# articles

## a scouting - applying online

[Most people don't finish online job applications | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33341263)
[Most People-92%-Never Finish Online Job Applications](https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/people-92-never-finish-online-job-applications)

[We created a fake language to root out resume liars | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26408181)

## a scouting - finding great people

[27 years ago, Steve Jobs said the best employees focus on content, not process | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829845)
[27 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Said the Best Employees Focus on Content, Not Process. Research Shows He Was Right | Inc.com](https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/27-years-ago-steve-jobs-said-best-employees-focus-on-content-not-process-workplace-research-shows-he-was-right.html)

[AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33270535)
[AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers | Chatterhead Says](https://chatterhead.bearblog.dev/ai-will-replace-middle-management-not-hourly-workers/)

[We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19707543)
[We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have A Sucker Shortage.](https://resumeskills.us/there-is-no-shortage-of-talent/)

## a scouting - job description

[Ask HN: Why doesn't YC list compensation for their own open positions? | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29720803)

[Stop requiring specific technology experience for senior-plus engineers | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29150389)
[Stop requiring specific technology experience for senior-plus engineers | Mike McQuaid](https://mikemcquaid.com/stop-requiring-specific-technology-experience-for-senior-plus-engineers/)

[Job descriptions should show a salary or salary range | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932978)
[Why you should put salaries on your job ads | Sifted](https://sifted.eu/articles/job-advert-salary-range)

[What does a CTO actually do?](https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/what-cto-does/)

[Ask HN: Why are some YC startups not posting salary ranges when law requires it? | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33970189)

[Tell HN: You can't hire because you don't post salary ranges | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32181619)

[Microsoft will include pay ranges in all U.S. job postings | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31693830)
[Microsoft Announces It Will Include Pay Ranges In All U.S. Job Postings. Experts Predict It Will Be The First Of Many.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2022/06/09/microsoft-announces-it-will-include-pay-ranges-in-all-us-job-postings-experts-predict-it-will-be-the-first-of-many/)

## a scouting

[I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892437)
[I Think I Know Why You Can't Hire Engineers Right Now](https://cushychicken.github.io/why-you-cant-hire-engineers/)

[It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762362)
[John Carmack on X: "I often think about the "Read what you love until you love to read" comment from @naval , and this is a good generalization. My experience has been that it is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated; you have to believe you can Do before you embark on an effort." / X](https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1445424833181925376)

[What's Wrong With Tech Hiring · It Will Never Work in Theory](https://neverworkintheory.org/2021/09/13/whats-wrong-with-tech-hiring.html)

[Why are American workers becoming harder to find? | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27415776)
[Why are American workers becoming harder to find?](https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/04/29/why-are-american-workers-becoming-harder-to-find)

[Great developers are raised, not hired - Eduards Sizovs](https://sizovs.net/mentoring)

[Stop playing Big Tech's hiring game - DEV Community](https://dev.to/allthecode/stop-playing-big-tech-s-hiring-game-97a)

[Staring into the abyss as a core life skill | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34094627)
[Staring into the abyss as a core life skill | benkuhn.net](https://www.benkuhn.net/abyss/)

[I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39346870)
[I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take this bizarre personality test. : mildlyinfuriating](https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1ap1345/i_applied_for_a_software_role_at_fedex_and_was/)

[Eric Jorgenson](https://medium.com/evergreen-business-weekly/how-not-to-hire-like-a-clownshow-evergreen-business-weekly-2-hiring-f4da0e9d3230)
(2015) How Not to Hire Like a Clownshow—Evergreen Business Weekly 2: Hiring

[Daniel Miessler](https://danielmiessler.com/projects/gt-rating-system/)
The GT Rating System

## a scouting - tools and techniques used by HR Personnel

[Programmatic Job Advertising Tools](https://www.selectsoftwarereviews.com/buyer-guide/programmatic-job-advertising-software)

[Pre-employment Assessment Tools](https://geekflare.com/pre-employment-assessment-tools/)

[Talent Management Solutions](https://peoplemanagingpeople.com/tools/talent-management-system/)

[Expert Judgement](https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/what-is-expert-judgment-in-project-management/#:~:text=Expert%20judgment%20is%20a%20technique,knowledge%20of%20the%20product%2Fmarket.)

Networking - they use a platform like [LinkedIn](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/p/ead99504-cbb6-4218-bb71-9ecc48fc291a/linkedin.com) to reach out to talents.

## assigning roles - innovators

[Innovation heroes are a sign of a dysfunctional organization | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40749754)
[Why Innovation Heroes are a Sign of a Dysfunctional Organization](https://steveblank.substack.com/p/why-innovation-heroes-are-a-sign)

## assigning roles

[The product manager role is a mistake | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38058638)
[The product manager role is a mistake - Software Product Development Pills](https://sollecitom.github.io/software-product-development-blog/posts/2023/2023-10-21-product-manager-role-is-a-mistake/)

## b interviewing

[Don't do interviews, do discussions | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141983)
[Don't Do Interviews, Do Discussions! - by Mayank Verma](https://thinkingthrough.substack.com/p/dont-do-interviews-do-discussions)

[The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30150343)
[the new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed - Ask a Manager](https://www.askamanager.org/2022/01/the-new-hire-who-showed-up-is-not-the-same-person-we-interviewed.html)

[That wild Ask a Manager story | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30340588)
[That Wild Ask A Manager Story - Jacob Kaplan-Moss](https://jacobian.org/2022/feb/14/that-wild-aam-story/)

[IBM's Asshole Test | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31265554)
[IBM's asshole test - johnpublic](https://johnpublic.mataroa.blog/blog/the-asshole-test/)

## c onboarding - coexistence

[Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32482007)
[Apple becomes first tech giant to explicitly ban caste discrimination, trains managers on Indian caste system](https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/apple-becomes-first-tech-giant-to-explicitly-ban-caste-discrimination-trains-managers-on-indian-caste-system-1988183-2022-08-15)

## c onboarding

[Ask HN: Have you experienced "hiring fraud?" | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32996457)

[Justin Garrison](https://www.justingarrison.com/blog/2020-08-31-remote-onboarding/)
(2020) How to On-board New Hires Remotely

[GitLab Docs](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/general-onboarding/)
Onboarding at GitLab

[Ingrid Towey](https://opensource.com/open-organization/17/9/culture-building-onboarding-buddies)
Growing your team's open culture, one buddy at a time

## c onboarding - stock and equity

[handbook/Hiring Documents/Guide to Your Equity.md at master · clef/handbook · GitHub](https://github.com/clef/handbook/blob/master/Hiring%20Documents/Guide%20to%20Your%20Equity.md)

[Employee Equity: How Much? - AVC](https://avc.com/2019/08/employee-equity-how-much-2/)

[A Guide to Employee Equity | Y Combinator](https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/a-guide-to-employee-equity/)

[A No B.S. Guide to Startup Stock Option Grants | by Matt Cooper | The Startup | Medium](https://medium.com/swlh/a-no-b-s-guide-to-startup-stock-option-grants-526a8bc33c2b)

# guides

## a scouting

[How to hire low experience, high potential people | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39288669)
[How to hire low experience, high potential people](https://worktopia.substack.com/p/how-to-hire-low-experience-high-potential)

[Daniel Miessler](https://danielmiessler.com/blog/the-tiger-hiring-algorithm/)
The Tiger Hiring Algorithm

[Daniel Miessler](https://danielmiessler.com/study/hiring/)
A Hiring Primer

## assigning roles

[Implementers, Solvers, and Finders | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35597346)
[Implementers, Solvers, and Finders](https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-finders.html)

## c onboarding

[The Ultimate Guide to Onboarding Developers: Industry Best Practices](https://codesubmit.io/blog/guide-to-onboarding-developers)

[How to hire engineering talent without the BS | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35031474)
[How to hire engineering talent without the BS · Jesal Gadhia](https://jes.al/2023/03/how-to-hire-engineering-talent-without-the-bs/)

[Contract management - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_management)

## HR - DevRel

[GitHub - buildwithusers/awesome-devrel-library: Curated list of inspiring learnings (articles, videos, podcast episodes) around DevRel](https://github.com/buildwithusers/awesome-devrel-library)
[Build With Users | Frank Lagendijk | Substack](https://www.buildwithusers.com/)

[GitHub - FrancescoXX/devrel-unlocked: Free resources about Developer Advocacy and Relations](https://github.com/FrancescoXX/devrel-unlocked)

[GitHub - devrelcollective/awesome-devrel: Awesome Developer Relations resources curated by the DevRel Collective](https://github.com/devrelcollective/awesome-devrel)

## HR

[Suspect classification - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspect_classification)

## non-cash pay

[Uninsured employer - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninsured_employer)

[Section 125 Cafeteria Plan | ADP](https://www.adp.com/resources/articles-and-insights/articles/s/section-125-cafeteria-plan.aspx)

## organization models

[The Gervais Principle, or the Office According to "The Office" (2009) | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33298158)
[The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to "The Office"](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/)

## tiger teams

[Understanding the Tiger Team Approach | Lucidchart Blog](https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/what-is-a-tiger-team)

# text

## a scouting

Producers are proportional instruments, but managers are exponential instruments

Negativity is a cancer. Never hire negative people and fire them asap

You need respect and loyalty

Bill Gates has said that if you took the twenty smartest people out of
Microsoft it would be an insignificant company, and if you ask around
the company what its core competency is, they don't say anything about
software. They say it's hiring.

IQ is a decent predictor of performance on an unfamiliar task, but once
a person has been at a job for a few years, IQ predicts little or
nothing about performance.

General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt has been clear about what the company
is looking for: someone who is externally focused, is a clear thinker,
has imagination, is an inclusive leader, and is a confident expert.
Those are behaviors, not traits.

Choosing human capital:
1. Never choose an important employee or a key supplier alone. Get others to interview them or talk to them as well, either with you or separately. The final choice must be yours alone.
2. Go further than reading a person's references. It's such a pain, but it pays. Make an appointment with their last company or with a supplier's other customers. Go and see someone there. Get chatty. Listen hard. You will discover more about the person or supplier in a few minutes in this way than in hours of conversation with them.
3. Make notes. Speak little. Have a series of questions ready to shoot out when they grind to a halt. Focus like mad on what your instict is telling you. You are being interviewed, too, so best to keep your mouth shut.
4. Good suppliers respect attention to detail.
5. Pay employees well. Bonuses better.
6. Ignore your prejudices.
7. Don't leave senior employees in any job too long. You will get the most out of any senior employee in their first year or two in a new position. After that, they enter a comfort zone.

Never stop looking for talent and promoting talent.

Hiring someone who is the breadwinner of in a single-income family is a double-edged sword
- their family means they will likely never quit on the fly
- at the same time, they will NOT be 100% devoted to the company (e.g., overtime) unless they become [addicted] to their work (which is unethical to outright foster)

Make sure to hire people more talented and stronger than you.
- Those people will [specialize] in things you can't, and will see things you don't see
- the smartest people are the most [creative] and efficient at what they do, and are often able to [lead] profoundly well
- This requires great [leadership] skills, which requires the right [personality] and the right [social skills]

Intuition is only accurate in domains where it has been carefully
trained. If you're a chess grand master, you should trust your gut. If
you're a manager making a hiring decision, you shouldn't. (You've
probably hired only a small number of people over the years, and the
feedback from those hires is delayed and often confounded by other factors.)
- hiring is a headache, so it really does make sense to hire from people you know personally, since you have experience around them to know if they'd fit into your organization

If you assemble a team from contract workers, expect ZERO [culture] to arise and any existing culture to disappear
- instead, assemble a team of people in it for the long-haul and you can build an AMAZING team long-term if you can work out the forming/storming/norming/performing kinks

A good employer looks for specific attributes:
- Character - honest and demonstrates integrity
- Competence - can read a situation and act appropriately
- Chemistry - personality fits well with others in the organization

Most hiring processes are geared around the needs of the average candidate, not the best.
For the average candidate, a new job is a tactical move based on short-term criteria.
For the best, it's a strategic move.

Top people aren't going to apply for run-of-the-mill jobs that seem the same as everyone else's.

When anyone on the interviewing team finds a candidate they think is hot, they go into immediate sales mode. They also stop listening and stop evaluating competency in a transparent attempt to excite the hot prospect on the merits of the job. This cheapens the job and drives many top people away.

Top people don't look for jobs based on their skills and experience. They look for jobs based on the challenges and opportunities.

Define what people need to do with their skills and experiences.

Forget the clever questions. Instead, dig deeply into a person's major accomplishments to observe trends of growth and patterns of behaviors.

Hiring great people is the single most important thing you can do to ensure your own success.

Use standard search-engine techniques to allow top people to quickly find their open positions.

Your openings are prominently featured on the first page of your corporate website.

Make it fun and compelling.

Track the end-to-end yield of those initially viewing an ad to those actually applying.

Don't differentiate on money, differentiate on opportunity.

Recruiting the best is not about selling or charming. It's about providing big challenges and career opportunities and a little money thrown in.

Examine all aspects of your hiring process from the perspective of a top person who has little time to spare and multiple opportunities.

Core steps: defining the job, sourcing, interviewing, assessing, and recruiting.
Redesign each of these steps from the perspective of a top candidate, and then integrate them into a systematic business process.
While each step is relatively easy to solve, fixing all of them and making sure they stay fixed for all candidates is the secret to making the hiring of top talent a systematic business process.

A performance profile is what the person taking the job needs to do to be considered successful.

Describe the real job, not the person taking the job.

Write compelling job descriptions that describe real job needs, not ads that emphasize skills and qualifications.

It should be so clearly written that your top candidate could show it to his circle of personal advisors and easily convince them this is a true career move.

Design every aspect of sourcing to attract top people (whether active or passive), which includes where you place the exciting job descriptions, how you design the career web site, how you get referrals, and when you make phone calls.

First define superior performance. Performance is about results, not about skills and qualifications.

Every job, from entry-level to CEO, has six to eight performance objectives that define job success. These objectives spell out what the person in the job must do to be considered successful,

Specific: Include the details of what needs to be done so that others understand it.
Measurable: It's best if the objective is easy to measure by including amounts or percent changes.
Action-oriented: Action verbs build, improve, change, and help understanding.
Results: A definition that complements the measurable piece by clearly indicating what needs to happen.
Time-bound: Include a date or state how long it will take to start and complete.
Environment: Describe the company culture, pace, pressure, available resources, and politics.

Categories: effectively dealing with people, achieving objectives, organizing teams, solving problems, using technology, and making changes.
Creating these performance objectives starts by asking what the person taking the job needs to do to be successful, not what the person needs to have.

First, determine the top six to eight performance objectives in general terms, then get more specific. The hiring team needs to put the final performance objectives in priority order.
1. Define the majorobjectives. Determine what a person taking this job needs to do over the next 6 to 12 months to be considered successful. Most jobs have two to three major objectives
2. Develop subobjectives. For each major objective, determine the two or three things a successful person would need to do to achieve the major objective.
3. Ask questions to make sure you have all of the key objectives.
4. Convert having to doing.
5. Convert technical skills into results.

Make the creation of these requirements a primary performance objective.

During the first interview, the president and the candidate (who ultimately got the job) spent two hours together developing a detailed operational plan for this new business.

Determine what the best performers already in the job do differently from everyone else, then look for these same abilities in the people you hire.
Also study the worst people, discover what they do that makes them poor performers, and then avoid these traits.

Your employee base needs to mimic your customer base.

Compensation is not the primary consideration. The opportunity and challenges inherent in the job are.

Top people want to work for leaders and mentors who can help them reach their goals.

Tie the actual job to some major company initiative

Great ads must meet three criteria:
1. Have a compelling title
2. Write copy that's focused on what the candidate will learn, do, and become.
3. Describe the most critical skills in the context of how they're used.

Call the best candidates within 24 hours.
If someone applies on your site, you'll need to make sure your backend search engine automatically brings this person to the top of the list.

To be a leader of the company, what qualities do you look for?
A: You clearly want somebody who can articulate a vision. They have to have enormous energy and the incredible ability to energize others.
If you can't energize others, you can't be a leader. -Jack Welch

30% PLUS Solution = Job Stretch + Job Growth + $$ Increase + Manager's Total Involvement

You can't tell a person how great a job is. The person needs to learn it on his own.

He tells prospective employees: "If you need me to motivate you, I probably don't want to hire you."

Precisely spell out what you want done, how it is to be done, and the desired measurable outcome once it is done.

Know what kinds of special skills or experience are required to do the job most effectively.

Hiring inexperienced employees:
It's easier to teach someone, than to unteach them first.

It's not easy to find energetic and enthusiastic people with the right attitude. We look for people who can grow into their work, and respond with excitement when we give them greater responsibility.

Most really successful people I've met are more interested in doing the right and proper thing than the easy and expedient one.

Good employees accept responsibility.
Great employees seek responsibility.

You'll attract the employees you need if you can explain why your mission is compelling, why you're doing something important that no one else is going to get done.

You should be able to explain why your company is a unique match for him personally. And if you can't do that, he's probably not the right match.

John D. Rockefeller Sr. hired talented people whenever he found them,
rather than according to need, confident that Standard Oil's growth
would create many spots to fill.

He recognized talent even in opponents.

Perot put extraordinary effort into evaluating new hires. He devised a
20-page application that asked candidates, among other questions, what
they considered the greatest accomplishments of their lives. He met with
the wives of the candidates, exploring whether they would tolerate the
demands that EDS would put on their husbands. In the early days, a
candidate did not get hired before interviewing with every single
existing EDS employee.

While Microsoft has attracted aggressively intellectual types
characterized as clones of Bill Gates, Sam Walton's top aides were
typically ambitious small-town men like himself.
Wayne Huizenga's senior managers have tended to be former football
players with middle-class, Midwestern backgrounds.
Ross Perot created EDS in his own image by hiring hard chargers with
military backgrounds.
In recruiting people who shared their views of the world, however, the
billionaires did not seek yes-men.
Confident enough not to feel threatenedby strong subordinates, they
generally valued aides who were willing to defend opposing points of view.

The hiring process is the first and most essential medium for communicating the Boss' idea.
HIRING:
1. scripted presentation communicating the Boss' idea in a group meeting to all the applicants at once. describe the idea, history, successful experience implementing the idea, attributes required of the successful candidate for the position.
2. meeting with each applicant individually to discuss reactions and feelings about the idea, as well as his background and experience. ask why they feel they're great for the role in implementing the idea.
3. notify successful candidate by phone.
4. notify unsuccessful applicants, thanking for their interest.
5. first day of training:
- reviewing boss' idea
- summarizing the system
- take a tour of facilities, highlighting people at work, systems at work, to demonstrate the interdependence of systems on people and people on systems
- answering employee's questions fully
- give operations manual
- review operations manual
- completing employment papers

Don't hire experienced managers, because they'll manage by standards they learned somewhere else.
You must take full accountability for what's going on in your business. You must lead the company in the direction you intend it to go.
You must set the standard.
The Management System : all managers and future-managers are expected to produce results.
You don't need professional managers to manage to those standards : just people who wish to learn how to manage them. People who are personally committed to those standards as you are.

You need people who want to play your game. Not people who believe they have a better one.

Let people with the best resumes make the decisions. Of course, a company's leader ultimately must take responsibility for the decision, but the best leaders let themselves be heavily influenced by advisers with the appropriate experience and training.

HIRE A VERSION OF YOURSELF:
Find someone who does every checklist task you do, probably better than you do it. Take the part of your job you can describe in a manual, and hire someone to do it. Find something to do but to do it so well that it more than paid for the person you just hired to do your old job.
Then you can spend all your time not just imagining a bigger, better future but also making it happen.
If you didn't have to spend your time in meetings and reacting to incoming, no one would be standing in the way of your ability to generate value and insight and forward motion. The people with more leverage than you don't work any harder than you do. They've hired people to do that. No, the people with more leverage than you do are making better art.

HIRE SOMEONE WHOM YOU CAN WORK FOR:
Entrepreneurs often do this when they raise money from venture capitalists. The VCs end up on the board; they are the ones who demand quarterly results and who scour spreadsheets and corporate-strategy decks and then give their permission. Painters do this when they sign on with a gallery instead of selling their work directly to the public. Musicians do it when they give away all their rights to a record label
The trade-off is that you will give up the freedom to decide what sort of art you're going to make.

## a scouting - old tPA

### Search for candidates correctly

Everyone promises they can do the job, but you need specific skills more than likability or general aptitude

#### Look for the BEST personality for your role

Personality determines fit from preferences, not aptitude
A. Each person focuses more on tasks or other people
B. Each person prefers to make their decisions slowly or quickly
- Mentally well people take on roles of their less dominant styles as they mature
- Mentally unhealthy people intensify their adverse behaviors over time
- Take on the diametrically opposite role during the interview to see the candidate more objectively

Boss (task-focused, quick decisions)
- Dominant, driven, and confident
- Risks behaving insensitively to others

Engager (people-focused, quick decisions)
- Persuasive, convincing, and closes deals
- However, can put pressure on others

Supporter (people-focused, slow decisions)
- Collaborative, understanding, and counsels others
- Can be bureaucratic and slow

Technical (task-focused, slow decisions)
- Analytical, insightful, and deliberative
- Can be overcontrolling

Avoid building a homogenous mix of personalities in your team
- Teams with only planners talk much and do little
- Teams with only performers take many unnecessary risks
- Task-based teams invalidate the human element in the team and outside the group
- People-based teams become a progressively more disorganized and unproductive mess

#### Start looking for workers before you need them

It always takes longer to find good workers than it seems
- Recruit or think of new ways to recruit every single day
- You may not think you need them now, but great talent ready to work is an insurance policy
- Consulting a list of great options is better than feeling pressured to make a quick decision

Use appropriate social media networks and software
- If you find an applicant you love, gain their trust by impressing their family
- Weed out poor fits for the position with applicant-tracking software

### Advertise correctly

A worker will only transfer if they feel they're receiving at least a 30% non-monetary increase
- Their change includes new skills learned, job growth, and a better mix of more satisfying work
- The less someone feels others appreciate their work, the more you'll need to pay

Make the job advertisement interesting, exciting, and in the first-person
- A job advertisement which sounds boring deters talented workers
- Attract more talent with witty and entertaining [writing](https://philosaccounting.com/a/writing-basics/)

#### Avoid a tedious or robotic applicant tracking system

- Your hiring process should honor the qualifications and time of experts
- Don't penalize blank spaces or require too many text boxes for them to enter information

Stay in fluid and natural communication with all applicants
- Robotic communication implies a robotic company policy
- Give every applicant an interview rejection or approval if the application has a deadline

### Always build your team

Attracting, developing, and keeping top-level talent is a manager's perpetual job
- Unless the team breaks up in fewer than six months, keep looking for more relevant talent
- Top talent takes time to discover from constant searching

Look for significant cultural gaps as the group expands and for qualified people to fit those roles
- The team member has to have proven their ability to match the role
- New team members must mesh with the rest of the team

Look for creative ways to recruit
- Competitions, job fairs, and internships
- Try temporary-to-hire positions
- Give work opportunities through extracurricular activities

Temps dilute the culture, especially when they're the leadership
Keep it max 40-50%, since any more will dilute the culture from lack of loyalty

On a contract/project, employees who are paid hourly ALWAYS have the perverse incentive to work slower unless they believe they can have steady work long-term
- The unethical way to keep them working diligently is to promise more steady employment
- the ethical way is to simply stay on top of them and crack the whip, or to provide very clear boundaries about what you want done and not expect anything more of them
- the AWESOME manager way is to either give direct financial bonuses for additional work done, or to give them time off for better work (e.g., a full day's pay for a half-day of double work)

When checking references for a job applicant, employers may be reluctant or prohibited from saying anything negative, so leave or send a message that says, "Get back to me if you highly recommend this applicant as super great." If they don't reply take that as a negative.
You cannot get smart people to work extremely hard just for money.
You can be whatever you want, so be the person who ends meetings early.
When you lead, your real job is to create more leaders, not more followers.
Immediately pay what you owe to vendors, workers, contractors. They will go out of their way to work with you first next time.

Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.

## a scouting - remote workers

Talent on demand rather than having to pay for employees all the time, whether you need them or not.

You are hiring an independent contractor who is an expert at what they do (rather than a jack of all trades).

Make sure you hire specialists and avoid those that offer many different types of services.

List several projects that, if completed, would make a big impact on your business.

Legal resources who specialize in filing trademarks.

Virtual Support Organizations (VSO) provide ongoing support like an employee, but from a distance.

Financial management : use online accounting systems (quickbooks.com) so a virtual CFO can remotely manage and keep me up-to-date on every aspect of my company's financial health.

Do not make the mistake of dumping more and broader scope of work on them, as time goes on.

DO
- value the relationship
- see your VA as an equal partner
- articulate your needs and wants well
- maintain a trusting relationship
- stay centered, focused, and organized so as not to distract your VA

DON'T
- fail to communicate when they request something from you
- attempt to micromanage
- treat your VA like a low-level employee
- live in the urgent, where everything is last-minute

Important to have a written business process for each support function a VA does for you. This discipline will quickly disappear into a mist of good intentions as soon as you try to broaden the scope of your VAs.

COO : Must have extensive experience assisting businesses from the strategic, operational, and HR perspectives.

Start with the small steps of hiring VAs for specific, measurable tasks. After you have two or more working with you and everything is going smoothly, consider hiring an executive level VA to grow your virtual team beyond that point.

If your VA team interacts with your prospects, customers, or suppliers, have them use your email signature (with their name not yours).

## a scouting - sivers - Hiring Smart - by Pierre Mornell - 1 before

Before the initial interview, pick up the phone and call the candidate.

How hard or easy is it to reach the candidate? Does the candidate return your call at the specific times that you suggest?

I review time, place, and dress for the initial interview by phone.

Five to 10 percent of interviewees will screw up this first test.

Regardless of the material already in your file, ask the candidate to send a resume with a one-page cover letter that briefly highlights his or her life and background.

Is the response slow or prompt? How long before the letter and resume arrive by mail or fax? Is the candidate literate or illiterate? Sloppy or neat?

65 percent of executive candidates lie about their academic credentials. Forty-three percent lie about their job responsibilities. Forty-two percent lie about previous compensation.

A resume must always be verified.

It is a red light if a person behaves deceptively on something as basic as a resume.

Ask the candidate to visit one of your stores, plants, campuses, offices, or Web page before the interview. Then ask for the candidate's observations.

Most candidates wait for the beginning of the "official" interview like a runner waits for the starter's gun to fire. These few minutes are a terrific opportunity to take a brief stroll about the office and make small talk, while lowering anxieties. "How was your drive? Any trouble finding the office? Would you like some coffee?" Look for curiosity - does the candidate ask questions? What other behavior does the candidate exhibit?

Curiosity is a valuable asset in an employee. It demonstrates a desire to gratify the mind with new discoveries, to learn about novel and extraordinary things.

Read the top candidates' resumes in teams of three to five people. Watch for one of your team members to emerge, often unpredictably, as your in-house resume expert.

Let a wide range of people know that you're looking.

What Dave observed at the dinner party and hotel were the potential candidates' behaviors. Casting the widest net possible, he is always on the lookout for the best candidates available,

Microsoft assumes that the best candidates are not looking for new jobs. In fact, candidates who approach Microsoft are actually less attractive to the company.

Hiring people from big companies to little companies, top-down to bottom-up organizations, or structured to entrepreneurial settings, can be a dangerous route.

Before interviewing new candidates for old jobs, it's an excellent time to rethink the job itself.

Keep your initial interview short.

## a scouting - workfromhome - outlinefordescribingaproject

OUTLINE FOR DESCRIBING A PROJECT (in an explicit and unambiguous way)

1. Project name : give it a short descriptive title

2. Description : describe in detail
a. overview
b. specifics, broken into outline form
- deliverables (what you will receive when project is completed)
- format
- uploads of supporting materials
c. bid requirements : what needs to be included with bids
- intellectual property rights : "work for hire"
- required commencement and completion dates
- samples of previous work
- number of revisions for creative projects

3. Budget : (in most cases, don't disclose budget)

4. Time to bid

5. Scope of Service Providers (what "class" can bid, recommend make available to entire database)
Have a formal written project plan agreement. Guru.com has online templates for this.

## avoiding group think

Team dysfunction often derives from group-think
- Group-think is the tendency to not think individually and personally on apparent issues and challenges which face the group
1. Members misjudge their standards as higher than reality and that they can't fail
2. They rationalize everything to discredit legitimate warnings or negative feedback
3. Everyone pressures each other to stay quiet about any complaints or negative consequences

Group-think creates many negative results
• Higher peer pressure against positive changes
• State of complacency about group tasks
• Highly censored opinions everyone publicly conforms to
• Illusions about unanimous agreement on a decision

## b interviewing

Interviews are less predictive of job performance than work samples,
job-knowledge tests, and peer ratings of past job performance.

Why predict something we can test? Why guess when we can know?

Use the (first) interview to collect information, not to make a decision.

One of the biggest problems is that too much emphasis is placed on the interaction between the candidate and the interviewer, and too little on the candidate's ability and motivation to do the job. This is the primary cause of hiring mistakes.

Interpersonal relationships and biases. This is how randomness enters the hiring process.
If you like a candidate, you tend to go into chat mode, ask easier questions, and look for information to confirm your initial impression.
If you don't like someone, you put up a defense shield, ask tougher questions, and try to end the interview quickly.
You go out of your way to find information to prove your initial belief that the candidate is incompetent.

There is a natural tendency to overemphasize the "getting the job" skills when assessing a candidate, rather than the person's ability to "do the job."

Remaining objective, overcoming the natural tendency to judge people based on first impressions, personality, and a few select traits.
Overcoming this problem will eliminate 50 percent of all common hiring errors.
Understanding real job needs will eliminate most of the rest of them.

Wait 30 minutes before making any decision about a candidate's ability to do the work.

To increase your objectivity during the interview, use the following six ideas:
1. Measure first impressions at the end of the interview. As
2. Disallow the yeslno decision unless the candidate is a complete dud. Make it a rule that you must suspend any decision for at least 30 minutes. During these 30 minutes, conduct a work-history review and get some details about the candidate's major accomplishments
3. Delay the decision by redefining the purpose of the interview. Use the interview just to collect information, not to make a decision.
4. Ask the same questions to all candidates.
5. Demand evidence before you accept gut feelings. Facts, examples, and details must be provided to justify a ranking, good or bad.
6. Make a "no" harder to justify than a "yes."

Interviewers need to train candidates to give complete information. If you leave it up to candidates to provide this information on their own, you're measuring interviewing and presentation skills, not job competency.

Organize the interview to assess competency and create opportunity at the same time. You do this by asking tougher questions, not by overselling or overtalking.

Top candidates must leave the interview knowing they have been assessed completely and properly. They must leave knowing the job offers a true career opportunity.

Making the job hard to earn but worthy of earning is how you hire top people.

When Teddy Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy, he purchased a used Brazilian merchant ship, the Nictheroy for $500,000, under the proviso that it must arrive under its own power within a very short time frame to a specific port. The contract didn't have any of the normal technical specifications. Roosevelt knew that if the ship couldn't travel the distance required by the date specified it was worthless.

The best had four common characteristics that were observable in the initial interview:
(1) self-motivation-everyone who achieved any level of success worked hard;
(2) an ability to motivate others-inspiring others to work hard, including peers, superiors, as well as their own team;
(3) achievement of results that were comparable to what needed to be achieved; and
(4) an ability to solve comparable job problems in real time.

Don't be seduced by affability and social assertiveness.

Another common error is to eliminate quiet people assuming there is a lack of energy.

"Of all of the things you've accomplished in your career, what stands out as most significant? Now could you go ahead and tell me all about it?"
Getting the correct answer to this question can tell you 65 percent to 75 percent of everything you need to make an accurate hiring decision.
The correct answer comes by fact-finding and getting complete details of the accomplishment.

What were the three or four big challenges you had to overcome?
What were the actual results obtained?
When did this take place and at what company?
How long did it take to complete the task?
What was the situation you faced when you took on the project?
Why were you chosen for this role?
Did you volunteer? Why?
What was your actual title?
Who were the people on the team?
What was your supervisor's title?
What technical skills were needed to accomplish the task?
What skills were learned?
Describe the planning process, your role in it, and whether the plan was met.
Provide details of what went wrong and how you overcame them.
What was your actual role in this project?
Give me three examples of where you took the initiative. Why?
What were the biggest changes or improvements?
What was the toughest decision you had to make?
How did you make it?
Was it the right decision?
Would you make it differently if you could?
Describe the environment-the pace, the resources available, your boss, and the level of professionalism.
What was the biggest conflict you faced?
Who was it with and how did you resolve it?
Give me some examples of helping or coaching others.
Give me some examples of where you really had to influence or persuade others to change their opinion.
How did you personally grow or change as a result of this effort?
What did you like the most and least?
In retrospect, what would you do differently if you could?
What type of recognition did you receive for this project?
Was it appropriate in your mind? Why or why not?

The key to using the most significant accomplishment (MSA) question is to ask it multiple times to observe long-term trends for individual, team, and job-related accomplishments.

If you want to better understand a candidate's thinking, planning, and job-specific problem-solving skills, just ask this question: "If you were to get this job, how would you go about solving _______ [describe a typical problem]?"

Don't accept generalities like "Created a new market," "Turned the department around," and "Developed a new procedure." Don't hesitate to ask for clarifying information.

"Please draw an organization chart and tell me how you built and developed this team, and describe the group's biggest accomplishment."

Determine whether the candidate's performance is on an upward trend, has flattened out, or is declining.

If you were to get the job what additional information would you need to know, and how would you go about accomplishing this objective?"

Eight steps provide a brief outline of the interviewing process:
1: Warm-up; do a quick overview and understand the candidate's motivation for looking. Use the first 5 to 10 minutes to gain a quick sense of the candidate, overcome temporary nervousness, and find out why the person is looking for a job.
2: Wait 30 minutes and Measure the impact of first impressions at the end of the interview. Use the interview to collect information, not decide competency. Decide competency by carefully evaluating the candidate's responses against real job needs. It's best to do this at the end of the interview or during a group deliberation where everyone shares information.
3: Conduct a comprehensive work history review. Go through every job and find out what the person accomplished, what the person didn't accomplish, the team the person worked with, why the person took the job, and any recognition they received. If you spend half of the opening interview on this, you'll know what you need to do in the second half.
4: Ask about major individual accomplishments. This is the MSA question. During the work history review, ask about the highlights of major accomplishments, then select ones that best meet your job needs to learn more about.
5: Ask about a major team accomplishment. This is the modification to the MSA question with the focus on team leadership. Spend a great deal of time on this, using specific team fact-finding follow-up questions.
6: Ask a problem-solving question. During this visualization question, start a discussion about a realistic job problem, not some hypothetical situation.
7: Recruit and close. Don't end the interview on a neutral note, but don't give the farm away either. Done properly, the close can be a useful way to begin the recruiting process without overselling.
8: Measure first impressions again.

Most Significant Accomplishment Question In Chapter 7, you discover how to modify the MSA question.
"Give me examples of when your personality has hurt your performance."
Don't ignore this part. Continue probing.
Be concerned if you get a run-around or some vague response.

Some Fatal Flaws Great communicator, with lots of self-confidence, but the person's management role doesn't seem to be growing. You might have found a great individual contributor or a consultant-type person, but a weak manager. Vague, superficial, or short answers when explaining critical issues, especially gaps in employment and why the person changed jobs, or failed to get the recognition deserved. Inconsistent track record-flat, down, roller coaster-that is always blamed on external circumstances. Lots of drive and ambition, but maybe too assertive. This could relate to ego problems, immaturity, or an inability to work in cross-functional teams. Too fast of a track record. The person might have been promoted beyond his capability. Extremes in any behavior-too analytical, too assertive, too friendly, or too persuasive. Usually this leads to problems regarding lack of flexibility or balance. Lots of energy, great personality, but answers are too general. This is the classic-lots of sizzle, but little substance. Lots of excuses about why things didn't happen, results weren't achieved, or why recognition didn't occur. A pattern of excuse making is the biggest clue that you're hiring the wrong person. If you observe any of these signs, you must get proof to overcome the potential concern.

Conduct the reference check just like the interview by getting specific examples to prove a generality and then by fact-finding.

You must conduct a background check on every candidate including degree verification, employment history, credit review, driving record, and criminal background. The cost is low and the protection is high.

First, never make an offer until it's accepted. Second, provide your candidate a compelling future vision that overwhelms the past.

Challenging questions are another way to create interest by pushing the candidate away to see whether the candidate pushes back. This is how you put candidates in the back seat.
For example, "While I like your background, I'm concerned you don't have enough experience in developing international accounting systems. Have I missed something? If not, can you describe something you've accomplished that you feel is most related to our needs?" This slight challenge increases the importance of this skill and requires the candidate to sell the interviewer. This approach, used judiciously throughout the interview, can increase a candidate's interest in a job. If the concern is valid, it demonstrates areas where the candidate can learn and grow if she were to get the job.

Use the following as the last question at the end of the first interview.
It's a must for all strong candidates:
"Although we're seeing some other fine candidates, I'm very impressed with your background. What are your thoughts now about this position?"

I told the candidate the salary range (only a slightly higher percentage over his current package) and the next steps in the evaluation process.
This consisted of a meeting with two board members on the East Coast, a half-day session with an industrial psychologist in the Midwest, and then a dinner with the chairman.
This was before the medical and drug test, and a final meeting with the CEO.
The candidate was very interested, but when he agreed to continue this arduous process, I knew the deal was almost done. 

Incremental theorists consider intelligence as something like strength. (Want to get stronger and more muscular? Start pumping iron.)
Entity theorists view it as something more like height. (Want to get taller? You're out of luck.)
- ENTITY THEORY?

If you believe intelligence is a fixed quantity, then every educational and professional encounter becomes a measure of how much you have.
If you believe intelligence is something you can increase, then the same encounters become opportunities for growth.
In one view, intelligence is something you demonstrate; in the other, it's something you develop.

The entity theory is a system that requires a diet of easy successes. In this schema, if you have to work hard, it means you're not very good. People therefore choose easy targets that, when hit, affirm their existing abilities but do little to expand them.

Ask every candidate the same questions and take extensive notes.

Check independent references. LinkedIn is very useful for this.

Keep the same members on your interview team. They get better and better at it.

## b interviewing - old tPA

#### Conventional interviewing techniques are flawed

The interview is both seen as standard practice and the fastest way to gauge performance
- However, a 30-minute interview doesn't measure much
- A conventional interview only assesses a candidate's ability to convince others
- Technical interviews focus on a given task without looking at cultural fit

An interview can undercut relevant information
- In college recruiting, interviewers skew against students with lower GPA's who may have more qualifications
- A candidate's lies are almost always impossible to discern since [there's no social context to pull from](https://philosaccounting.com/a/dissecting-pinocchio-christopher-dillingham-m-a/)

Create alternative ways to interview well
- Only ask practical questions
    - Discover more about them by asking them what they've been recently reading
- Give them homework and interview them based on their performance
    - The homework could be an unimportant task for the organization
- Instead of giving an interview, have them interview you instead to gauge their ability to think
- Give internships or 30-day no-obligation trial periods to find viable technical workers
- Finding competent workers on the job market is often more difficult than grooming interns into great workers
- If you can afford it, give a skills test battery with a 30-day trial period
- Interviewing well is a skill of trial-and-error

#### Look for the correct traits in a candidate

A candidate is a good hire if you see several universal traits
- Adaptable to spontaneous or unplanned situations without losing their nerve
- Open to new ideas and experiences
- Honest about their skills, limitations, and capabilities
    - Don't hire them if they distrust you in the interview or are somehow withholding
- Resourceful and steadily improving in long-term learning outside formal education
- Self-disciplined and desires to create work others will use
- Desires to grow with clear career goals unrelated to titles or status
    - A career goal for a title or the ability to direct others is a negative trait
- Rationally and openly admits graciously when they're wrong, even when only slightly
- Team-oriented and focused on the organization's collective growth
    - Watch if they brag about proudly defending something or gaining ground
- Since you're hiring them for competence in something you may not know, they should be smarter than you

Some circumstances need specific traits, so ignore capability and look for fit on the following
- Being sociable is risky in an environment with little human connection
- Analytical tendencies are risky when you want enthusiasm and energy
- Ambitiousness can harm a complex process-oriented system
- Team players often hate working alone
- Perfectionists are often dangerous when results demand speed or adaptation
- Young people are more ambitious and reckless, while older people are more skilled and jaded

Reject a candidate, no matter what, for any job position on the following
- Unintelligent or entirely unwilling to learn new things
- A depressing or miserable personality
- Tends to use hyperbole, extremism or overly emotional reactions
- So overconfident in their abilities they can't accept mistakes
- A poor personality mix for the position

### Value their time and yours in interviews

Use software like [InterviewStream](https://interviewstream.com) for long-distance communication
Avoid conventional phrases which don't make sense
- "We're the best at what we do" - vague and sets an impossible expectation
- "We are experts" - implies everyone in the organization is an expert
- "We've been doing this for X years" - implies an unchanging culture
- "We have a tough interview process" - not necessarily true for [talented interviewers](https://philosaccounting.com/a/get-a-job/)
- "We don't post jobs; we run off of recommendations" - implies an inbred culture of friend-coworkers

Asking a patronizing, irrelevant or stupid question will usually lead a true [professional](https://philosaccounting.com/a/level-1-being-a-professional/) to believe their time is worth more than yours

#### Try to discern between a great interviewer and a great candidate

Gut instincts are great for business decisions but awful for choosing candidates
- If you doubt whether someone can do the task, look for specific reasons you have your doubts
- Even if you're rushing to fill a position, never emphasize skills and experience more than performance, attitude, and fit

Ask direct and pointed questions instead of vague or general ones
Use a sales pitch for the position, then watch their reaction to understand how they'd fit into the culture
Have multiple members of the team meet or interview the candidate

#### Pick the right questions for what you want to learn

Don't ask questions which don't reflect their ability to do the job
- The presence of any notable employers, impressive educational credentials, GPAs or any external commendations
- Scores on personality tests, at least outside the job description's needs
    - If you're interviewing correctly, you should have weeded them out from the interview already
    - However, personality results can help determine if they're lying or self-unaware
- Past or present salary, which only measures their ability to negotiate
- Age, family or any other demographics
- Gaps in employment, though you should know why they left their last job
- Tasks and duties from past jobs don't matter, only whether they can perform the current one
    - "Progressively more responsible positions" don't matter either

"What is your greatest accomplishment?"
- The best question you can ask
    - Shows what they value most
    - Removes any uncertainties about what they can accomplish
    - By connecting to their passion, you can see how they work when they're happy
- Ask for details
    - When did it happen and how long did it take?
    - What results did you achieve?
    - What was the organization, role, title, position, and team?
    - What parts of the project did you enjoy or dislike?
    - How did this accomplishment change and grow you?
    - What types of formal recognition did you receive from it?
    - If you could do it again, what would you do differently?

"What can I expect from you in the first 100 days on the job?"
- Shows how they think and their long-term plans

"What does it mean to you to be on a team?"
- A team is both being helping and getting help

"Don't use names, but can you tell me about your best and worst boss?"
- Shows how much personal responsibility they take
- Shows what they prefer and hate in a work environment
- Shows if they're loving and understanding or mean and spiteful

"How many pennies does it take to fill a room?"
- Shows their problem-solving ability
- Shows their preference for details and specificity
- Make your own to have more fun or find specific problem-solving skills

"Tell me about yourself."
- A common question every job candidate should be ready to answer
- Shows how well they think through their experiences

"What can you do to bring our organization to the next level?"
- Gives you potentially great ideas and whether the candidate has a vision for the future

"Describe a situation where you had to manage multiple things in your personal or work life. How did you deal with it?"
- Shows their ability to handle stress and intense work environments

"What have you done to improve yourself in the last two years?"
- Shows their desire to grow personally, professionally or spiritually

"What is your life's mission statement?"
- Makes the candidate think and shows how they process the question
- Shows what they believe their purpose to be and its connection to their work style

"What can you tell me about our organization?"
- Shows how much the candidate cares about the job opportunity

Offer a position for a somewhat related and more prestigious role on the team
- If they jump at it, they don't want the job they're interviewing for

#### Many candidates use the same lies

Education lies
- "I have all the credits; I just didn't graduate."
- "I've done all the classes; I just need to pay the fees to graduate."
- "I graduated from (university), but it was a long time ago. I'm not sure why they can't verify my degree."
- "I had a 3.0 GPA in my 'core' classes, but a 1.9 GPA overall."
- "It was actually an (actual major) and business degree."

Background check lies
- "No, I'm not on drugs (fails drug check) Oh, you meant marijuana as a drug."
- "She told me she was 18."
- "They told me in court it would never be on my file, so I didn't think I needed to tell you."
- "No, I don't have a felony (finds felony) Oh, that felony! That was in a different district."
Experience lies
- "When you said Java, I thought you meant experience making coffee."
- "I was part of the leadership team responsible for implementing it."

Not showing up to the interview
- "My car broke down."
- "I couldn't find your location."
- "My child was sick."

Termination lies
- "It was a mutual decision for me to leave."
- "I (or family member) was in a bad accident and went to the hospital, so they fired me for not showing up to work."
- "I volunteer at a community event, and we have drinks afterward. The next morning my boss smelled alcohol and fired me for drinking on the job."

### Research and connect after meeting with the candidate

Followup outside of what they told you
- Contact references who may know the candidate but weren't on the reference list
- Search the internet for them, personally and professionally

Observe their influence and network to create future hiring opportunities
- Even if that person has no value to you, their network does

## b interviewing - sivers - Hiring Smart - by Pierre Mornell - 2 during

Interviews test how well someone interviews.

Trust your gut. Chemistry is usually determined in the first few minutes of an interview.

'Never do business with anybody you don't like.' If you don't like somebody, there's a reason. Chances are it's because you don't trust them, and you're probably right.

As the official interview commences, as the starter's gun cracks and the race begins, ask all your questions at once. That's right. Put all your initial questions on the table up front. This strategy accomplishes three things. First, in a manner of speaking, you pass the baton. You've asked the questions, now the candidate must respond. Performance depends upon the candidate, not selling yourself and the organization. Second, and more importantly, this strategy directly confronts the most common problem in interviewing: not listening, and talking too much.

This technique forces you to listen.

Settle back and watch a candidate's behavior as well as listen to his or her words.

How do you recognize incompetence? What do you do about it?

How do you recognize excellence? What do you do with it? What about yourself would you like to improve most? What makes you lose your temper? Tell me about the last time it happened.

"Are you lucky?"

Henry Ford's favorite question, "Are you curious?"

Disingenuous questions.

"I'm just a legal and financial guy who never really understood the HR department. What exactly does a HR director do?" If the candidate could explain the job in detail, clearly and concisely, Larry went on to the next question. Watch out if the candidate spoke in jargon and buzzwords.

"How are you going to lose money for me?"

Three quarters of the way through the interview, give the candidate a task to perform. Not only does this demonstrate the candidate's behavior - it also breaks the monotony of most interviews.

The interviewer asks the candidate how she would market the new furniture and why.

"We have about five more minutes …" is a useful statement before closure. Pay attention to "By the way …," "Oh, one more thing …," and "I almost forgot …," which mean, "This is the most important thing I'm going to say."

Our strengths, in the extreme, may predict our weaknesses. Therefore ask candidates about their strengths, and consider what might exist on the other side.

If candidates can go into detail and depth about a subject, they probably have some expertise in that area. If not, the opposite is true. On the other hand, the key is to ask questions in your areas of expertise.

Use a pad with a line drawn down the middle. On one side of the page, make appropriate notes about what the candidate tells you regarding jobs, dates, strengths, weaknesses, etc. On the other side, note what you're thinking. Nothing is too minor to write down: questions, missing pieces, thoughts, feelings, likes, dislikes.

I have all candidates sign a release form, an at-will clause, and an arbitration agreement three times during the hiring process. They sign when they fill out an application, co-sign an employment agreement, and after they read our policy and procedures manual.

## b interviewing - sivers - Hiring Smart - by Pierre Mornell - 3 after

Before a candidate leaves my office I make a simple request. "Please call me back on Monday."

I say, "You'll probably have a few thoughts on the way home, maybe some questions, so let's talk for five minutes, even to touch base, if you're available by phone next week." Then we settle on a time and day.

Give finalist candidates a current project you're evaluating and ask for an analysis.

Give finalist candidates a post-interview project that evaluates attention to detail, as well as the ability to analyze problems and suggest solutions.

Meet the candidate's spouse or significant other.

What worries or anxieties does that person have about the candidate's possible job?

For the candidate worried about his sick child's health insurance, or about missing Little League practice with his son, or about his spouse's isolation, these issues need to be addressed, fully and satisfactorily, in advance of new employment.

Always have a final interview in which you talk about potential problems.

If you've not discovered any, you're missing something in the candidate's background.

Your goal is to address whatever difficulties might arise.

Give prospective employees a fifteen-minute psychological inventory.

Offer the assurance that there are no right or wrong answers.

I'm not as interested in the MBTI results, which identify a candidate as one of sixteen personality types, as I am in how long it takes to return the inventory, and how the person discusses the results, which we always do by phone or in a follow-up visit.

In our conversation afterward, the candidate has plenty of time to agree or disagree with the test results as it fits her personality. More significantly in terms of my task, does the candidate laugh? Does she elaborate on her independence? Her rigidities? Does she give examples? Do the results open up our discussion? Or does she clam up? Does the candidate think she can make an end run by saying, in all seriousness, as many candidates do, "Oh, I used to be like that, but I've really changed over the years."

## b interviewing - sivers - Hiring Smart - by Pierre Mornell - 4 references

Digging deeper - asking the candidate's references for other references,

Call references at what you assume will be their lunchtime - you want to reach an assistant or voice mail.

Jones is a candidate for (the position) in our company. Your name has been given as a reference. Please call me back if the candidate was outstanding."

If the candidate is outstanding or excellent, I guarantee that eight out of ten people will respond quickly and want to help. Take such a response as a green light.

If only two or three of the ten references selected by the candidate return your call, this message is also loud and clear. And yet: No derogatory information has been shared. No libelous statements have been made. No confidences or laws have been broken.

For all references, the higher you go up an organization, the more likely you are to get helpful information.

Tap the enormous wealth of publicly available data banks that may contain information on a candidate's driving and financial records, real estate dealings, court appearances, and litigation history. Perfectly legal, this is all public information and is readily available.

Always ask the candidate, "What am I likely to hear - positive and negative - when I call your references?"

Candidates always deserve the courtesy of explaining the peaks and valleys of their work history.

Call and ask about:
1. Technical Competence Can the candidate perform the required tasks? Can the university president raise money? Can the secretary spell? Can the receptionist handle phones? These are easy pitches, and references should be able to hit the ball out of the park.
2. Intelligence This topic can take a few seconds to consider. "On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate the candidate's intelligence?" Most references respond well to a ten-point scale for rating people.
3. People Skills Ask about the candidate's interpersonal skills. How does she get along with bosses? What about subordinates and peers? You'll usually get a ringing endorsement, but listen for silences, gaps, and omissions in this part of the conversation.
4. Motivation What motivates the candidate? Financial rewards? Meaningful assignments? A job well done? Pats on the back? Independence? All of the above? I have seen candidates decline offers because of relationships ("My fiance just accepted an offer in Salt Lake"), money ("My company just beat your offer"), and educational concerns ("My daughter's special school needs aren't available in your city"). How you structure your offer depends upon a person's motivations and your understanding of these motivations.
5. Everything Else Finally you should say, "Is there anything that I haven't asked?" Then listen carefully.

Here's a second format for phone references:
•  Did you like the person?
•  What did they fail at doing?
•  Reputation in the company?
•  How did they communicate?
•  Reputation in the industry?
•  How did they react to authority?
•  Reason for leaving?
•  Level of energy, drive?
•  What did they accomplish?
•  What would you change about the person if you could?

## b interviewing - sivers - Hiring Smart - by Pierre Mornell - 5 final

It helps enormously to have a colleague you can trust - or entrust - to tell you when you're making a mistake.

Do people like working for your candidate? Contact the people who currently work for him - secretaries and administrative assistants, direct reports and coworkers. Do they revere the candidate? Or do they fear or resent him? All employees, past and present, can help predict future behavior.

Give the candidate a longer assignment or hire a candidate on a temporary basis

Ask three questions at once. See if the candidate remembers the questions without reminders.

Give conflicting opinions early in the interview. Then see if the candidate agrees with both opinions throughout the interview.

## b interviewing - workfromhome - afterphonecall

Now that you've had an opportunity to review the support processes we need to have done, what other clarifications or specifics about it can I provide you?

Do you have any suggestions for completing what we need done in a more effective manner than the way it was described?

Are you anticipating any initial setup before you can start? If so, what will it entail and how much will it cost?

Why do you require a retainer? What happpens to the unused balance at the end of each month?

Why are you excited about taking on my company as a client?

What is the range of hours during the day I can contact you?

Are there any restrictions as to when or how I can contact you in the event of an emergency?

How often do you invoice and what "net" terms do you typically require?

Do you have any concerns or objections if we use my own Indepdent Contractor's Agreement for our working relationship?

How soon can you start?

## b interviewing - workfromhome - first contact with virtual applicants

My company is seeking the services of a professional virtual assistant with experience in the following areas:
- thing1
- thing2
- thing3

We found your listing on (website) and it appears you may have the proficiency we are looking for.

The work we need done on an ongoing basis is as follows:
- describe
- stuff
- here

Please take the time to review it carefully before answering the questions below:
1. Why do you feel you have the required expertise and experience to handle our support needs as described above?
2. Why do you feel you are the best VA available to do this work for us?
3. What assurances can you give us that any tasks we hire you to perform will continue without interruption or degradation of quality or timeliness if you go on vacation or suddenly become incapacitated.
4. What assurances can you guve us that you will not take on more business than you can reasonably handle?
5. Given the above description of what we need done, are you willing to charge on the basis of achieving the end results, rather than by the hour?
6. Within the last 7 years, have you been involved in litigation or had complaints lodged against you as a result of your work? If so, give details.
7. Are you willing to allow us to do a background check on you and your company?

In addition to answering the above questions, please include the following with your responses:
- your bio that includes any special training or certifications you have received relative to your VA work and a timeline showing when you started your VA business
- the state/province/country where your current business license/permit is filed
- sample of the Indepdent Contractors Agreement you typically use
- samples of your work product that are similar to what we are asking you to have done
- contact information for 3-6 current clients for whom you are currently doing the same or similar tasks as we are requesting
- contact information for 3-6 previous clients for whom you have done the same or similar tasks as we are requesting
If you need clarification for any of the above questions or documentation requests, just reply to this email with your questions. You can find out more about our company by going to cdbaby.com.

We are looking forward to your response and the possibilty of establishing an ongoing working relationship with you.

## c onboarding

Realistic job previews have been shown to reduce turnover even when they
are given after the employee is hired.

They're helping all people cope better when they confront the inevitable
difficulties of the role.

For most jobs, it takes from three weeks to three months after a candidate starts to determine true competency.

During the first _____ days, identify the key resources needs to accomplish this, evaluate actual status against existing plans, and revise and implement as necessary to achieve the planned goals.

One of our key technically oriented objectives is manage the [implementation, launch, design, development of] __________. Over the next _________ months, we must [complete, identify, plan, define resource needs] to ensure achieving planned results.

During the first ____ days, prepare a strategic plan outlining all the needs of the department to meet the company's long-term objective of _________ From this, prepare a calendar-based monthly operating budget and implementation plan by _________ [date].

The best people consistently deliver more results than expected, and they do it on time, all the time. This separates the best from everyone else.

New hires at Zappos go through a week of training. Then, at the end of those seven days, Hsieh makes them an offer. If they feel Zappos isn't for them and want to leave, he'll pay them $2,000 - no hard feelings. Hsieh is hacking the Motivation 2.0 operating system like a brilliant and benevolent teenage computer whiz. He's using an "if-then" reward not to motivate people to perform better, but to weed out those who aren't fit for a Motivation 3.0-style workplace.

After a job candidate has worked a thirty-day trial period on a team, the prospective teammates vote on whether to hire that person full-time. At W. L. Gore & Associates, the makers of the GORE-TEX fabric and another example of Motivation 3.0 in action, anybody who wants to rise in the ranks and lead a team must assemble people willing to work with him.

People working in self-organized teams are more satisfied than those working in inherited teams.

People want to be accountable - and that making sure they have control over their task, their time, their technique, and their team is a pathway to that destination.
- this is dependent on the conscientiousness aspect of personality

## diversity

Odd people and ordinary people get a co-dependent kick out of being needed and liked by each other.

If you're going to be an entrepreneur, be prepared to work with people who not only don't follow the rutted path of the masses but openly shun it. After all, that's why these people are willing to listen to you and your fundamentally innovative ideas in the first place.

In working with odd people, you are in for some serious challenges. But you're also in for some serious treats. These are the smartest, most interesting people on the planet, and the fact that they are willing to give your ordinary B-getting ass the time of day should flatter you.

## hiring

If someone gives you more than one reason why he wants the job, don't
hire him.

Only hire someone you wouldn't mind sitting next to on a plane ride
across the country.

## HR

If you are good with people and enjoy helping them resolve conflicts and issues, you might consider becoming an HR specialist. HR stands for Human Resources.

Human resources management is recruiting talents and developing a solid company's workforce. The HR department identifies skills or human resources in a company, evaluates potential candidates, and hires talent. They are also in charge of advertising a position for a company.

An HR specialist screens, recruits, interviews, and places new employees.

Other HR responsibilities include:
- Handling employee relations
- Handling payroll
- Managing benefits and training for employees
- Consulting with executives on strategic planning

HR is there to serve the COMPANY'S interests
- since a manager is generally harder to replace and often paid more, HR will usually protect the manager over the employee
- however, once a manager becomes too large a risk (or redundant), they'll be there to get rid of that manager
- stay upfront with your charges about this fact, and everyone will respect you more

## role assignment

Smaller teams are more effective than larger teams because as group size
grows, more attention is devoted to running the group and less to the
task at hand.

Lao Tzu wrote:
"A leader is best when people barely know he exists; when his work is
done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."

make sure someone is responsible to keep track of the changes in everyone's authority
- assign people appropriately the the various scopes of that authority within your organization
- if it's 100% clear who did what at what time, it's much easier to track down errors and who did it

Anne Mulcahy, who as CEO of Xerox announced that executives, on a
rotating basis, would have to serve as the customer officer of the day.
The customer officer would have to deal with every customer complaint
that came into corporate headquarters that day. Mulcahy said, "It keeps
us in touch with the real world." It made the stock four times more
valuable.
- everyone must have SOME sympathy for all the people they work with
- if they don't, the whole group quickly devolves into a tribalized [bad system]
- this is a CONSTANT need, especially since every new person (and [personality]) is going to change the group slightly

A team forms through several stages

A. Forming - relationships established in the group, goals are clarified, the manager defines the team's goals and tasks
- Marked by avoiding conflict and relationships formed
- Avoiding conflict yields very little work accomplished
- Its length depends on how clear tasks are defined and everyone's experience in the team
- Autonomous people, complicated tasks, or a variety of tasks will slow down the Forming stage
- The manager is very "hands-on" in this stage

B. Storming - team members feel capable of expressing and questioning opinions
- More evidence of internal conflict
- The manager will try to direct nervous energy into something productive
- Morale will dip when strongly expressed views and differences between expectations and reality appear
- Storming will resolve relatively quickly without any guidance or support and is necessary for the team to work together
- Team members will try to console and encourage everyone involved
- A manager who tries to force through this stage can permanently splinter the group

C. Norming - team focuses on resolving differences to define the mission and goals
- Marked by trust, mutual respect, cohesion, and harmony
- Team members learn more about each other and how they work together
- The team sets core standards about conduct, values, and measuring performance
- The manager is now a team member with everyone else
- The team starts developing a sense of team pride and productivity increases from it

D. Performing - genuine benefits to the organization
- Marked by high levels of loyalty, cohesiveness, shared work as an autonomous unit, and confident decisions
- The team completes work at each stage, but Performing is the most productive
- The manager is now an overseer who delegates tasks
- Team members feel confident and eager to be part of the team
- Everyone is optimistic about the outcome, openly communicates, and is highly energetic
- Everyone expects disagreement and encourages it as long as members channel it through a meaningful process the team agrees on

Labor can often be organized more efficiently in the context of community than it can in the context of a corporation. The best person to do a job is the one who most wants to do that job; and the best people to evaluate their performance are their friends and peers who, by the way, will enthusiastically pitch in to improve the final product simply for the sheer pleasure of helping one another and creating something beautiful from which they will all benefit.

Make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Defining roles reduces conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities.

## Teams

Hiring is the most critical thing you do in a team, so allocate time and effort accordingly.

Use the smallest team possible, but no smaller.

Do everything you can to keep the team size small. Remove distractions for the team, delegate work that isn’t crucial, provide tools that help their productivity. Increasing the team size should be the last resort.

Teams need to be carefully grown, not quickly put together. When companies brag about how many engineers they’re planning to hire in the near future, this is a massive red flag.

New systems are best designed by a small numbers of minds, not committees. Once the structure of the system is clear and the main decisions made, more people can usefully get involved.

Code ownership may be undesirable, but it’s important to have someone who owns the overall vision and direction for a system. Without it, the architecture will degrade over time as it gets pulled in different directions.

Prefer paying more to get a smaller number of great people instead of hiring more people at a lower salary.

Use contractors to bring in expertise, to ramp up a project quickly, for work on trial projects, or to deal with specialised work of a temporary nature. Don’t use contractors as a substitute for ordinary staff. (I say this as a contractor.)

If you’re hiring contractors because you can’t get permanent staff, you’re not paying your permanent staff enough.

As a team lead, if things go well, give your team the credit. If things go badly, take the blame yourself.

A team member who isn’t a good fit for the team can kill the performance of the whole team.

Inter-personal conflict is likewise poison to a team. While it may be possible to resolve underlying issues, if it proves difficult, it’s usually better for everyone to accept this and move people on.

Many people do “agile” badly, but that doesn’t mean that “agile” is bad.

Out of all the agile practices commonly used, estimating task sizes and trying to measure project velocity is the least useful. (Its utility is often less than zero).

## role assignment - personality

The extravert is energized by being with people and socializing. The
introvert is not; introverts are territorial and need private mental and
environmental space. The introvert draws strength from solitary
activities and finds social situations tiring. Seventy-five percent of
the population lean to the extravert end of the scale. The other
twenty-five percent of us wish they'd leave us alone.

Intuitive people are very imaginative and appreciate metaphor, are very
innovative, and see many possibilities - life is always around the next
corner. Intuitives may skip off to a new activity without completing any.

Thinking/Feeling: The T's strict view of the rules may seem cold-blooded
to the feeling folks. The thinking folks view the F folks as "bleeding
hearts."

Allow for different bugs in different people.

## role assignment - spotify model

### The Spotify Model

The Spotify Model is an approach to team and organisation structure which has been popularised by 'Spotify'. In this model, teams are organised around features, rather than technologies.

The Spotify Model also popularises the concepts of Tribes, Guilds, Chapters, which are other components of their organisation structure.

Members of the organisation have described that the actual meaning of these groups changes, evolves and is an on-going experiment. The fact that the model is a process in motion, rather than a fixed model continues to lead to varying interpretations of the structure, which may be based on presentations given by employees at conferences. This means 'snapshots' may be 're-packaged' by third parties as a fixed structure, with the fact that the model is dynamic being lost.