059: Hiring and Interviewing

Jess, Chris S, and Allison discuss the hiring and interviewing process in tech. They share their experience as the interviewee, as well as the interviewer. The team identifies the underlying bias in the process, good signs and bad signs, and why it's important to set up a potential interviewee in the best environment possible.

01:45 Hiring and Interviewing in tech

• Jess writes a book and gets a new job
• How to reduce bias in interviewing process

03:33 Tech interviews hinder parents and caregivers

• Take-home vs pairing session
• Hiring managers should set up the interviewee in the best possible scenario
• 6-8 hours for a take-home test, unrealistic for caregivings

09:50 How to access talent

• Everyway is flawed
• Take-home - kids constantly interrupting
• Paired - many engineers are introverted
• Solutions: Short at-home mixed with pairing, or problem prompt

13:30 Bias

• How to reduce: rubric for every round, being aware of the bias
• Allison asks about parental leave, and feels the tone shift drastically
  
• Legal protection, but a lot of fuzzy areas
  

16:45 Good signs for parents interviewing

• Its a non-event when a child pops into the room while on a call
• Companies reward evenly
• Talk with team members outside the interviewing committee
• Talk with someone you relate to on the team, mom, trans, BIPOC, etc

20:30 Bad signs for parents interviewing

• The entire tone changes after asking about parental leave..
• Judgmental, leadership team of non-parents

22:00 Handing flexibility

• Ask about parental leave, primary and secondary leave
• Be honest with needs
• Workplace flexibility

28:37 Genius / fail

• Jess deals with her son having accidents constantly
• Chris and his kids play board games and jam out to all songs names satellite
• Allison’s daughter sparks chaos when she leaves her room after bedtime… but soon learns to stay in her room to tire herself out.

How can I support the podcast?

Please follow us @parentdrivendev on Twitter or email us at panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com.

Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com.

Jess
Allison
Chris S

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Episode 043: Pressure and Considerations Around Leaving a Job for Ethical Reasons.

Welcome, Nick Means!
Nickolas Means loves nothing more than a story of engineering triumph (except maybe a story of engineering disaster). When he's not stuck in a Wikipedia loop reading about plane crashes, he spends his days as a Senior Engineering Manager at GitHub working on Security and Compliance tooling for our users. He's also a co-host of the Managing Up podcast, a show about leading and managing in the world of technology. He works remotely from Austin, TX, and spends most of his spare time hanging out with his wife and kids, going for runs, or trying to brew the perfect cup of coffee.

01:54 How do you approach management with parents on your team?

• Treating your team as you would want to be treated as a parent
• Setting examples to your team as a manager
• Evaluate the job performance on the work actually done, and not clock a few hours taken off for kid responsibilities
• Flexibility and trust in team members and manager

07:12 Work life balance and work life integration

• Work sometimes becomes an escape from parenting life
• Self care for parents! No kids included, you need you

11:35 How do you encourage your team members to take time for themselves

• Ask the right questions to figure out what will fill their cup?
• As a manager, you’re more aware of the state of your team members and can identify things quicker
• Applaud team members when you see them take the effort for PTO

17:18 When you’re the only parent on the team.. How to make others understand

• Speak with kindness, set boundaries, have trust
• Time zone issues
• Setting boundaries with your team members
• How to structure workflow with team members in different zones

26:20 Managers making it explicit that it is OK to be done when you leave your workstation

28:02 Managing for non-remote teams

• Inflexibility when have to go into office
• Complexity for parents when they are totally out of the convo when working in an office

31:40 Moms vs. Dads double standard

• Putting family time on calendar
• Single parenting, the lack of help

33:40 How can managers support parental leave

• Encouraging more time for first time parents
• The job to support parents starts when they decide to have kids, not just during the leave
• Twins

37:50 Genius // fail

• Chris Sexton, how do you spell drop? #fail
• Josh had the sex talk…. but bombed on the timing with his daughter #geniusfail
• Allison has a nice turkey day with kids and neighbors, building her more positive memories! #genius
• Chris Arcand makes his nanny wait on her scheduled time off #fail
• Mandy gets a puppy… and it's a beautiful new experiences to share with her daughter
• Nick and his wife forget about homework… his son gets it done, but they all struggle the next day #fail

Follow & Support

Please follow us @parentdrivendev on Twitter or email us at panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com.

Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com.

Support us via Patreon and get access to our our Slack Community.

Panel

Allison McMillan
Chris Arcand
Josh Puetz
Mandy Moore
Chris Sexton

Special Guest: Nick Means.