad.
(Point number 1) Hiring an IT staff nowadays is like hiring medical consultants.
Everyone has specific skills. Multimedia? networking? Web design? Database design? Artistic Photoshop magazine design?
One thing that we realise is that people who are creative in artistic/photoshop design is always NOT good at Database design & maintenance. And vice versa.