abouie

[abouie]

Messing around with Form validation this weekend and I found this. A cool resource for folks like who only flirt with Regex. :)

Regular expression tester with syntax highlighting, contextual help, video tutorial, reference, and searchable community patterns.

[abouie]

A's-Musings turned 3 today! 3Years ten post...Okay, I should write more I get it!

[abouie]

How to not lose an interested candidate?

Once upon a time I was an H.R manager and then a Director of Operations for a wonderful non-profit. How I become a developer from there is a story filled with twists and turns a plenty but it’s not the story I’m going to tell this time.

What I’m going to talk about is why that interested candidate of yours has disappeared? Because of my past experience I actually get this question quite a lot from both hiring managers and from developers who loved a candidate during the interview and doesn’t know what happened to them.

The reason is usually one of three key issues:

Compensation

Work-Life balance

Communication

Let’s look at each and see what can be done to keep your candidate.

Compensation

This is the easiest one to take a look at first. Of course as a hiring manager you only have so much room to negotiate in terms of salary or hourly. One hiring manager I know was told not to tell the candidates how much the max salary was and to lowball each candidate no matter their experience level. She felt helpless and knows that this “strategy” cost her at least 10-20 solid developers in this competitive market.

On the flip side a good friend went through 5 rounds of an interview process with an agency who loved her got the offer...and found out the job was 30k under what she was making currently. There was little room for negotiation and she didn’t take the offer. A complete waste of time for her, the hiring manager, and the agency as a whole.

My suggestion is let the candidate know what is budgeted for the job sooner than later. I know that talking money is not looked upon kindly but it’s needs to be talked thoroughly if you want to keep a good candidate.

Work-Life Balance

Ah, the balancing act of life! This is one of the most difficult areas when it comes to keeping a candidate. There are a lot of considerations for your candidate when looking at the job work-life balance. I remember interviewing at a company five years ago that told me straight up that I would be “working so hard I won’t have time for that freelancing stuff”! Not, the best way to keep a candidate .

When it comes to the work-life balance of the job I feel that two things are key.

One, actually talking to your candidate and getting a feel of their situation in life. Are they workaholics loving every moment in the office, do they freelance on the side for fun, or are they raising children and need to be there for them not in a office 24/7? These should be known facts for the hiring manager.

Depending on your business you may need someone willing to work 16 hour days to get that product out.  Not an uncommon in the startup world. That said candidate’s should be open to late night once in a while. I’ve clocked in an 80 hours week a few times in my life and am still around coding and singing...okay maybe not singing.

Two, is the challenge of the job one that will help your candidate grow. No one wants a job that they can’t get better at. Whether it’s learning a new coding language, trying out your design skills, or growing management expertise your candidate wants to get daft punk style i.e “faster, better, stronger!” Harder too if they like hitting the gym… okay that was bad. Jokes aside if you can present a job that will cause your candidate to grow and understand where they are in life you’ll find that you won’t have to worry about them disappearing.

Communication

By all things good, this is for me the most important of the three. You want to keep your candidate interesting in a job. COMMUNICATE with them!

Alright, I’ll calm down. The thing is communication means so much and yet is ignored the most in the market today. A good friend of mine took a job he liked over one he would have loved because he got no feedback from the hiring manager or dev team. He reached out to see if they had any feedback or questions for him within 24 hours and got nothing from them for 8 weeks. Not even an email saying they are considering all options and need X amount of time.

That’s unacceptable and sadly common in the market right now. You can’t expect your candidate to be around even a week past the last interview round unless they love your company. Even then you have two weeks max if you should down communication completely.

Communication is the lynchpin of your company’s culture. It gives your candidate a first glimpse of life at that company. You could do concerts, cookouts, and have an awesome arcade in the rec room to the right but if you can’t give solid feedback or a timeframe for a decision. Well that will remark more on your company than you think. It saids that this company doesn’t care about it’s employees, it shows a lack of professional disciple, and can put your company’s reputation on the line. That may sound like an hyperbole but it’s true. I’ve been warned off some of the top companies because of others having an awful time with their H.R team.

I know, I know you have 20+ candidates for one position of many that you’re hiring for. I’ve been there and understand the balancing act of figuring out who’s right for the job while working within the guidelines of your company. That said, you have to take the time to let them know! Even if you have to chase down a director to get the feedback or timeline needed. Your candidate maybe one of the many but honestly so are you.

You want to know what makes a company truly special? It is the amount of caring they have for their current and future employees. The easiest step to show that caring is communication. Let the candidate who has gone through X rounds with you know the feedback from the interview team. Let them know you may not have a decision ready for X amount of time. Yes, you may lose them there but more likely if they have the time to spare and they love the opportunity that they’ll stick it out. No one wants to be kept waiting but what is worst is waiting in the dark.

Keeping these three things in mind will help you keep your candidates.

If anyone has anymore suggestions for keeping candidates for a job or wants to discuss in depth my thoughts here please comment or email me.

Cheers!

[abouie]

Kingdom of Plateaus

"A Jack of All trades and King of None."

I disagree with the sentiment of this saying. I think that a Jack of all Trades can be a King of a few.

Recently I've come to the realization that I'm a King of Plateaus! Which isn't exactly what I've been going for...yeah. Here's the thing, I've always thought that plateaus were more like hard stops. Things that you can't get pass without extreme effort. Of course since these things would be so hard to get pass they would be obvious when I got to them. 

That's is where I made my big mistake! My kingdom is full of "Oh I'm pretty good now" plateaus. Soft, fluffy ones that make you believe that you don't really need to finish that goal. "Who needs to climb that mountain?" they whisper. "It will be hard and the mountain is like so so high. OMG" Beware all of these whispers! They come in the many guises and want you to stay were you are or fall back down into a valley. I've fallen back down the valley many times for many goals and not realized it was happening until it was to late. But, this time I think I know what to do. KEEP MOVING FORWARD! 

I say this but It's the hardest thing to do isn't it. Especially when you're proud to be a solid generalist/jack of all trades in things. You have a lot of knowledge and interest in so many areas and you want to pursue them all...but you can't. You shouldn't give up knowledge and interest you have because I'm not going to. It's just time for Jacks to pick a few trades to become Kings in. Let's give up our "Oh I'm pretty good" plateau kingdoms and finish climbing a few mountains! (DAMN IT!)...wooh that felt good.

We're not giving our Jack status, just adding another title on to it. Never stop finding new things to explore and making sure to give it the time it takes to really know it.

Your kingdom is what you make it. I hope to fill mine with wonder...and mountains lots of mountains. 

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

[abouie]

Excellent article! It's hard to remember that there's a larger world out there. 

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http://javascriptissexy.com/

[abouie]

Interview trials

The tech job market is a frenzy, and growing place. Which can be great on plenty of fronts except when it comes to getting a job. 

That's not to say there aren't any jobs out there. There are and gobs of them thank goodness. The problem lies in the job interview process in tech. I have a lot of friends looking for jobs right now and the best description I have for their experiences is a game of gauntlet with random generated maps and enemies. Wait! Let's make this contemporary and call it the tech hunger games! (YEAH!)

Since tech is a daily growing industry and there's a new framework, preprocessor, or cool build process being created right....now...and now....and now, it makes being on top of everything hard for both interviewers and interviewees. It appears while the tech is growing the interview process is not at least for front-end development.

There's no coherent thread to technical interviews for front-end developers or tech leads.

It can be:

JavaScript Jeopardy (What is JavaScript method chaining for $1000? Alex) *Answer at the bottom of the post*

White boarding code (This can be effective but it depends on the situation given)

Assignments and code review (In office on a unknown computer or take home and work on.)

I'm not even counting the phone tech screen which can be something as simple as (What's get and post?) to (Build me a quiz app in angular).

One other approach to hiring is two-four week trail contracts. Companies get a dev, see if their work is solid, and if they're a good fit for the team. The dev gets a new job, get to work with some awesome people and gets to prove their mettle without having to go through the tech interviews TRIALS BY FIRE. Yeah I like that name best too.  

I know there are negatives to giving someone a trail period as well. What if they don't work out? You've already spend time and money getting onto the team and going. I expect that those moments are rarer than you would think. You would still interview the candidate beforehand and should hopefully have seen their code. Usually you'll be able to tell within a week if the person going to work out. Though I would advise not trying this process out if you're hiring for a major project that needs to get done in a short period of time. 

I don't have a solution for this process but I have some opinions and worked as a H.R manager so hopefully they will fall on kind ears. 

1. Don't ambush you candidate with the technical interview. 

Please always inform your candidate when the technical interview will happen and have it timed.

No, an ambush technical doesn't represent the pressure of the really life development process. 

No, your candidate doesn't want to be there for 3 hours and neither do you.

Yes, they would like to work on their own computer so make sure to tell them to bring it.

2. Be prepared to interview the person. 

Don't pull up random questions on a cell phone during the interview.

Make sure your questions or assignments are in consideration of real life scenarios for your company or project.

If giving an assignment or white boarding problem make it something that you know and can build yourself.

3. Nope you don't need to add to the pressure. 

There's no need to ramp up the pressure for an interview it's already there.

Give your candidate time to think.

If they're stuck but on the right track give a hint to see if they figure it out. It doesn't hurt you to help them along if you like what you've seen so far.

4. I lied

Yes, I lied! When all is said and done there is one thread that all interviews have which is. (Do I want to have coffee or a beer with this person?)

This is a the most important thing in my opinion. I've worked with brilliant people that have the personality of a grumpy grandpa yelling at the kids. Only the kids are their co-workers and stakeholders. Not usually the best fit for a team.

What do you think? Should technical interviews be more coherent? Are my thoughts those of a madman!

Let me know.

* Here's your answer. WOOT $1000 Points!

Chaining is a way to return an object from a method call that allows for further methods to be called. The typical way to enable method chaining is to return the current object at the end of every function.

Kitten.prototype.setName = function(name) {

  this.name = name;

  return this;

}; 

*

[abouie]

Ballet with Attitude

I had the pleasure of seeing the Paul Taylor Dance Company tonight at Lincoln Center.  http://ptdc.org/ It was wonderful and my first time at the ballet. 

Seeing the show gave me two funny insights about my brain. One, even watching amazing feats of the human body I can still obsess over coding problems. Two, I need to get away from electronic entertainment more often. It was wonderful not to look at a screen for a few hours straight. 

What I'm saying is...SPRING GET GOING ALREADY! I need a picnic and to join a soccer league. 

[abouie]

Endings and beginnings

I've found myself often in a place of endings. I'm not sure if I'm looking forwards or backwards from those places but I know that once I take the next step nothing will be the same. From the moment I decided to end being 400 lbs overweight and unhappy to moments when I decided to take a leap of faith and landed with nothing broken...mostly. :)

At the end of a day like I had I'm grateful to everyone in my life for seeing me through these endings and being there for the new beginnings in my life.

http://www.gratitudeandtrust.com/omega-alpha/ <-- This site is making me sappy. 

[abouie]

Trying the spaced repetition method. I've done so many courses and read so many books and I want to remember it all! :)

[abouie]

The MEAN stack and I became friends over the weekend. While it has some anger issues I don't care since it makes app building so much easier. 

[abouie]

Speaking in the language others (Office life)

Working within a large company with many teams has been quite rewarding. I've gotten the chance work with amazing people. It has also given me one of the most important lessons in communication. Learning to speak the language of others is key! I'm not talking Spanish or French. I'm speaking about knowing how to talk to product teams, developers, designers, content makers.

Coming from smaller agencies and non-profit management roles, I got to work with a large variation of people from all walks of life. I naturally got the chance to develop the ability to talk to a person X and explain what he means to person Y. I'm not perfect at it but I know that obstacle is there.

As you grow in the career make sure you think about the soft skills needed for the work place. I find that often no one wants to be a jerk they just want you to understand what they mean. Being able to be a bridge of communication will be a big help for you at any job.

A few general points that have helped me out are:

Listen more and talk less - Unless what you're about to say is going to help clarify the conversation hold onto your silence. You'll find when you do speak you'll have a better understanding of your co-workers point of view and will be listened to more as well.

Try to get your point across the first time. Thanks to the listening above you'll have more time to formulate your thoughts. Use that time to find the most effective way to get your point across. No one wants to be in conversation with the guys repeating the same point 5 times. 

Translating what one means to another is easier than you think. Knowing what each party considers the most important priorities is the key. If you can convey to each how their priorities line up together and can be combined to not only get the project done but also open a pathway to new opportunities without hassle you've done you job.

A few warnings on what not to do in a meeting:

Please don't giggle or laugh - This one will depend on who your meeting with but if it's your stakeholders, content makers, or manager just don't do it. You may think no one would do so naturally...not so much.

Please don't use offensive language in a meeting or roll your eyes - It's not funny or edgy. Offensive language doesn't get your point across better. A good deal of time it just makes it seem you don't know what point you're trying to make or that you maybe trying to bully others to your opinion. Rolling your eyes in a meeting should only happen if you're a teenager. 

That's it. I've got a lot more thoughts on office place communication but I think this is a good start. If anyone has office place advise or funny stories please share.