j e s r u s h . c o m

The HR manager at my last organization and I have a long-running joke about what our country would be like if our president were hired by HR instead of being chosen by popular vote. To make a long story short, the joke goes that we would have no president, because HR would add a requirement to the job description that the person have, “4+ years experience running the country.” As there would be no way to obtain that experience without first being given the job, there would be no qualified candidates.

I don’t mean to pick on HR. In fact, I love HR and believe that the director of HR should sit atop the org chart right next to the CFO (Yes, hiring, growing, and retaining the right people is THAT important to organizational success). But I’ve also noticed a troubling tendency among recruiters (and sometimes functional managers) to automatically reject candidates who don’t have experience doing the job which they are filling. The legendary story of the General Electric HR manager who recommended against hiring Jack Welch should forever haunt recruiters everywhere.

I hate to state the obvious, but people cannot obtain certain kinds of experience until someone gives them the opportunity to do so. Most successful managers for example, were at some point a regular staff worker with no formal management experience. Someone looked at their past performance (which–for humans–is a good indicator of future success), looked at the opportunity, and took a calculated risk by placing them into a “bigger” job.

I’m not suggesting that you should put your landscaper in charge of your IT department because they do a great job on your hedge rows. What I am saying is that whenever you encounter someone who has taken on stretch assignments, undergone training, and reached outside their formal job responsibilities, you should take notice. Many of these people will be tomorrow’s successful managers and simply need the right break to become stars. You could be the enabler who spots the next Welch.

Update 7/21/09: Patty Azzarello has echoed my thoughts in her excellent article: How to hire a star.

There are many facets to hiring technical folks, but one important area is the issue of how they stay on top of the new technologies which are coming out at a frightening pace. I used to ask a standard question: Give me an example from past work experience where you learned or discovered a new technology (new at the time) and used it for the organization’s benefit?

But after asking that question many times, I realized it was too narrow. People “accidentally” get exposed to new technologies all the time through friends, school, etc. Maybe they never sought out new technology and just “stumbled” on something. I needed to tease out the real proactive learners from these casual ones.

After some experimentation, I finally nailed it with an incredibly simple question which has been extremely effective over the past year: Technology is changing all the time. What periodicals do you actively read to stay on top of it?

A good technical person who stays on top of their field should be able to rattle off a number of periodicals or e-newsletters related to their expertise. For example a network engineer might mention Technet. A security expert might say Bugtraq or Mark Minasi’s newsletter. A more senior individual might even throw in some strategy, such as CIO Magazine. If their answer seems canned, you can pry further to validate it: Tell me about something you read in that periodical in the past three months?

But here is the best part: People who don’t stay atop their field absolutely punt this question. They’ve got nothing. One candidate told me that he reads the documentation which comes with the software used at his company. Another mentioned a four year old SQL book which she had read a year ago. Many others are surprisingly honest and simply tell you, “I don’t have time to read anything like that.”

This question is a deal-breaker for me. I count on my technical people for innovation, and their capacity for such is drastically reduced when they aren’t following the industry. This has quickly become one of my all time favorite interview questions.

PS–This reminds me of a great management practice: Assign technical periodicals to individuals on your staff, formally give them an hour or two every Friday to read them, and then have them present short “book reports” to the whole team on interesting findings. Most geeks love learning new stuff and get excited about new technology. This is an easy way to keep your team both happy and on the cutting edge.