Topic: Recruiting and staffing
I'm not sure whether this is a US tradition or if it's more general, but job candidates in this country tend to oversell themselves. Americans (and maybe others, as well; I can't speak to that) either believe they are gods or they assume they have to convince hiring managers that they are gods in order to have a chance of getting a job.
Yesterday, the team I'm presently coaching checked out two candidates for temporary contract positions on their project. This team spends very little time talking to candidates, and quickly moves to the audition phase when candidates pair with different team members to complete a small, contrived application. They have learned through experience that this is really the only meaningful part of the process, and that they cannot rely on résumés or interviews (or certifications — pay attention, ye who advocate developer certification programs!) to find out what a person can do. In fact, most of them don't bother to read candidates' résumés. They have learned that there is rarely anything factual in a résumé.
I was present during the interview phase and observed portions of the audition phase, although I didn't comment or interfere. It seemed to me that both candidates were reasonably good at the work. Neither was extraordinary, but they were okay. Clearly, they had at least a moderate level of practical experience in both the technology areas relevant to the project. It seemed to take them a long time to get through the little project, but they did manage to get it done. They probably would have performed adequately on the project.
The team decided the two were not up to par technically. I'm speculating that the candidates may have screwed themselves during the interview phase.
Both did a wonderful job of selling themselves. Based solely on their own words, one would expect each to be a one-of-a-kind expert in the technologies relevant to the project, and an all-around genius generally. By the time they had finished describing themselves, I was wondering why their names aren't household words, like Einstein or Newton. They didn't perform badly in the audition phase, so I have to wonder whether they set expectations too high during the interview phase. There is absolutely no way they lived up to their respective self-portraits. Frankly, I'd be surprised if anyone could have.
I wonder whether this is a difference between the conventional way of interviewing and the more empirical approach that is becoming more and more commonplace in agile software development circles. People used to have to sell themselves to employers strictly on the basis of words — both written and spoken. Nowadays, the words can backfire unless the candidate can confirm their claims when they sit down to write code. Given the extreme degree of exaggeration typically found in résumés, it's unlikely many individuals can live up to their own sales pitch.
These two may well have been selected had they sold themselves as reasonably competent developers with a balance between confidence and humility who enjoyed a collaborative working style and wanted to work with a high-performing team where they could share knowledge and learn from their peers while delivering value to their customers. They didn't.
Maybe next time.
