Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age: A New Model for the Workplace | Edutopia
http://www.edutopia.org/randy-nelson-school-to-career-video

This is a terrific short video on hiring. Nelson explains how to see past the breadth of the resume to determine if someone is really going to make a difference for you. Found via <a href="http://www.kottke.org/">Kottke</a> and like him I especially liked the part about hiring interested vs. interesting people.

Depth, breath, (being interested rather than interesting), comms, collaboration (not just cooperation, which = not getting in each others way. Collaboration: interested in each other, bring separate depths to a given problem).

Pixar University's Randy Nelson explains what schools must do to prepare students for jobs in new media. Much of what he says applies to people working in other fields as well.

Those of us who run businesses, departments, or teams are faced with this question all the time. How can we distinguish the stars from the merely competent? Of all the candidates whose resumés we receive, how do we place our bet on the one who will stand out from the rest?

Ha ha ha, so true!

Joel Spolsky on salaries

Hiring is always hard. The hardest thing to do at a company is the recruiting and hiring. It was really hard when the economy was doing well. Paradoxically, for certain industries (especially those reliant on innovation such as those in the tech space), it's even harder when times are tough. That's right ... hiring in tough economic times can actually be much harder than when times are good. In a downturn, the amount of resumes from C-Players massively increases while the amount of resumes from A-Players probably remains the same.

"It's harder to hire great people in a tough economy"

Talks about employee retention, handling increasing complexity in the company, etc

Slide deck from Netflix outlines their employee strategy, how they do compensation, why they only aim for top performers, how their "vision statement" is different than Enron's, etc

19 Tips for Recruiting Great Developers

There are three questions you have when you’re hiring a programmer (or anyone, for that matter): Are they smart? Can they get stuff done? Can you work with them? To find out whether someone’s smart, I just have a casual conversation with them. I do everything I can to take off any pressure off: I meet at a cafe, I make it clear it’s not an interview, I do my best to be casual and friendly.

There are three questions you have when you’re hiring a programmer (or anyone, for that matter): Are they smart? Can they get stuff done? Can you work with them? Someone who’s smart but doesn’t get stuff done should be your friend, not your employee. You can talk your problems over with them while they procrastinate on their actual job. Someone who gets stuff done but isn’t smart is inefficient: non-smart people get stuff done by doing it the hard way and working with them is slow and frustrating. Someone you can’t work with, you can’t work with.

Tips from a headhunter

Nine Questions to Ask during a Job Interview

Website to set up your own brief coding interviews, to augment telephone interviews with a practical aspect.

Automated recruitment test reduces the cost of screening of a programmer. Recruitment testing decreases the amount of interview work by up to 90% by requesting the candidate to write a snippet of a code in an online assessment tool. It also allows the recruiter to test employee in a natural working environment.

Automated tests of programming skills.

Jay Fields' Thoughts: Questions To Ask an Interviewer

RT @lisawilliams: How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen: http://bit.ly/9oaK1Y

Do you have an idea for a website, online business, or application, but need a programmer to turn that idea into reality? Many of my friends have been in the same position, so here's my best advice, below.

RT @sivers: How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen: http://sivers.org/how2hire

Job interviews are meant to be conversations. The interviewer asks some questions and the interviewee does the same. It’s never a good sign when an interviewee doesn’t have any questions. It shows a lack of interest. This is particularly true when interviewing for a startup job because there tend to be so many more unknowns at startups compared to more established, bigger organizations.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1442546

«What are the startup’s plans for the next 6-12 months? What are the key metrics for success in the next 6-12 months? What’s the competition like?»

hiring people

BEFORE HIRING: 1. Hire late -- alleviate pain 2. Skip over the perfect catch if we don't have any open positions 3. Operate at the limits of your organization -- get more done with fewer resources 4. Smaller team keeps you focused -- focus on things you have to do 5. Need someone? Have you already tried to do the job yourself? HIRING: 1. Ignore resumes 2. Cover letters say it all (this job or any job? who can write?) 3. Always hire the better writer 4. We look for effort (custom website) 5. Ask questions. Ask why questions. Avoid How questions. 6. Test-drive people for a week, $1,500. 7. Never let geography get in the way.

I'd like to share a bit about how we go about hiring at 37signals. Hiring is something we rarely do -- we're intentionally small at 20 people -- but we've developed a method that has worked very well for us. It allows us to find the right people and keep them happy. In 11 years, only two people have left the company -- and one recently returned after working elsewhere for seven years. (Welcome back, Scott!)

"First, we hire late. We hire after it hurts. We hire to alleviate pain, not for pleasure. Who hires for pleasure? Any company that hires people before it needs them is hiring for pleasure. I've run into a lot of companies that invent positions for great people just so they don't get away. But hiring people when you don't have real work for them is insulting to them and hurtful to you. Great people want to work on things that matter. How do you know if you really need someone? A good rule of thumb is this: Have you already tried to do the job yourself? If you haven't done the job, you don't really understand the job. Without that fundamental understanding, it's hard to judge what constitutes a job well done. What we do look at are cover letters. Cover letters say it all. They immediately tell you if someone wants this job or just any job. And cover letters make something else very clear: They tell you who can and who can't write."