FNC Roundtable

Topic 3: Evaluating People

The materials for this discussion

  • The New Boy Network, Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker Magazine, May 29, 2000
  • Sorting Resumes, Joel Spolsky,
  • The Phone Screen, Joel Spolsky,
  • The Guerilla Guide to Interviewing, Joel Spolsky,

What is it about Evaluating People?

What is it about evaluating people that makes it such an interesting topic?

  • Why do we evaluate people, anyway?
  • People like to know where they stand?
  • Feedback is good?

Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task — playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.

Anders Ericsson et al, researching performance, and the value of training (“deliberate practice”)

  • We have to do it as part of being a manager?
  • What else? Why?
  • Why do we find it hard to evaluate people?
  • How do we “evaluate” people without “judging them”?
  • Are there things that “bias” us when it comes to evaluating people? What do we do about that?

The New Boy Network

(Malcolm Gladwell’s article about how people interview.)

Learning something about how we judge people

  • Snap judgments
  • We can form an opinion in a matter of seconds (with fair reliability)
  • What happens when we ask people to explain their snap judgments?
  • Become much less reliable
  • Blind audition for orchestras (what changed as a result?)
  • But what DON’T we know about people after the first impression?
  • Do we treat different people differently when we interview? Why is that?
  • How people behave in one environment does not mean they will behave the same in a different environment (called “fundamental attribute error”)
  • Is an interview the same as work?
  • Work habits
  • Promptness
  • Working with others
  • Can you pick a leader in an interview?
  • Do interviews have any rituals we all agree to?
  • Like the way we dress
  • The way we answer questions
  • Describing strengths as a weakness
  • What does he suggest as one alternative to common interviewing?
  • Structured interviews (same questions, same emotions, same situations)
  • Cataloging the variations (how people are likely to behave in different circumstances)
  • Ask more difficult questions
  • Why don’t we like structured interviews?
  • No romance
  • Suggests that we may not always be right in our impressions

New Employees

This is the familiar process of resume, telephone interview and personal interview.

  • Sorting through Resumes

What is Joel Spolsky’s approach?

  • They use screening of resumes to “screen out” not hire

What are the guidelines? (Do you agree with these guidelines? Remember, he is talking about hiring programmers.)

  • Passion. What does that mean?
  • Loves doing what they are doing
  • Demonstrated by choices they made
  • Pickiness. They want to work for us, not just for somebody, anybody.
  • Demonstrates an interest in FNC before they put the resume together (found out what we do, etc)
  • Also, that they are targeted in their job hunt, not just mailing to everyone
  • English. Ability to communicate.
  • Ability to communicate in an orderly, clear manner
  • Attention to avoiding errors
  • Brains.
  • Signs that they are smart
  • Selectivity.
  • Have survived some kind of difficult selection process
  • Hard-core
  • Attracted to and achieves with more difficult approaches to whatever they are interested in
  • Diversity
  • Adds a new element to the current team

They do not look for experience in any particular technology.

  • Why is that?
  • However, if you are hiring someone as chief software engineer, who will lay out the initial code and figure out how things will work together, you want someone with a fair amount of experience in the technology you are using.
  • Phone Interviews

By using the phone, you can avoid some of the dangers involved in the snap decisions, but still not final

What 4 steps (he actually says three)?

  • Loosen up
  • Describe the process
  • Get a chance to relax
  • Tell me about yourself (this is a good way to tell whether they have prepared enough to tell you a coherent story)
  • Details on the resume
  • Bore in
  • Details about skills (if skills are important)
  • Do they really have these skills?
  • Ask a few trick questions if you want
  • Details about work
  • Did they really do the work?
  • What was the environment they worked in
  • Test question
  • This is basically a big question that gets people to explore, and tells you how well they can attack a big question or a big problem (if this is not programming)
  • The purpose of the test question is to see how smart the person is and how well they attack problems
  • Ask me about FNC. This is a chance for people to ask about FNC and whether they want to work there or not. It is also a good way to see how prepared they are (did they look us up on the Internet?)

What do you think about his profile of things to do in a phone interview?

Does it suggest that you need to be prepared in advance?

How would you prepare for a phone interview?

  • In Person Interviews

This is a more elaborate version of the phone interview but looking for the same things

  • Is this person smart?
  • Does this person get things done?

Better to turn away a good candidate than hire a bad candidate.

  • Does that make sense?
  • What if we are desperate?

He suggests that several people interview the same person, including people who would be peers of this person

  • Why is that?
  • Does everyone have to agree to hire before you do?

Do not take “maybe” candidates, only superstars.

His outline:

  • Introduction
  • Question about recent project candidate worked on
  • Can they communicate? Can they explain?
  • Easy programming [or whatever] question
  • He always gives an easy programming question to see how quickly people solve and how they do it
  • Pointer/recursive question (really difficult question)
  • Are you satisfied?
  • Do you have any questions?

What would be good open end questions?

  • Especially for non programmers?

Is evaluating people the same as completing

an employee performance appraisal?

How are they different?

I think of a performance appraisal like a high school report card.

  • It gives an overall view of the person, from English to Math to History
  • Why is this important?
  • How does this help FNC?
  • People don’t just work for you, but the whole organization so we need to know more broadly about the person
  • But what if you are the biology teacher?
  • What are you interested in?
  • Is that why you are impatient with the performance appraisal?
  • Do you feel pressured to rate people highly across the board in assure them a raise, because they are valuable to you—but only good at a few things.

What are the core issues when you evaluate people in the work place?

What do you think is important to know about/evaluate in people in the workplace?

[Peter Drucker, the Effective Executive, 1966]

Start with a statement of the major contributions that you have expected of this person in past and current positions and how the person performed against those expectations.

Then ask:

  • What has he/she done well?
  • What, therefore, is he/she likely to be able to do well?
  • What does he or she have to learn or to acquire to be able to get the full benefit from his/her strength?
  • If I had a son or daughter, would I be willing to have him or work under this person?
  • If yes, why?
  • If no, why?

Why is this question here? What does it force us to evaluate?

In other words you need to make a plan with the employee every year to IDENTIFY then AMPLIFY their strengths

What are some good ways to observe people in action and form an opinion about their performance?

Remember that we are looking at behavior, not who people are (for purposes of avoiding bias).

  • What about in meetings?
  • Is it good or bad to be an active participant in a meeting?
  • E-mails?
  • Are people disciplined in their use of e-mails?
  • Should they be?
  • Are e-mails different than IM?
  • “Walking around”
  • Delivery dates
  • Getting organized
  • Interactions with others
  • What about “lessons learned” sessions?
  • Do we do lessons learned sessions?

What do you do with those observations to form an opinion

Remember, that people are not the same in every environment or circumstance

See how well you can predict?

How important is the opinion you form? How do you use it?

Let’s go back to Drucker

  • What has he/she done well?
  • What, therefore, is he/she likely to be able to do well?
  • What does he or she have to learn or to acquire to be able to get the full benefit from his/her strength?

We are looking for strengths and how to amplify them and how to apply them. We are only looking for weaknesses in order to minimize their effect

oMinimizing their effect may mean “making a change”

Does everyone need to be an extrovert to be effective?

Does everyone need to “get along” to be effective?

What characteristics would you consider unacceptable?

How often should you talk to your employees about their strengths (and potentially weaknesses)?

What about ourselves? Can we apply these same issues to ourselves?

How do we do that?

How do we use it?

How do we take to heart the issue of what do I need to do to gain full benefit of my strengths?

Some bonus information

Excerpt from Evaluating People’s Performance

EvaluatingPeople's Performance

Evaluatingpeople's performance is more challenging than evaluating the performance of a project, because human performance is not always easy to quantify. For example, do people work well with others on the team? Do they build a level of synergy with other team members that enhances the performance of the entire team? Or, do they disrupt the team by complaining or not delivering what they're supposed to? This section describes what you can do to evaluate the qualitative performance of people on projects and how to handle problems if they arise. It also provides a few techniques for reviewing people's performance using Project.

Watching for People's Performance

Management by walking around is the best way to see how people are performing on your project. Team members don't necessarily announce that they have problems with other people and, when the project is going well, they often simply keep their heads down and pump out work. You can tell a lot just by talking to team members. With a few insightful and open-ended questions (see "Initiate Discussion with Open-Ended Questions," page 321), you can learn about what's going well and what could be better. And reading between the lines in those responses, you might also learn about people who are doing well or not so well. Symptoms vary with the people on the project. Problems can lead to more bickering than usual, but an unusual silence can be the indicator as well.

Status meetings and lessons learned sessions (see "Collecting Lessons Learned," page 318) provide additional opportunities for learning about performance. The mood of the group, people joking with each other, strained discussion, and other interaction can tell you how work is going.

Collecting Lessons Learned

Status updates, code reviews, and other project meetings can be convenient opportunities for gathering suggestions for what to do and what not to do in the future. But scheduling meetings regularly and specifically for identifying lessons learned is a better idea. Extracting lessons learned from reticent team members requires a delicate balance of honesty and tact. Getting the attendees into a productive mind-set and laying out the ground rules for these meetings takes some extra care.

There's enough work to do on projects that no one has time to attend unnecessary meetings. If people think a meeting is about finding fault, they'd just as soon do laundry or see the dentist for a root canal. What's more, poorly run meetings drive people into a daze; they fidget, then daydream, doodle, and eventually stop attending other meetings you schedule.

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