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Hiring The Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science Of Hiring Technical People

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If you are involved in any way with hiring techies, you need this book -- not just as a one-time read, but as one you will refer to repeatedly.

(If you're a techie looking to get hired, it has considerable value, as well.)

Some other recent books, such as <u>How Would You Move Mt. Fuji?</u> deal with the *entire* hiring process only lightly, if at all. This book covers everything, from coming up with the critical/optional requirements of the position (an especially favorite section), through finding and sourcing candidates, résumé review (é is alt-0233 on the numeric keypad, BTW), phone-screen techniques, and truly useful interviewing guidance (another outstanding section). It also covers the crucial decision-making process, reference checking, and making the job offer. It discerns the differences between hiring contributors and managers quite well indeed.

Those of us who have lived painfully through a bad hiring decision know the tremendous cost in money, disruption, and angst. Risk is inherent in every hiring situation, but reading and applying this book will help you go a *long* way toward mitigating that risk.

I bought this book for myself. I'll be buying it for my peer managers, my directors, and my team. It's *good*, and it's *useful*.

In this comprehensive, detailed handbook, Rothman recognizes what employers have to do to be able to attract the best technical workers. It's not enough simply to advertise for job openings, but the technical work has to be properly described to attract the right kind of prospective employees. Otherwise, the hiring process will be inefficient, murky, and errant. Reviewing resumes, screening potential candidates for interviews and preparing for these, and conducting an interview are other topics. A consultant to technical firms, Rothman also goes into a personal touch with individuals looking for employment which gives them a favorable impression of the company. This is desirable because a company might want to hire an applicant at a future time; and it creates a favorable image of the company among technical workers. This specialized hiring manual is timely considering the present pick-up in activity in the technology sector of the economy. Many technology companies have to start now preparing to hire new technical workers to be able to capitalize on the opportunities shaping up.

If you want to increase your ability to attract and hire people who will help build the company while avoiding costly hiring mistakes, Johanna Rothman's book, Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds, can help.

The book is full of detailed guidance on each step of the hiring process, from creating a hiring strategy to making the new hire's first day a great one. The book provides templates and examples to help determine the required and desirable skills for a job, identify elimination factors, and articulate interpersonal and cultural fit qualities necessary for success.

Assessing skills in an interview isn't sufficient; it's how people apply those skills and adapt to situations that determine success. So Johanna details how to use behavioral questions and auditions to gain a clear picture of how a person is likely to perform in your context.

Hiring the Best will help you fine-tune your hiring process, make the best use of your time, and increase your hiring success.

Even if you have a lot of experience with recruiting, selecting and hiring technical people or managers, this book can help. I recently needed to hire a new manager. I already knew that behavioral questions give the most insight into a candidate's experience and potential fit with the hiring organization. However, Johanna's extensive list of behavioral questions gave me a head start on writing an interview protocol that our panel of interviewers could use. I selected several questions from her lists that only needed slight modification to work for the position we wanted to fill. Not only did we get a great manager to hire, all of our candidates told us how much they enjoyed the interviews! Several said it was the best interview experience they'd ever had. Thanks, Johanna!

Being a very experienced recruiter of IT and telco professionals myself, and also having written books on recruiting, I appreciate this book. There is not many books on this subject, and this along with Hodges: Technical Recruting must rank among the very best. Having said that I think the part on Internet sourcing, as well as online screening/testing, could have been much more comprehensive for a book published as late as 2004.

This book provides valuable resources like worksheets, checklists to use for hiring.
The best part is the way the author provides 'warning' section to denote common mistakes.
I am an IT guy, not a HR person and this book meets my practical needs.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this book goes all the way from first defining the open position through to the new hire's first day on the job. It contains extremely detailed information on how to handle each step of complicated processes like sourcing, handing the interview day, and making a final hire/no hire decision. Admittedly, her approach is very similar to what I'm used to from Microsoft, so I may be a bit biased, but this resonated well with me and what I've seen succeed in my hiring experiences.

I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who's new to the hiring process or who is finding they're not able to fill open positions as quickly as they'd like.

I found this book on the author's web site, and I must say that I am glad that I did. My department's hiring practices were in need of overhauling, and this book served as great guide. Readers will find a description of the hiring process that really mirrors software development itself.

The book begins with an overview of the hiring process, and then it looks at the various stages in detail. A hiring process should begin with an analysis of the job for the position you are trying to fill. Then you design a job description, ads, and interview questions. Next you implement the interivew questions with phone screens and on site interviews. Finally you extend offers and bring candidates in for their first day. All along the way, you evaluate what you are doing and let new information feedback into the previous steps. It really follows the pattern of iterative software development. As a bonus, the author provides templates for forms that you can use along the way during the process.

I recommend this book to anyone who is faced with implementing a hiring policy that they don't understand or who feels unprepared for the process. I found it to be quite helpful.

If you're hiring people, helping hire, or trying to be hired in the tech world - I can't recommend this book highly enough.

It has a very clear and natural structure that takes you through each step in the hiring process. It's also very skimmable with good summaries at the end of each chapter. I especially enjoyed the chapters on the actual interview. A lot of great material on interview questions & strategy.

As someone who has been part of the hiring process many times in the past and is looking to run it in the future, I'm keeping this book by my side.

If you'd like to get a feel for what's in the book, Johanna has a great blog about hiring technical people here :

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Finally, a book that is focused on hiring technical people. Great read, very informative.