Luis Gonçalves - Blog

Hi guys, in my last post I wrote about a great experience that I had when I was interviewed for an Agile Coach position. In this blog, I will write about a second experience that I had, I believe both of them are great ways to get good candidates on board. Let´s take a look at it…

First thing that impressed me when I arrived at the company´s office were friendly and super polite people. I felt we´ve known each other since ages. This is extremely important for a candidate that is nervous and not familiar with the environment around him/her. For me its strange, but there are still plenty of companies that don´t play much attention to this.

After a warm reception, a hiring manager gave me a tour around the office; this was extremely important because I could start to understand they had something that was crucial for me. For example, they had several beautiful salty fish aquariums that created a fantastic environment where I would be more than happy to work. But what really created the “wow” effect, was the amount of information radiators they had all over the places at the office. That gave me a pretty good idea about their “agile maturity”. That means, if something went wrong with the product, everyone could immediately see that something was broken.
After the tour, I was invited to go for a lunch with the team; that was a fantastic way to get to know each other.

The hiring committee took an opportunity to check my CV, my twitter account and my blog before meeting me. This allow them to “bomber” me with questions about my professional life. Based on this, they could get a much better understanding of my skills. Afterwards, they shared several challenges with me and asked me how I could help them to solve those. This is a great way for the team to evaluate my knowledge and for me to see how mature they are.

After many interesting discussions over the lunch, I was invited to participate in their Iteration Planning. Observing what kind of tasks they would need to do, gave me a fantastic opportunity to see what was their level of “agile maturity”. I believe, this exercise is more useful for a candidate than for at team itself. However, the candidate can always give some opinions and share past work experiences, allowing the team to evaluate his/her experience at these kinds of activities.

The previous activity (Iteration Planning) was followed by a series of interviews with top management. This job had both responsibilities - coaching the team and the organisation. The understanding what top management expected from me was crucial. I used this exercise to explain what I would like to do inside of the organisation and to ask them about a possible list of things that we could implement in the future. This exercise was fantastic because it allow us to align our expectations. After this, my interview day came to an end and I left the company with a really great feeling.

This blog is not devoted to techniqual things much like in my last post blog Instead, I mention several activities that can be done with a candidate in order to know an applicant better and allow him/her to know your company´s practises better. I hope you enjoyed this reading.

Thanks,
Luis