Hiring: Skill vs Attitude

I believe the purpose of interview is to find out what the candidate knows and NOT what the candidate doesn't know. We try assessing the candidates on four broad levels:

1. Skills (C/C++, DSP, Data-structures, etc.,)

2. Knowledge (Insights, how well the candidate can apply the skills to the problem at hand, ability to trade-off, finesse, etc.,)

3. Attitude (team vs self, taking initiative, self-awareness etc.,)

4. Values (something that is the core/character)

It is obvious that it is easy to assess someone in the above order. It is also obvious that it gets harder and harder to train someone for say attitude compared to say train someone for a missing skill (provided other things like academics and other vitals meet NI's standard).

I get annoyed that we often get stuck at skills, saying that guy could not solve a simple problem (often in the area that the interviewer loves - it doesn't matter whether that particular area is required as a part of the job or not),which is more like finding what the interviewee doesn't know. Often times we would not have bothered to check what is the kind of problems that the interviewee might have solved in his prior work, for it requires an amount of intelligence to first understand the work the interviewee has done and ask meaningful questions and then assess - finding out what the candidate indeed knows.

While we often get feedback on the quality of hires, we will never know the mistake we might be committing by eliminating someone quickly because he could not answer our pet question.

What do you think?

Effort vs Impact

At the end of a long day you feel you didn't accomplish anything; long week and still feel you wasted it; a complete month you have nothing to show. And your boss is not happy that something is not done. Now you wear your victim cap and tell everyone that cares to listen (or atleast pretend to do so) how unfairly you've been treated that despite your stellar "efforts" no one recognizes and blah blah. Sounds familiar? Most of us have fallen or keep falling into this trap, hopefully not often. In the end, we are paid for results and hardly for efforts. Our customers wont pay us for "efforts", not do we pay our vendors for their "efforts", then why do we expect that our boss applauds our efforts if we have very little to show. Sometimes it is helpful to catch ourselves "busy being busy". Such busy-but-no-results happen for several reasons:

1. You are spending a lot of time in office no doubt, but that also includes some or all of periodic checking of twitter feeds, updating facebook status, checking out latest cricket score, ultra long lunches, interesting water cooler discussions and all that (I can hear some of my friends asking me to add yoga, zumba etc., also to the list)! Not only these activities take time, but also will not give an uninterrupted stretch to do something meaningful.

2. Rework from a poor quality job

3. Procrastinating on something because you do not have competence or required skills to do the job and hesitant to admit it.

4. Poor work ethics in terms of when you come, when you go, how you respond to team member queries etc., etc.,

5. Taking on tasks that is of no value to the boss

6. Not knowing what is good-enough and instead chase perfection

7. Being very rigid about everything and keep doing things in the same way as you were doing several years ago

How do we fix it? First step is always to identify that you are busy-being-busy. Once this is done we have to see the "excuses" we are making to not move the needle. Put some structure to make sure that we do not fall into this trap. A daily self-assessment that asks whether we gave our best in everything we did.

Do you know more methods to fix such things? More reasons why we fall into the trap? Love to hear.

Initiative

Its a pet feedback of many managers "You should take more initiative" and most reportees do agree to that. Normally many won't have a clue of how to actually take "more" initiative. Thought I'll quote one of my favourite authors Seth Godin on this topic:

"Initiative is the privilege of picking yourself.

You are not given initiative, you take it.

Pick yourself.

If you are not getting what  you want, it may be because

you are not making good enough art, often enough".

Simple but profound message. What do you think?

What RamP's Reading: Dec'15

Tom Peters month!!!!

In Search of Excellence: (Re-read). The "Greatest Business Book of All Time" (Bloomsbury UK), In Search of Excellence has long been a must-have for the boardroom, business school, and bedside table. Based on a study of forty-three of America's best-run companies from a diverse array of business sectors, In Search of Excellence describes eight basic principles of management -- action-stimulating, people-oriented, profit-maximizing practices -- that made these organizations successful.

Design: An inspirational and informative series of compact handbooks by the influential management guru and author of the best-selling In Search of Excellence sheds new light on key concepts in the business world and provides helpful guidance on how to achieve success in the high-pressure, fast-moving arena of modern business.

Thriving on Chaos: (Re-read).  Addressing American industry's continuing decline in foreign and domestic markets, Peters (In Pursuit of Excellence) here offers a detailed plan for unstructured business activity in which some readers will see not only chaos but anarchy. Nevertheless, the author's perception of high quality as a determining consumer motivation and his radical recipe for achieving it are persuasive. Noting that smaller service-oriented businesses like Federal Express prosper while mammoth GE and GM falter, Peters would largely eliminate top-heavy management superstructures in favor of creative worker involvement and customer participation, with supervisors on hand to encourage. This textbook cites dozens of specific business situations and person-to-person responses in support of its step-by-step instructions for turning a failing enterprise aroundif those involved can act fast. 

The Pursuit of WoW!: (Re-read) Organized into more than 200 thought- and action-provoking elements—from the importance of clean trucks and bathrooms to conversations with entrepreneurs creating new markets—Tom Peters, bestselling management guru offers a practical guide to impractical times. In The Pursuit of Wow!, Tom Peters offers readers the words, the tools, to survive in tumultuous business environments. Getting to a place called excellence is no longer the idea.  You’ve got to take that leap, then leap again—catapult their imaginations, blow their mindsets—in a word, wow! them.