Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Well ... employing someone full time, I expect that I am their priority. I didn`t accept resumes from people who had their own company.

Yeah I hear you on not accepting resumes or inquiries from other wanna be business owners. Let me give you an example of a posting that I recieved about 2 days ago... "ITCN Corporation is willing to take on any project of any magnitude at reasonable rates"
So I responded to the So called ITCN Corporation and requested that they simply send me their Corporate ID and state of Incorporation so I can check with their State to see if they were a legit company.
I got a respond back from the guy that he was a sole proprietor not a corporation and that he didn`t feel comfortable doing business with my company. As if he was going to be selected.

As for having a job description I do have one and I`ve described what I am looking for the problem with that is they modify their resume to fit the job description so what I`ve done now is created my own basic html test that they have to take before they goto phase 2 if they pass with an 85 or above they move up the ladder.  
The test has questions such as:
1. What is the purpose of a meta tag?
2. Show example of how you would use a div tag in a web site.
3. Creat a css rule for the following tag <a>
Show the following: Active, hover, visited

Simple questions... I developed a page of 100... They do get harder  at about question number 15. I added some php, asp, and most of all coldfusion.
If they don`t know how to use the cfmodule tag... they are in trouble...
I hope this will help me eliminate the newbies from the good coders

-------------------------

Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

Hello Nuevolution

Wow... you`ve gotten a lot of adivce so far. Mine is going to be very
different however, First I`ll say I`ve been hiring software developers (and
firing some of them) for much of my career... which has been a long
career. So let`s be clear right up front. We are all trying to find good
people... and they can be found.

The way my advice is going to differ from the other posting is that the
first step in find good people ... starts with you, not with the person you
are going to hire. Someone said get a good job description; I agree but
I`d go farther. In web design there are some very clear indicators as to
whether people can do the job or not. Put togehter a test, and exam if
you will, that will determine if the potential hire can do the work. During
the interview process it is perfectly reasonable to sit the candidate in
front of a computer and say, "Here is a typical website that represents our
product for our customer. Would you please modify the buttons, change
the css to handle newsletter signups on every page and create a
secondary css to represent Google adwords landing pages. Take as much
time as you like. I`ll just hang out here while you do it. if you have any
questions, just ask. Here are some hard copy representations of what the
pages should look like when you are done."

Then just sit back, watch, listen, answer questions if necessary, and when
the hour is up (don`t make it more work than an hour) you`ll know if you
have a good candidate or not. That is the first step. Without this you are
guessing how good people will be. And I must tell you, without these
kinds of processes in place it is really a guess. It is pretty much
impossible to tell if a person has the requisite capabitlity by resume and
interview. In fact, in the past as director of engineering, I would have
three or four of my program managers interview an important candidate,
and even then we were accurate about 75% of the time. So take heart.
This is a tough process, but the test I talked about above is a good first
step in increasing the odds.

Second, you are just going to have to sift through a lot of candidates.
The more specific you are in your add, however, the fewer people you`ll
have to interview. My suggestion is to first make your add very, very
specific. Make it so most people who can`t do 95% of what you want
done, won`t even send a resume (some who can`t will still send you one...
can`t keep them away). If you don`t find the right person there, then
expand the add a little by removing some of the requirements. Keep
doing this until you find someone. And as you do this process of opening
up the requirments, you`ll get really clear as to how many people are out
there who can do your job. My sense right now is that you are doing this
in too much of loose way.

Also, someone on this list suggested college students. In needed a Linux
expert programmer a couple of years ago, and I needed one fast. I called
and emailed the math and computer science departments of the local
University of California campus. I asked for gradutate students only.
(They are more serious and have more time to commite). I got two
possible candidates. I had the programmers who were going to work with
them interview them, they picked one and the guy turned out to be a
genius and a life-saver for our project.

So... final suggestion. Don`t dispare. Stick with it. Know that the best
approach is to tighten up your end of the process and tighten up your
adds and just work through it and adjust as you learn more about your
specific market in your specific local.

I hope this helps.

Steven Cerri