Hiring Mistakes

12 Jan 2011

Hiring mistakes hurt us[1] in terms of time, money, cultural-issues and many other things. I have made those, more than one time - that makes me guilty of repeating mistakes (a crime or sin?).

We filtered résumé, screened candidates over phone, interviewed in-person over multiple rounds and discussed among ourselves before extending employment offer. Sounds good to get good candidates? No, it is not. We ended up having some bad hires.

Anyways, most of us know - Resume don't matter anymore; Someone really good at things[2] should have more than résumé to show and talk about

• bunch of projects done in free time;
  • indicator: passion, love for craft and desire to improve by practicing in free time
• technical or craft related blog
  • indicator: communication skills; knowledge sharing attitude
• contribution to open-source projects
  • indicator: love for FOSS; desire to do something beyond self, for others; team player
• active participation in technical communities[3]
  • indicator: knowledge sharing attitude; mentoring and helping
• every word on résumé should be justified
  • indicator: modesty and humbleness

I believe, we lacked some discipline in our hiring process and new-hire-orientation process. We were also not strict, at reviewing and monitoring progress, during probation period.

Both pre and post hiring phases are important.

Pre hiring is good time to know about candidate personality wise.

Post hiring is another chance to make sure if hiring decision was really good. Within three months, it should be absolutely clear (binary: 0 or 1), whether one is good match[4]

The one who has potential to be rockstar and great team-player should be given more time and mentoring; This might affect the economy of company in short term, but worth doing for long term benefits. Patience works, I need to get better at this.

I am learning something everyday, often I realize I am not doing something right; I need to bring discipline in my life and the way I do things, hopefully, rest would go very well.

In Kanpur, I am yet to connect to good software developers and designers. I know there are good ones, perhaps they are working outside of Kanpur.

I am curious, how do you hire, train and get people started?

[1] Entrepreneurs and companies
[2] Programming, Software development, Graphic/UI/UX Designing or skill in question
[3] <a -=\"\" a=\"\" best=\"\" for=\"\" forum=\"\" href=\"http://www.flex-india.org\" india=\"\" technical=\"\" the=\"\" title=\"\"Flex\">flex_india</a> or alike), forums, etc.
[4] Great Thinker, Technically sound and has emotional-intelligence