If you are working in computer science, you may have to select people for your technical/geek team, this article is about how to select good technicians and what strategies you can take to attract your high-level professional team.
Repost of article first appeared on Medium
Series A
I start from a very simple assumption, but that it is often overlooked within companies.
The best professionals love working with those like them
Whether it's developer, devops, dba sysadmin or any other under category this rule always applies.
Of course it's not a mystery, ask serial players Who likes to face on the field... They will respond that they love to play with other players at their own level or higher, so what is the dream of an Italian basketball player? Playing in the NBA, confronting the best, testing yourself.
This may be considered the most useful key to reading the whole selection process.
If you aim to create a team of "toste" people (differently you wouldn't be here) it is essential to try to always hire people with a high-level professionalism, resources that can find in comparison with others like them the stimuli that, unfortunately, very often the projects in which they are involved can not give them.
Testing 1,2,3
My personal experience as manager of the website theGiornale.it has allowed me to experience a little regarding the selection of people for the development team, and taught me that to attract talents often a normal announcement is not enough, because there is a real filter that can make the difference between those who camp work with the real passion.
The first selections I faced, in fact, had all the same problem, it took time and many resources to see so many candidates who perhaps did not have half of the skills they carried to CV, and this fact generally came out after much of this very time consuming process had already ended.
The first thing I thought of doing to overcome the problem was to create a test of "proficiency" useful to cut the "millantators" in this first phase.
Of course, creating such a test requires time, but nothing you can't face and anyway, creating the test once, the same for all was even less honorable to see various unsuitable candidates one by one.
Moreover, the test has characteristics such as to make the selection process more transparent and homogeneous, the questions are those, they are the same for all and allow you to evaluate candidates on more objective basis.
Obviously, making selection in this way requires skills that not everyone could have, and somehow limits the selection to the knowledge of who writes the test.
Over the years, I have learned how to make the process of creating the test a task to share with others of the team, in this way everyone is stimulated to create interesting questions and, above all, the test becomes a more competent and complete tool.
If you hadn't understood, I repeat that the test should not be the only phase of selection, but only an initial scrambling, useful to discard unsuitable subjects. In fact, any test cannot replace the human contact and the interview that will follow and allow us to give an idea about the person who goes beyond skill and skills that can be demonstrated on a piece of paper.
The method I use to "administrate" the test is to call candidates to groups, it is a bit laborious from the organizational point of view because it consists in finding pitfalls in the timetables of several people, but it gives us the opportunity to know ourselves in person from the very beginning, to establish common "engravement rules" and to check the conditions in which the test is performed. Personally I have nothing against anyone looking for things on Google, I always do it myself, of course, but an account is having an hour for 20 questions another having a week and the possibility to ask for help right and missing.
The love for a good challenge, to get involved
For years I have adopted the test written as the first candidate selection tool for the technical team, but after a few laps I realized that the method was further improved.
What I have noticed in recent years, in fact, is that people with the most interesting profiles and features are often the first ones who like to put themselves in play and face new challenges.
I tried to exploit this and adopted a different approach.
No more an ad and an e-mail where to collect applications, even because if you publish it on a site with a bit of traffic, it happens that you get endless profiles of which you don't care absolutely nothing... but a kind of game / test directly online.
The absolutely "non-canon" method I have come to has involved the creation of [a special page] (http://www.ilgiornale.it/page/work-con-noi.html), put online with just one simple, vague suggestion:
If you want to bring your professional profile to our attention press F12 key on keyboard and good work
Okay, I admit it's pretty crazy, but I love things a little crazy.
A natural filter
Giving aspiring candidates the opportunity to test themselves directly during the selection process, solving a game or a test is not a new thing, but it is very "Silicon Valley" and has produced very interesting results for me.
Specifically, no mail is shown to the candidate unless he has been able to solve the game, and this eliminates much of the SPAM and unsolicited applications.
In addition, the game gives us the possibility to verify some technical knowledge or characteristics of those who apply, in this case, a minimum of knowledge of the development console on the browser, HTML, CSS and javascript, as to say, two pigeons with a fava.
But it is not all, in this way, besides a filter, you create a goal that is to try somehow yourself and to prove your own value.
Although this method was unorthodox, it was really interesting.
The features that the online game should have, in my opinion are these:
An appropriate difficulty, not impossible or trivial to solve, something that commits one or at most a couple of hours, because if it takes too much time or if it is too difficult it becomes too selective and challenging, vice versa if it is trivial it is not enough "trusting"
The possibility of several different approaches or solutions, always in the matter of difficulty, is a little like one of those old graphic adventures, puzzles must lead us to think even out of the schemes, but they must not be illogical, if the problem can be solved in several ways it is interesting also to see that I approute choose the candidate to solve it, and can become, if desired, also object of discussion in phase of interview
The contact to which the CV must be unveiled only once the game is resolved, as mentioned above
I still remember with pleasure many of the emails I received that complimented the initiative and that they explained more or less in detail as they had solved.
For me this initial dialogue is fantastic, it allows you to break the ice and create a different bond from the very beginning so you do not participate in the classic old style "selection" but to something new and interesting.
The bad side of this method
Unfortunately, this method has also had some disadvantages, on the one hand I happened to receive various answers from who was interested in solving the game, but not to apply, and this is definitely a side effect not negligible, on the other, this non-traditional approach can attract, but also creates expectations that it is not always easy to maintain, I imagine myself as this first step in the context of a traditional company equipped of the classic HR office can create a little more confusing, then I guess.
Another disadvantage of this method is that it requires a non negligible amount of work to make the game work for everyone and that it does not have bugs that can frustrate those who participate. My advice is, as soon as you prepared it, before you even put it online for the world, ask someone to trust (maybe some of the team) to solve it, so you will immediately know if it works.