We will interview the project manager
Immediately I would like to decide on some concepts in order not to provoke anyone into controversy due to a misunderstanding of key points. I also want to warn that this is not a guide to action and not a guide, but just a story in the style of "how others do it."
For me, the head of the project (projects) is a person, first of all, having a deep understanding of the subject area, in our case, Internet development, having experience of independent development, being in the know about technological and business trends in the market. Equally to the aforementioned qualities - the ability to communicate and find a common language with completely different types of people. RP knowledge should lie not only in the development plane, but also in interface prototyping, in design, and in Internet marketing.
Perhaps, after the previous paragraph, there will be a feeling that we are looking for universal supermen and that our utopian demands seldom find a response in earthly candidates for this position. Naturally, this is partly true (it’s really difficult to search and such people are rare), but as practice has shown, such requirements bring dividends and quickly pay off the labor costs of finding such people.
Of course, for different companies with different business tasks, the requirements for candidates can seriously differ, I described my understanding as a “project manager” and I want to tell you just about my approach to finding and hiring a RP of this type.
After reviewing the resume and selecting the candidates that interested me, I immediately invite the candidate for an interview. Given the specifics of the requirements, an opinion on the candidate’s professional skills can only be made during direct communication (or I just don’t know the secret techniques).
Further, I will definitely pay attention to various trifles preceding the actual interview itself - did you need help finding an office (I doubt that a person who is not able or unwilling to use a card can manage processes and people), how a person is dressed, how he communicates with the secretary, how he walks and how he sits.
The most amazing thing is that all these little things make it possible with a high degree of probability to immediately determine whether a person is suitable or not. If I studied as a psychologist, I would probably be able to reveal this topic, but for now I have to be content with amateurish conclusions and definitions. For all these points, I am trying to determine the independence of a person, his self-confidence, sociability (a terrible word, hackneyed from a resume), adequacy in general.
The main focus of the conversation is the candidate’s story about himself, about his achievements, mistakes and experience in general. In the course of the conversation, leading and clarifying questions are asked, at the end - a series of questions that allow you to form a final opinion and make a decision in one direction or another. I take at least two hours for an interview - it takes about an hour to tell the candidate’s story, my questions are designed for another hour of conversation.
During the candidate’s story, you can find out a lot of things important for the work of the RP, moments - the ability to interest an interlocutor, the ability to coherently express thoughts, the ability to "sell yourself", the ability to argue a point of view. I immediately inform you that we have an hour for this part of the conversation - thus, a person has to count time and focus on the main thing, state only significant facts, answer questions without unnecessary details.
During the conversation, the interviewer does not sit, propping his head with his fist, but takes part in it lively, I can highlight the following points that I especially pay attention to, leading the candidate to clarify them:
If after the previous stage the opinion about the candidate was negative, then it doesn’t come to questions, sometimes some questions are asked during the conversation. Before asking questions, I talk about job responsibilities and the supposed role of the RP as a whole, about some accepted methods of work in the company.
Development experience and understanding of the subject area.
I am opposed to tests and tasks for the parser - what this or that line of code will output and so on. Here are some technical questions that I usually ask candidates for the position of RP:
Project Manager Week. How do you imagine the working week of the Republic of Poland?
There are no leading questions like “what kind of meetings should be held, how, when and to whom to hand out tasks”, only a story in your own words in free form. A good candidate leads a rather extensive scheme of work, where the fork depends on the operational situation, project, business tasks and other conditions.
Have you recruited people to the team? How would you rank the qualities of the candidate in order from the most important to the less important?
The point of the question is not even to understand whether a person can engage in recruiting, but in how priorities will be set, whether a person understands what a team is and how to form it. One of the signs of a good candidate is to avoid utopias, theories and bright ideals, to realize the realities of a harsh and merciless world.
How do you usually lead (would like to) a project? From collecting business requirements to release.
The meaning is the same - reality and experience against theories and assumptions. Usually this question is asked during the first part of the conversation.
Criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of developers.How to evaluate whether a developer works effectively or not. Is it worth it to forbid reading Habr and whether it will increase productivity, does the duration of the developer’s presence in the office affect its effectiveness, what to do with delays and so on. Everything is clear here - whether a person is able to adequately assess the effectiveness of his team and how he can influence this effectiveness.
Conflict resolution. In a team of 4 programmers, one fell into inadequacy - freaking out, getting nervous, sending everyone into the woods. The second one, working generally well, stalls on some tasks, tries to postpone them in every possible way or tries to transfer them to other developers (the tasks are not classified, the same type of task can be perceived differently).
There are no correct answers here, the candidate must go through the situation independently with various development options and propose his solutions at each stage. Sometimes I propose a different type of conflict - two high-ranking people in the company pull the blanket in different directions, the extreme in this situation is the RP, he is invited to solve this situation.
Fiction.
A question that seems banal and useless to many. I strongly disagree with this. Talking about literature, in addition to the natural conclusions about the horizons of the candidate, allows you to evaluate how easily the candidate moves from a tense conversation about work to an unobtrusive conversation about literary addictions and vice versa.
Rate the interface.An interface prototype of a couple of layouts is shown, business requirements are briefly explained, the task is to evaluate and comment on them.
In my opinion, a very important question, but in order to ask it, you yourself need to understand the subject.
My favorite question. As far as I remember, this type of question is asked by Microsoft and Google, I have long felt its charm to the full and use it at all interviews, regardless of position (of course, I mean the IT sphere).
Example: "The task is to calculate how many women in heels walk in high heels." The point is that the question does not have a solution, forcing the candidate to include logic, analytical thinking, imagination and his entire arsenal as a whole. I usually ask at least two decisions, while trying to find weaknesses in the solutions and in every possible way to ruin the theory of the candidate.
In my case, this list is quite enough to form a fairly complete picture of the candidate and make a decision in one direction or another. I deliberately missed a few questions regarding the specifics of the company and the programming language used in order to make the list as universal as possible.
After more than 100 interviews between developers and RPs, I still can’t explain or classify some things, making more and more convinced that recruiting is more a matter of intuition, experience and ability to “see people”, rather than any techniques, questions and secret knowledge. But still I hope that this note will help someone, and I will also be grateful for any additions and comments in the comments.
For me, the head of the project (projects) is a person, first of all, having a deep understanding of the subject area, in our case, Internet development, having experience of independent development, being in the know about technological and business trends in the market. Equally to the aforementioned qualities - the ability to communicate and find a common language with completely different types of people. RP knowledge should lie not only in the development plane, but also in interface prototyping, in design, and in Internet marketing.
Perhaps, after the previous paragraph, there will be a feeling that we are looking for universal supermen and that our utopian demands seldom find a response in earthly candidates for this position. Naturally, this is partly true (it’s really difficult to search and such people are rare), but as practice has shown, such requirements bring dividends and quickly pay off the labor costs of finding such people.
Of course, for different companies with different business tasks, the requirements for candidates can seriously differ, I described my understanding as a “project manager” and I want to tell you just about my approach to finding and hiring a RP of this type.
Come back tomorrow
After reviewing the resume and selecting the candidates that interested me, I immediately invite the candidate for an interview. Given the specifics of the requirements, an opinion on the candidate’s professional skills can only be made during direct communication (or I just don’t know the secret techniques).
Further, I will definitely pay attention to various trifles preceding the actual interview itself - did you need help finding an office (I doubt that a person who is not able or unwilling to use a card can manage processes and people), how a person is dressed, how he communicates with the secretary, how he walks and how he sits.
The most amazing thing is that all these little things make it possible with a high degree of probability to immediately determine whether a person is suitable or not. If I studied as a psychologist, I would probably be able to reveal this topic, but for now I have to be content with amateurish conclusions and definitions. For all these points, I am trying to determine the independence of a person, his self-confidence, sociability (a terrible word, hackneyed from a resume), adequacy in general.
Tell it all
The main focus of the conversation is the candidate’s story about himself, about his achievements, mistakes and experience in general. In the course of the conversation, leading and clarifying questions are asked, at the end - a series of questions that allow you to form a final opinion and make a decision in one direction or another. I take at least two hours for an interview - it takes about an hour to tell the candidate’s story, my questions are designed for another hour of conversation.
During the candidate’s story, you can find out a lot of things important for the work of the RP, moments - the ability to interest an interlocutor, the ability to coherently express thoughts, the ability to "sell yourself", the ability to argue a point of view. I immediately inform you that we have an hour for this part of the conversation - thus, a person has to count time and focus on the main thing, state only significant facts, answer questions without unnecessary details.
During the conversation, the interviewer does not sit, propping his head with his fist, but takes part in it lively, I can highlight the following points that I especially pay attention to, leading the candidate to clarify them:
- Experience and skills indicated in the resume. The point is not even to catch a person on a lie or exaggerating his knowledge and merits, but in assessing how much a person maintains a balance between a healthy assessment of himself and the ability (desire) to sell himself.
- How firmly a person holds his positions - I try to convince a person in a particular issue. I especially like to talk about project management systems.
- Reasons for leaving previous companies.
- Experience or knowledge in related fields - Internet marketing, interface design, design, layout.
Questions
If after the previous stage the opinion about the candidate was negative, then it doesn’t come to questions, sometimes some questions are asked during the conversation. Before asking questions, I talk about job responsibilities and the supposed role of the RP as a whole, about some accepted methods of work in the company.
Development experience and understanding of the subject area.
I am opposed to tests and tasks for the parser - what this or that line of code will output and so on. Here are some technical questions that I usually ask candidates for the position of RP:
- What are the benefits of OOP and does it give at all? Pros and cons of two approaches - object and procedural.
- What does the concept of AJAX mean, how it works, what actions need to be done so that a registration form with server field validation appears on site X without reloading the page?
- How to distinguish bad code from good?
- What are some ways to deal with high loads?
- How does the web server work? Tell us as detailed as possible. What is the difference between apache and nginx?
- What patterns do you know?
- What are the signs of a good layout?
- What is a version control system, which ones do you know how to use? What benefits do they give the team?
Project Manager Week. How do you imagine the working week of the Republic of Poland?
There are no leading questions like “what kind of meetings should be held, how, when and to whom to hand out tasks”, only a story in your own words in free form. A good candidate leads a rather extensive scheme of work, where the fork depends on the operational situation, project, business tasks and other conditions.
Have you recruited people to the team? How would you rank the qualities of the candidate in order from the most important to the less important?
The point of the question is not even to understand whether a person can engage in recruiting, but in how priorities will be set, whether a person understands what a team is and how to form it. One of the signs of a good candidate is to avoid utopias, theories and bright ideals, to realize the realities of a harsh and merciless world.
How do you usually lead (would like to) a project? From collecting business requirements to release.
The meaning is the same - reality and experience against theories and assumptions. Usually this question is asked during the first part of the conversation.
Criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of developers.How to evaluate whether a developer works effectively or not. Is it worth it to forbid reading Habr and whether it will increase productivity, does the duration of the developer’s presence in the office affect its effectiveness, what to do with delays and so on. Everything is clear here - whether a person is able to adequately assess the effectiveness of his team and how he can influence this effectiveness.
Conflict resolution. In a team of 4 programmers, one fell into inadequacy - freaking out, getting nervous, sending everyone into the woods. The second one, working generally well, stalls on some tasks, tries to postpone them in every possible way or tries to transfer them to other developers (the tasks are not classified, the same type of task can be perceived differently).
There are no correct answers here, the candidate must go through the situation independently with various development options and propose his solutions at each stage. Sometimes I propose a different type of conflict - two high-ranking people in the company pull the blanket in different directions, the extreme in this situation is the RP, he is invited to solve this situation.
Fiction.
A question that seems banal and useless to many. I strongly disagree with this. Talking about literature, in addition to the natural conclusions about the horizons of the candidate, allows you to evaluate how easily the candidate moves from a tense conversation about work to an unobtrusive conversation about literary addictions and vice versa.
Rate the interface.An interface prototype of a couple of layouts is shown, business requirements are briefly explained, the task is to evaluate and comment on them.
In my opinion, a very important question, but in order to ask it, you yourself need to understand the subject.
My favorite question. As far as I remember, this type of question is asked by Microsoft and Google, I have long felt its charm to the full and use it at all interviews, regardless of position (of course, I mean the IT sphere).
Example: "The task is to calculate how many women in heels walk in high heels." The point is that the question does not have a solution, forcing the candidate to include logic, analytical thinking, imagination and his entire arsenal as a whole. I usually ask at least two decisions, while trying to find weaknesses in the solutions and in every possible way to ruin the theory of the candidate.
In my case, this list is quite enough to form a fairly complete picture of the candidate and make a decision in one direction or another. I deliberately missed a few questions regarding the specifics of the company and the programming language used in order to make the list as universal as possible.
Arrived.
After more than 100 interviews between developers and RPs, I still can’t explain or classify some things, making more and more convinced that recruiting is more a matter of intuition, experience and ability to “see people”, rather than any techniques, questions and secret knowledge. But still I hope that this note will help someone, and I will also be grateful for any additions and comments in the comments.