Hiring team members

There are so many questions when it comes to hiring new team members and forming a team.

• Should you hire new team members based on skills or personality?
• Is there a perfect job for every personality type?
• Is the perfect software developer introverted?

In episode 16:2 of Architecture Corner Jesper Kråkhede and I talk about hiring people and what information you need to make the right decision.

Let’s face it, a skilled person with ten years of experience has a huge advantage over a “nice” person without skills and experience. Experienced programmers write better code. Personality however do not predict your ability to produce good code.

Sure, there are benefits to personality tests. Personally I’ve found it to give some insights into how other people might think about the world. Perhaps you could also use tests to weed out psychopaths and other people who have a negative influence on a team.

So far we don’t really know what matters and what predicts success but we are working on uncovering it…

Update: 2015-09-11

Of course there is research to back up this post and the discussion in the video. HBR has a neat summary of what HR professionals think works and what actually works in making successful hiring decisions. Many thanks to Mike Lehr for pointing me to the article.

@GregerWikstrand Studies show 50% of exp HR pros (>13yrs) not up 2date w/latest behavioral & psychological research https://t.co/O4OF0Q6gwD

— Mike Lehr (@MikeLehrOZA) 10 september 2015

So, what actually works in making hiring decisions? The table below is an excerpt from the HBR.org article.

Effective hiring selection practices

There is one thing missing from the list, I think, and that is job related tests.