How to hire someone ?
Two attributes can decide if someone will fit your need.
- Interest
Whatever area or domain you want some one to work on, if the person is not interested in it, then even if they are qualified for the job, you would have to be behind them to get the job done or you would have to dangle carrots to get them motivated. In short, they will be like a ball of mud inside a water tank, a sitting duck and eventually not rising up to the need.
When some one is passionate about something, they will be thinking and talking all the time about it. They will keep exploring new things in that area and will be willing to move out of comfort zones, optimize the work by building tools and will end up infecting others in the team with their enthusiasm. Some one can fake an enthusiasm for sometime. But only if someone is truly interested in things they can show a sustained enthusiasm. This is especially needed for long term evolution of products in a domain.
2. Skills
Again even if someone is qualified, not having displayed any thing to show their skills in their area of interest can result in delaying your outcome. Whether it is about coding something or building some stuff or writing on something, the proof is in being able to show something around what they have done. This is not about experience. Experience is a very vague thing. Merely saying ‘I am five years into Java’ will not be of much use. If on the other hand, they can show code they have written before which can be examined and critically questioned or they can explain it to expose how they solved a problem with code, that could tell a lot about the skills of a person.
The above two attributes are really important. Qualifications, Work Experience, Commitment etc. while may or may not lead up to the above two, do not give a good idea as to some one can fit the bill or not. Instead of measuring the above two attributes, going around it with puzzle questions, with imaginary problems or asking them to explain their projects, their roles etc. in their previous employment will not help.
