neovintage

Being in business school is great. We get to learn about all sorts of topics like economics, marketing, and even organizational development. The one thing that not all students get to learn about is how to hire the right person for the job.

Since I love being a part of startups, especially software startups, I get a lot of people in the business school asking me for advice when it comes to hiring programmers and developers for their businesses. Outside of telling them that they should really have a technical co-founder on the team, I try to give them some advice based on my past experiences.

In one of my past experiences, I was brought on to a team to manage a couple of developers. Unfortunately, I was brought on to the process a little too late. When I was finally debriefed on what was going on, I found out that all of the developers had been hired, and without my input. The process for hiring developers was just a standard 1 hour interview. At first I didn't think anything of it but as the project progressed, cracks started to show in the team. For example, I had one individual who would always promise to do a set of tasks by the end of the day, but then at every status meeting the next day, without fail, some issue came up that prevented him from completing it. His excuses were alway very long winded and convoluted. After a week of this, I found out from other developers on the team that the individual in question kept pestering the other developers to help them solve very simple issues. Not only was this not productive for the other developers but for the project as a whole. Since the project was so short, I didn't have the time to let the person go and hire someone new. I had to just manage around the problem individual. It was at that point, I wished I was part of the hiring process.

Take aways:

• Don't think that an hour interview is going to tell you if the interviewee is a good candidate.
• You're gonna have to take the time to get to know someone.
• Have the person work on small tasks or projects before actually bringing them on. (On Interviewing Programmers)