The Hungry Academy - An Innovative Way to Hire Developers
It’s always hard to hire great developers. If you want to hire them in volume you need to think outside the box.
It looks like the team at LivingSocial and JumpStartLab have done just that with their new Hungry Academy program. They have setup an engineering training academy with some of the “industry’s best programmers” and are offering market compensation to anyone that gets accepted.
They claim: “If you survive the five-month program, you’ll be offered a position on LivingSocial’s elite engineering team (18-month commitment required).”
This sounds like a smart move by LivingSocial. It’s great way to find great candidates and bring them up to speed quickly. It’s also a great opportunity for candidates looking to get a foothold in the industry.
If you think you’re a passionate and creative person, you can apply to the program on the Hungry Academy website: http://hungryAcademy.com
Hiring Drupal Developers - Buyer Beware
Hiring Drupal developers is difficult. Hiring great Drupal developers in the current market often feels close to impossible. They are highly sought after and most of the people on the market, in all honesty, aren’t very good.
CMS developers are an unusual breed. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds, often stumbling into programming. While a non-CS background can bring valuable perspective, if you need a strong generalist on your project you should take extra care to make sure that you’re getting the skill set you require. As you are probably well aware, hiring is very time consuming. To be effective you should aim to spend 80% of your time talking to great candidates. To do this, you need an efficient initial screen to quickly weed out unsuitable candidates. Ideally you’ll do your screening online or on the phone. Your screen should test for most of the skills that you’ll need to see exhibited on the job, including: web basics, OO PHP knowledge, solid coding technique, system design, CSS/HTML, SQL and Drupal expertise. I’ve put together a list of the best Drupal interview questions that I’ve used over the years to screen Drupal candidates. Hopefully you’ll find them useful. After the screen, don’t forget to look at your candidate’s commits to Drupal core or module functionality. In my experience, great Drupal developers have a track record of regular contributions to the project.
Technical Phone Interviews
In a previous post I shared some data showing that the vast majority of engineering managers do a technical screen before arranging an on-site interview. I do the same and furthermore feel that it’s critical to:
- Drive agreement with your team on the technical skills that every engineer in your organization must have.
- Test in a repeatable way, allowing for apples/apples comparison between candidates.
- Test candidates for these skills offsite.
Defining the Bar
Recently I’ve streamlined my screening efforts. I’ve defined a “Technical Bar” that focuses on seven skill areas. I test for these using an offsite test heavily influenced by Steve Yegge’s blog, Five Essential Phone Screen Questions. Any engineer, regardless of target position, must have a solid working knowledge of:
- Coding
- Data modeling
- *nix shell / command line
- How the web works
- Object Orientated Design
- Databases (RDBMS, KV etc)
- Data structures
I’ve definitely benefited from this approach, saving both my time and the time of candidates by quickly identifying the people with the skills and experience that I’m looking for. Consequently I can spend most of my interviewing time in in-depth, in-person interviews with suitable candidates.
Test Mechanics
The actual mechanics of the test have proved to be trickier. I’ve experimented with a few methods including coediting Google Docs and Skype screen sharing. These work to a degree but have considerable drawbacks.
Google Docs provides a convenient shared notepad, but creates a rather alien coding environment. It’s also fairly limiting since neither the interviewer or the interviewee can compile or run code.
Screen sharing on Skype works somewhat better but dropped calls are common over the inevitably less than stellar connection. It also doesn’t give the interviewer any access to the code being written. Ideally the interviewer can run the code and record the result of the test conveniently.
If you’re interested in trying an alternative, theReq.com is currently looking for alpha testers for their free technical phone screening service. Check out the demo video if you’re interested in learning more.
Building Great Tech Teams: 12 Critical Questions
I recently had the pleasure of talking at First Capital’s CTO summit. I hosted an interactive discussion on team building for around 100 CTOs and VPEs of small to medium sized, venture backed technology companies.
I’d like to share the results.
#1: Should you hire specialists or generalists? (52 Votes)
%7CGeneralists%20(14)%7CDepends%20(14)%7CA+mix+is+best%20(22))
#2: Are job-relevant Degrees Necessary? (49 Votes)
%7CPreferably%20they'd%20have%20a%20degree%20(24)%7CYes%2C%20they%20need%20a%20degree%20(1)%7CAbsolutely%2C%20and%20from%20a%20top%20school%20(3))
#3: What are your thoughts on remote employees? (55 Votes)
%7CSome%20remote%20employees%20are%20o.k.%20(25)%7CAny%20number%20of%20remote%20employees%20is%20o.k.%20(7))
#4: If you’ve offshored work, how successful have you been? (50 Votes)
%7CModerately%20for%20non-creative%20work%20(18)%7CModerately%20for%20creative%20%26%20non-creative%20work%20(3)%7CAwesome-sauce%20across%20the%20board%20(7))
#5: How much experience do you require? (51 Votes)
%7CYou%20need%20a%20mixture%20of%20experience%20levels%20(40)%7CMore%20%3D%20better.%20Always%20hire%20experienced%20people.%09%20(6))
#6: Do you focus on hiring all A-players? (46 Votes)
%7CI%20try%20to%20hire%20a%20mix%20of%20A%20%26%20B%09%20(5)%7CIt%20really%20depends%20on%20the%20role%20(8)%7CI%20avoid%20A-players%20(0))
#7: What’s your typical process for evaluating candidates before bringing them in? (45 Votes)
%7CResume%20review%20%2B%20recruiter%20screen%20(2)%7CResume%20review%20%2B%20recruiter%20%26%20tech%20screen%20(12)%7CResume%20review%20%2B%20recruiter%20%26%20tech%20%26%20culture%20screen%20(15)%7Cother%20(14))
#8: What is the best technique for testing for technical chops? (55 Votes)
%7CA%20whiteboard%20coding%20exercise%20(22)%7CRiddles%20and%20brain%20teasers%09%20(2)%7CDicussing%20code%20samples%20(8))
#9: What’s the best way to source great talent? (39 Votes)
%7CPersonal+referrals%20(8)%7CExternal+recruiters%20(0)%7CSourcer%20(0)%7CInternal+recruiters%20(0)%7COther%20(4))
#10: How fast should you hire? (39 Votes)
%7COnly%20take%20a%20chance%20if%20you%20%20really%20need%20somone%20(8)%7CNever%20take%20a%20chance.%20Unsure%20%3D%3D%20No%20(29))
#11: Is it worth checking references? (45 Votes)
%7CYes%2C%20check%20a%20couple%20(26)%7CYes%2C%20but%20it's%20a%20formality%20(5)%7CNo%2C%20it's%20a%20waste%20of%20time%20(7)%7COther%20(4))
#12: How much should you sell to a candidate? (44 Votes)
%7CSome%2C%20but%20they%20should%20*really*%20want%20to%20work%20for%20you%09%20(6)%7CHard%2C%20but%20at%20the%20end%20of%20the%20process%09%20(8)%7CHard%2C%20at%20all%20phases%20of%20the%20process%09%20(28)%7CSo%20hard%20that%20you%20risk%20sounding%20desperate%20(1))
REWORK your Hiring Practices
REWORK, the latest book to emerge from the 37Signals.com founders, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, delivers some strong opinions on hiring.
I loved the book (and the attack ad below promoting it). I spend a good deal of my time striving to hire world-class web developers, and much of what Jason and David had to say resonated with me.
I cracked a smile at the book’s opening assertion; resumes are ridiculous documents, beloved by the mediocre, filled with half-truths and exaggerations and perfect for spamming hundreds of potential employers. And my heart warmed at the suggestion that cover letters, on the other hand, are potential gems, written in the voice of the candidate and often specifically directed at the position in question. I always read the cover letter first.
Rework also takes aim at companies with strict formal education requirements, pointing out the value of considering dropouts, low GPA students and high school graduates. CEOs currently heading the top 500 American companies did not graduate from Ivy league colleges, in fact the University of Wisconsin has more than the most heavily represented Ivy school, Harvard. While I have to agree that I’ve worked with many great non-graduate colleagues in the past, I have noticed an association between formal education and effectiveness in the workplace.
The book also takes a pot-shot at the notion that experience is a good predictor of effectiveness and suggests that what matters is an employee’s dedication, personality and intelligence not their years of experience. I’ve also found that it matters much more how well someone has been doing something, rather than how long.
Rework ends the hiring discussion on a couple of notes that didn’t resonate with me, at least not for hiring developers into Agile teams in competitive markets.
#1 Hire remotely: While I agree that focusing on local hiring inevitably excludes some great candidates, the overhead of hiring remote candidates cannot be under-estimated, especially on Agile development teams. I’d recommend against considering remote candidates unless your organization is committed to building out a significant distributed presence.
#2 Test drive employees: Rework suggests testing employees not with an interview but instead hiring them for part-time mini projects or even fictitious projects. While this may sound great in theory, you’ll be unlikely to close any candidate with a choice between your pretend-project and a real, full-time position with a competitor. And you can bet dollars-to-donuts that any stong candidate has a counter offer.
Overall, Rework is a great read, not just for advice on hiring, but for a distinct perspective on your current startup. If you’re at a startup or are thinking of joining or starting one, I’d strongly recommend picking up a copy.
