Recruiting for an Agile Organization

Mayank Srivastava Manager – Recruitment & HR Equal Experts India Pvt. Ltd.

Agile is not just a methodology. It is a philosophy

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

• Adopting agile should not only influence your software development approach or delivery cycles.

• It should influence your culture, your infrastructure, your style of working, and most certainly, the way you recruit.

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

Some features & practices of agile which dictate what qualities to look out for in new hires.

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

• Small teams

• Pairing

• Daily scrum meetings

• Frequent client interactions

• Extreme Programming (XP)

• Flat structure

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

What works well in agile & how to look out for those aspects.

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

1. Hands-on – People who are hands-on or at least have a genuine interest in being hands-on.

• Have them sit on a system. Make them write code, tests, business solutions etc. Have them actually implement what they theorize.

2. Collaboration – People with humility, openness to feedback, assertiveness.

• Make them pair with your employees on actual code / test cases / business case scenarios. If they are too defensive, that’s bad. If they are too meek that’s worse.

3. Communication – Clarity, crispness, humility.

• Involve some less experienced employees in interviewing seasoned candidates.

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

4. Involvement – Willingness to get involved proactively across other roles when required

• Look out for answers like “that’s a QA’s job, I’m a BA”.

5. Lack of hierarchical mindset – People who see growth in responsibilities rather than designations.

• Check their comfort level with being designated as Software Developer / Software Tester regardless of their experience.

Developers with deep understanding of TDD (or at least unit testing), and Testers with deep understanding of automation, are usually critical for the success of most XP projects, especially development projects. So these aspects should be regarded highly.

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

How to make your recruitment process Agile.

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

. • Recruitment Wall – Just like the story card wall of any Agile project, you can create a Recruitment Wall which tracks the progress of candidates through each stage of their recruitment life cycle.

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

HR Screening

Pairing Round

1st Technical Interview

2nd Technical Interview

Management Interview

Offered Candidates

Candidate 11 Card

Candidate 7 Card

Candidate 8 Card

Candidate 4 Card

Candidate 1 Card

Candidate 2 Card

Candidate 14 Card

Candidate 10 Card

Candidate 9 Card

Candidate 15 Card

Candidate 5 Card

Rejected Candidates

Candidate 12 Card

Candidate 13 Card

Candidate 3 Card

Candidate 6 Card

• Sample Candidate Card:

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

Candidate Card

Name of candidate XYZ Kumar

Relevant experience 5.3 years

Skills QA, Automation, Selenium RC

Pairing Panel Members Status

1st Tech Interview Panel Members Status

2nd Tech Interview Panel Members Status

Management Interview Panel Members Status

• Feedback:

1. Give constructive feedback to candidates at every stage of their recruitment process, whether they’re selected or rejected.

• Ask interviewers to give candidates the reasons for their selection / rejection.

2. Take constructive feedback from candidates at each stage of their recruitment process, whether they’re selected or rejected.

• If feasible, incorporate some of the feedbacks suggested by candidates to improve your process.

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

In Conclusion

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

• Recruiting for an agile / agile-transforming organization is challenging, because you are looking for people with a rare mindset.

• Quite often, you also have to convince them of agile.

• So before recruiting, make sure that you, as an evaluator (whether you’re a recruiter / tech interviewer / manager), are convinced of Agile as a methodology and as a philosophy which influences your organization’s culture and values.

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10

THANK YOU

…And please make sure that you give me some constructive feedback...

mayank@equalexperts.com

+91 9923000943

www.agiletour.org 05/11/10