Can’t Find People? Root Cause Why

Can’t Find People? Root Cause Why:
There’s a great article that George Dinwiddie pointed me to, If There’s a Gap, Blame It on the Employer. It’s a nice companion piece to John Sumser’s entire series, Skills Gap: The Series.
Here’s what this means for people in technology:

1. Hire based on how well people fit into your team. Yes, this is cultural fit, not technical fit.
2. Be ready to train people. This means you need to assess if people are able to transition to agile, if you are, and transition them. Agile is a mindset, not a capability.
3. You must differentiate among essential qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills, as well as the technical skills, and the merely desirable ones.
4. Don’t be cheap with salaries. Well, you can be. But the great people will go somewhere else, because they have options.
5. Find other sources of people. You can become creative about looking for people. I have more than 20 suggestions for sourcing people in Hiring Geeks That Fit. You’re not going to use all of them, but I guarantee that if you use more than two of them, you can reduce your hiring time and hire more and better people.

John has another post, More on Attraction vs Promotion, that talks the difference between people who want to come work for you and people who are stuck working for you.
If you need other ideas about what to do when you can’t find people, Hiring Geeks That Fit has a chapter on how to reorganize your projects when it’s taking you a long time to find people. See, I help you, coming and going!

DIGITAL JUICE