Deborah Branscum just wrote an article in Medium Backchannel: Our Hiring Process is Broken. Can a Hackathon Fix It? It talks about her experience of a new approach to hiring that my partner, Noah Goldman, and I are pioneering that we’re calling Staffup Weekend. You can see a photo of the attendees, a report on the event, and a video of Deborah here.
This story appears to be a hit because my inbox is flooded.
People writing appear to fall into a few categories that we list below (along with the response you should expect as soon as we can get to it):
- I have an opinion. (Noted.)
- I have a complaint. (Noted.)
- I want you to help me get a job. (Give us time to work on a story offering advice for the masses and then if that doesn’t do the trick then please write again. In the meantime, please: Read my advice for job seekers on my website, follow me on twitter, check out our company (BetterWorkWorld.com), and go to Staffup Weekend where you can sign up for our newsletter and learn about future events.)
- I want you to help us hire better. (Let’s schedule a call ASAP.)
- I want to make money doing what you do. Can you help me be a competitor? (Absolutely. If enough people do what we do then we don’t have to do it. Tell us more about yourself.)
- I want you to look at our software that makes everything easier so people don’t have to get involved. (Maybe later. Please read our response to one such a software developer below.)
Hope this helps. More later.
Brooke
Here is my response to a reader who wrote: “I invite you to visit our website and get a general feel for what we are about. Essentially, we offer a software solution backed by solid Industrial Organizational Psychology and vast experiences working with high performance clients.”
Thank you for writing.
I have copied Noah, my partner in Staffup Weekend. He might have time to evaluate your software. Right now, because I am the only one of us mentioned in the article, I’m busy fielding requests from people who want us to help them hire rather than help them develop product in competition with us.
Perhaps we could help each other because although we are both trying to help employers hire better workers and job seekers find better jobs, we’re coming at it from different viewpoints. You are essentially a “software solution” and we are essentially an “anti-software solution.”
Perhaps you would send to us the prospects you cannot help because they have plenty of software (including perhaps yours) and now they’re willing to try getting down-and-dirty shoulder-to-shoulder with job seekers and help them prove their worth to themselves – even if it leads to them getting hired elsewhere.
We’ll be glad to send to you prospects who don’t want to do that but imagine they have not yet found the perfect software package.
Deal?
Brooke
PS. Our approach is not based on modern Industrial Organizational Philosophy. It is based on the idea that if you care about people they will care back. This was observed by psychologists in the dark ages before the computer, and I believe it is called the Hawthorne Effect.
Brooke Allen 