If you don’t want to be a speaker, don’t. If you do want to be a speaker, you may do those things, because they make sense. You don’t do them to practice authenticity, you do them because if you love speaking, you do it. You are authentic because you care about your job.

It’s the same thing with interviews and thank you notes. If you love your job, and you’re interviewing candidates, you don’t have to remember to thank people for coming in for the interview. You don’t have to remember to thank people for their time at the end of the interview–you’ll do that because you are an authentic human.

If you’re like me, you need a little checklist/reminder at the beginning of the interview process to stop work-as-normal, and start interviewing. I don’t need to remember to smile, I need to remember to put away the day’s work and focus on the interview. As a hiring manager or team member, you might need some other remembrances.

And, if you’re a candidate, and you liked the interviewer, the team, the organization, by all means, send a thank you note. If you have questions, ask them. If you have concerns, and they are minor, say you want another conversation.

But if you have major concerns or don’t want this job, say so. Or, don’t write a thank you note. Don’t write a fake note, saying you want the job when you don’t.

Authenticity is a necessary part of interviewing–from either side. So, don’t practice authenticity–be authentic.

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I have, but in slides (for my Hiring for an Agile Team tutorial and workshop and in my other workshops) and in person, but not on this blog. So, let me say it here:

Good interviews are conversations. Period.

Good interviews do not surprise people. Good interviews build rapport with a candidate, learn about a candidate, preferably with behavior-description questions and auditions. Maybe with hypothetical questions. Maybe with a meta-question.

But good interviews should make a candidate (and an interviewer) think, not sweat.

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At one interview, it was clear that the manager makes all the technical decisions. No, the manager doesn’t code anymore; he makes all the technical decisions though, for a 12-person group.

At the other job, it looked as if my colleague might be the most senior person there. The other folks are young and smart, but just don’t appear to have the same amount of experience he has.

I asked him who he would learn from, at each job. He immediately answered the job with the younger group. Why? Because the manager in the first job would prevent him from learning.

He said something like this (I’m paraphrasing), “When managers don’t manage, and make all the technical decisions, they make it harder for the team to grow and for people to learn.”

So hiring managers, remember, the interview works both ways.

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The first section is all about preparing to interview: knowing what you want in a job, creating your resume, building your resume in Word, html, and text. Yes, your potential employers may want more than one version, so write it and make sure it looks good in all three versions. In the section called “Finding Your Job,” Andy says,

“Your most important tool in finding a job is relationships with other people.”

He’s right. And, the chapter about building your network, creating and building relationships has great ideas about how to build your network in a variety of ways.

I love the section called “The Interview and Beyond.” Andy’s advice shines here. From clearing your schedule, to all the other preparation (selling the interviewer on you, answering tough questions, compiling and bringing a relevant portfolio, which questions you want to ask), the idea is that if you are prepared, the interview is now on your terms. (He’s got a great sidebar on how to shake hands.)

Chapter 9 is called “Handling the Tough Interview Questions.” Here, Andy delves into what to do and, especially, not do. In the section, “The Tough Questions”, Andy provides examples of what not to say and what to say when you encounter the “Tell Me About Yourself” question. With Andy’s empathy for the hiring manager and the candidate, his advice is targeted for candidates to prepare in ways that make sense.

Andy doesn’t stop there. The chapters “After the Interview” and “Staying Hirable” are gems, too. In fact, you should buy this book and Chad’s The Passionate Programmer, as part of your New Year’s actions to improve your overall skills.

You can buy  Land the Tech Job You Love on Amazon in hardcopy only. Or go to the Prag site and buy it in hardcopy or a variety of softcopy formats.

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You have at least two options I know of, to evaluate salary options: Payscale.com and Salary.com. (If you know of other free sites, let me know and I will post links to them.) You put in your experience, location, salary and see where you are with respect to their databases. You can see where you fall in the range of people and salary. Armed with that information, you can decide if your salary offer is a good one.

Assuming you have a salary you like, consider a start date. Do you want a week between jobs? I don’t always recommend that. If you know you want some long weekends in the summer, why take a week in the winter? If you know you want some conference time, take your week later for a conference. You may not need a week now. If you don’t, don’t take it. Your hiring manager will be thrilled you wanted to start faster.

Even in a down economy, you have options for negotiating salary and start date.

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Here’s the way I like to see the company names on a resume:

month/year, CurrentCompanyName, city, state. (Previously known as CurrentCompany-1, CurrentCompany-2, CurrentCompany-3) YourJobTitle.

Unless your responsibilities have changed, you’ve had one job.

Hiring managers: don’t ding candidates on what looks like job changes. It isn’t the candidate’s fault the company management sold/bought the company.

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Oh, I did not change all the links, so some links to older posts go to the archive for that month. If you find one and email me, I will fix it. Otherwise, I’m assuming you aren’t bothered by having to search the monthly archive, or you’re not reading those old posts.

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Dave suggested it might take a couple of years investment in terms of salary to make a developer productive. My experience is that it takes about 6 months of that developer and some number of months of other people. You can short-cut some of that cost by:

• Creating a buddy system when you hire or move a new person into a team
• Providing training about the code, the product, the process
• Go to conferences so you can see what’s going on in the industry
• Creating learning opportunities as a group each week or so, such as a lunch-and-learn
• Starting a reading group and read a chapter in a book and discuss it once a week

Informal training is great and has little cash cost. The person explaining what’s going on will take time away from his or her work to prepare, and the other people benefit tremendously. Reading groups have a small cost.

I’m always surprised when people tell me that they want to keep their per-head cost of training under some number. That number is generally less than a person-day of loaded labor.

I’m also surprised when people tell me they can’t buy books because they are “too expensive.” Publishers have sales all the time (see the current Prag sale), and sometimes Amazon sells my books so cheaply I don’t understand how they make money. If a company thinks books are too expensive, they haven’t thought about the cost of ignorance.

Good recruiters cost more out-of-pocket money, but are worth their cost if they bring you candidates that fit the role.

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A participant asked, “What is personal but not intimate?” I explained that personal is about you, and intimacy is something you might see or do in the shower. (Ok, that was not one of the most articulate explanations I’ve ever given. You get 5 minutes to laugh and then please keep reading.)

The problem with small talk is that it’s not personal. “How about those Red Sox” or talking about the weather is something we could do with a complete stranger. But sharing little anecdotes from your life is personal. “I returned to gym yesterday morning after a three-week travel period. I’m surprised I’m not sore today.” That’s personal. Many of us have felt the soreness of pushing too hard when we start our regular workouts again. Some of us have felt guilty about not being sore–did I push hard enough yesterday? That’s a personal comment that allows us to build rapport. It may not be the right topic of conversation. But it’s a start, and suggests a topic for the other person.

If you have a minute or two of rapport-building talk, you’ve set the stage for a successful conversation, whether that is an interview or any other conversation.

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