IT Management Reference Guide

Staffing key positions with well-qualified individuals is one of the most important responsibilities of a manager. In previous segments of this section of the IT Management Guide I offer methods to identify and recruit potential candidates for critical hard-to-fill positions within IT. The methods include looking both within and outside a company for the required level of talent and experience. In this segment I offer techniques to help you select the most qualified individual from the list of qualified applicants

Once a perspective candidate has been identified, a relatively formal interview process should follow. Both the employer and the potential employee should ask sufficient questions to ensure that a good fit is likely. For key positions that will interact with several groups, including customers, it may be appropriate to have several key staff members interview the candidate to ensure that a variety of viewpoints are covered and to arrive at a consensus about the candidate.

Telephone interviews sometimes are necessary to accommodate conflicting schedules, especially if multiple people will be involved in the interview process. Whenever possible, however, face-to-face interviews should be conducted to evaluate personality, body language and other nonverbal cues not apparent over a telephone. Most companies have unique job benefits as well as drawbacks, and all of these should be discussed thoroughly and openly during the interview process. The fewer surprises in store for both the employer and the new hire once employment begins, the better for everyone involved.

Effective interviewing of prospective job candidates is one of the most important responsibilities of a manager, but is frequently one of the least desirable of activities. This seems especially true for technical managers. I have known and directed several managers who candidly admit that face-to-face interviewing is one of the least appealing of their job duties. Their reluctance often stems from three problems they frequently encounter: poor questions, rambling answers, and loss of focus. I have developed three simple techniques over the years to address these issues.

Poor interview questions usually mean asking close-ended or irrelevant questions. Two simple rules I use to avoid this are: ensure the question cannot be answered in one word, and state the inquiry as a request rather than a question. For example, instead of asking 'Have you ever managed a development project?' ask 'Describe your role in managing a development project and what lessons you learned from it.' Or instead of 'Which security products have you recently evaluated?' ask 'Explain the primary advantages of the products you considered and the drawbacks of those you did not?' Open-ended questions not only draw out more from the applicant and may lead to other valuable follow-ups, they often display the candidates verbal communication skills, vocabulary, clarity of thought, critical thinking and reasoning techniques. These are all characteristics that otherwise might not become apparent.

A second problem managers often encounter in interviews is that of the rambling response. The simplest way I know to stop a rambler cold is to just call out their first name. Most all of us have mental antennae that are tuned to bring all of our actions to a stop when our first name is called out. This technique has yet to fail me in an interview. The method also works well in restaurants when you need to get the immediate attention of your server.

The loss of focus in an interview usually stems from lack of preparation. Interviewers should know exactly what they plan to ask much in advance of the interview. Reading an applicant's resume just minutes before an interview is not a best practice. This also leads to the issue of when to require references, how many there should be.

For positions involving leadership and supervisory roles, companies should almost always require references. Request a minimum of two and preferably three or four, and then thoroughly follow up on them. When company benefits are explained to prospective candidates, the explanation should be very thorough; it is usually best handled by a person in the company's human resources department.

Sometimes selecting the best candidate becomes a process of eliminating those who are not quite the best. Recently, two colleagues of mine each used a slight variation of this technique to narrow their field of prospects. One of these managers needed a senior-level systems administrator who, among other things, would be willing to respond to periodic calls outside of normal working hours and to occasionally come in to work on weekends. After the field had been narrowed down to two finalists, one of them failed to show up for his interview at the appointed time. The next day he explained that, on the way in to his interview, traffic had been so bad from an accident that he decided to turn around, go home, and call back the next day to schedule a new interview. His apparent lack of a sense of urgency and his questionable decision-making skills were all my colleague needed to see. The manager promptly extended an offer to the alternate candidate.

The other instance of eliminating a potential new hire occurred even earlier in the selection process. It happened while I was on a consulting assignment at a progressive Internet start-up company called WhatsHotNow.com. This firm was becoming a very successful e-commerce and licensing company for pop culture merchandise, specializing in entertainment and sports items. The executives there had worked very hard to grow and expand their firm and took pride in branding their company name. While looking through a stack of applications for a key management position, the hiring executive immediately rejected one of the resumes, even though the candidate had impressive credentials. His reason was direct and succinct: the applicant used the wrong company name. He had carelessly rearranged the letters to change the firm's image from something very hip to something very unhip. Instead of calling it 'WhatsHotNow' the applicant referred to his new prospective employer as 'WhatsNotHot'.