The challenges of hiring

This past few weeks we have been trying to interview and place a technical consultant for our project and it turned out to be quite a challenge. I had my share of unique experiences and here are some:

• This guy claimed himself to be an architect and had about 5 years of experience. I start to wonder if folks understand what it takes to be an Architect (its a separate article unto itself)? And so, I start interviewing him and he is not even close to what he claims to be. He’s not a senior developer to begin with – asked him a question from his project as to why he took a certain approach among the options and he had no clue. And brought up the security model and he couldn’t even describe what was setup, much less why its done that way. Although he was better technically (all on a relative scale) than few others we interviewed, the mere fact that he over-sold himself turned out to be the worst mistake.

Kaam Chor (Slacker)

[Definition: Kaam Chor – One who evades his or her duty or work; shirker]
I ponder why its so hard to create, find and retain well natured, ethical, hard-working and honest employees for a company these days (relativity kept in mind!) Its not perhaps all the the individual’s fault – the company’s have become blood-sucking leeches which drop their employees like what the Dracula does to its victim when its done with it – all in the name of business (obviously, I am not generalizing here).

Just like the perfect balance with food-chain its all a balance here as well, and it seems especially skewed these days.

The Secret of Success

I recently attended a telephone interview for a gig I applied for. The interviewer was a knowledgeable guy and he beat me up royally with intelligent questions which got me dumbfound more than once (I got selected at the end anyway ;-). Although it was bitter to go through the whole experience, I was doubly inspired to be more knowledgeable than him and gave myself a years time. I drew up a strategy on how I’d get there. And on retrospect, I think sometimes such harsh-shocks are needed in life.. otherwise you get “too” comfortable “too” quickly.

Thankless Job

I have been in services industry all my career (as an employee in a services company initially and later as an independent consultant) and have worked with variety of bosses. In my opinion, consulting is a rewarding career – pays what you work for and you constantly work on your skills to improve your worth to your customer. One of my strong beliefs is that we are “learning machines” and consulting pays you to constantly learn and excel – much like folks in sports career, they need to stay healthy and fit and their job pays for it. Of course, there’s always another side to every coin and I understand that..