How to Improve Tech Hiring

Assess more than tech skills for better hiring outcomes

There was a customer engineer named Tom that I knew that was remarkable in two ways. First, he was always coming up with the most odd-ball consumer product ideas that he was convinced would be the next big thing. Second, his job was to reach out to customers and gather their requirements for the engineers. Problem was that he was not very good with customers.

Being in a big, slow-moving company, his poor job fit was often overlooked. That is until the “Bob’s” arrived to clean things up. As Bob grilled Tom on what he did exactly, Tom got flustered and shouted, “I have people skills, I am good at dealing with people! Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people!”

Let’s just say that Bob was not invited to return to his role or the company thereafter. If this scenario seems familiar, it was from the movie Office Space. But if you have not watched the movie, the scene above might have triggered memories of your real life in offices of the past.

You need to assess more than tech skills to have better hiring outcomes

We all know those one or two people on our teams that have not quite worked out. You might have even…