Kyle Smith

I doubt many (if any) of you are involved in hiring employees but I came across a post on TrueTalk by way of Jason Yip which had an awesome quote:

Friend of mine used to say, if you need to hire something that climbs a tree, hire a squirrel. You could train a turkey to do it, but it’s a heck of a lot simpler to go with the squirrel. Or, “hire for temperament; train for skills.”

Unfortunately I’ve encountered a number of employers that do the exact opposite. They hire the people that have a particular skill they need right now and neglect to look at the rest of the candidate. As soon as they see “Linux” or “Java” on a resume tunnel vision develops and everything else is forgotten.

When the next project starts and the manager (or a coworker) realizes the employee doesn’t have the skills or adaptability to do it properly, it’s too late.

When I interviewed at Microsoft in 2005 I got the sense that even though they had an immediate need for a particular skill, they refused to give in to their desire to hire someone that had it without looking at them as a whole and considering how they would perform on project N+1 or N+2. The writings of Joel Spolsky and William Poundstone seem support my view. I also get the sense that Google looks for more talented people (like my friend Dave from elementary school).

Sadly I’m pretty sure companies won’t improve their hiring process even though they’re already being bit by this problem.