R.Mainz suggested I try GoStats (who is a fellow Entrecard user, like me) and check-out their in depth stat tracker. I can tell you, for drilling down on your site clicks, these folks at GoStats have this friggin’ thing buttoned down. While I am unable to access some very specific analysis tools, because I am using the free version right now, this site has massive potential for everyone! And, using the free version is purely my choice - do not read anything into this one bit, please. I am on a very fixed income presently and free is my way, today!

Scott (TechFires) sent me over to GetClicky. Scott’s site TechFires also uses Entrecard, which for me gives very serious street-cred when it comes to a referral to another site/tool. And, I have to tell you, hands down, these folks make an awesome tool! I have pretty much moved all the other trackers OUT of my daily start-up routine in the morning. All my bookmarks are out of the Firefox start-up bookmarks group I use - it just has GetClicky! You just have to see the tool to believe it - truly. I, and this is always personal, love their interface, ease of use, and powerful incorporation of AJAX. Not overdone at all, it just moves the way I like to move around a site. One caveat for now, from the folks at GetClicky, is that they cannot CURRENTLY support sites that get 50,000 page views per day. I am, a small fish, so this was a no-brainer for them to sign me up. And, I can have up to 3 sites with less than a combined traffic rate of 3,000 page views per day (1,000 page views per site), for FREE! Not bad, eh?!

Anyway, wanted to update you all on my search for a nice, throrough, and pleasing tool for stats and trackers to use with all of my blogs and sites.

Almost Done Looking …

As you may know (or may not know) Staff IT Right© was started by our parent company, Snowlark Software. I’ll post more there about Snowlark once I get the blog up and running. I wanted to share with you a short backgrounder for what Snowlark is all about.

Snowlark Software is currently filing for a formal LLC. We are also aggressively developing two products that live within two very distinct niches: business intelligence and social networking. The Staff IT Right© suite is in the business intelligence niche, and shall remain there. Our newest product is in stealth mode, and will be available soon. The main interruption is primarily the search for funding - where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

I’ll post more about our funding initiatives, the trials and tribulations, and our outlook for securing a safe first round of funding … be right back! (i have to go pick up my kids at school - can’t be late!)

I do have quite a bit of experience in offshore personnel augmentation. I can say that I have been involved in the use of local (onsite or same locale), onshore (other states), and offshore (other countries) resources for many years. There are so many opinions out there, with the negative attention and intensity growing at a rate that is far too alarming, that offshore alone has received a very bad reputation. While some of the reasons are warranted, these situations are a small percentage and clouds the many successes in the use of offshore personnel. I’ll caveat this entire statement with the fact that it is how one applies the use of offshore personnel. It can be said that bad management is irrespective of locale - it’s just bad management!

The post to which I am referring is How to get Burned Outsourcing. The author brought up a few points, but I found the mention of culture to be something that immediately caught my attention. Culture is a key factor in the success of any offshore contract or relationship. There are two prevalent forms of culture, when one uses the term culture: corporate and heritage (origin of birth). I believe that regardless of culture (heritage), the most important factors to a successful project consist of the following brief list of culture components:

• Entrepreneurship in spirit
• Drive to develop the best products
• Love of company and your team
• Competitiveness, in any form, applied appropriately
• Loyalty to company and its intellectual property
• Product development process awareness

While these are not all, they are probably a large subset of those traditionally known as corporate culture. The greatest success can be achieved if everyone involved is firing on all cylinders in each of the above areas. When looking for candidates to be a part of your winning team, wouldn’t you look for all of those qualities? Can you honestly say you can scope these areas into objective criteria to better screen these candidates before making the decision to hire? And, what about the subject we are talking about now, onshore and offshore personnel augmentation? Can you consider these two part of your candidate acquisition process? Do you?

Interestingly enough, the issue of hiring is integral to the success of any project. Offshore, in this instance, is not immune. Everyone should apply the same criteria when acquiring support from an external firm. In fact, it is sage advice to say that one should be even more selective when bringing on offshore resources.

While the Staff IT Right© tools are not currently addressing offshore personnel assessments, it is not at all impossible to perform such assessments using our tools. By arranging the candidate pool to include the CV/Resumes of those resources used to augment your staff, one can logically see that an assessment is very much a reality! In fact, one can compare and contrast local, onshore, and offshore resources in one pool!

As you can see, Staff IT Right© knows your pain and help has arrived …

Here’s a quick list, with a little extra background on each:

• Added StatCounter first, because, well, I’ve always used them
• Added SiteMeter because TTLB requires a SiteMeter tracker (see next item)
• Added an “old standby” for me, which is The Truth Laid Bear (TTLB)
• Added the WordPress stat plugin so that I could track from within my own site (clever, eh?)
• Added another new site/ranker I found on another site, IZEARanks
• Added an Alexa tracker - for the fun of it ’cause I’ve never ever showed any sort of kick-up on Alexa.
• Added Technorati ’cause it goes well with other StumbleUpon users - they like to have ya “Fave” them (even though I’ve not been faved back - hey, FAVE me!)

I’ve gotta say, all these crazy counters are just not giving me what I need or want! I know, you’re saying, “But Steve, you picked all the free ones, Dude! So, spend some coin!” That’s all well and good if the company was generating revenue and also I had a JOB!

You’d think that there would be someone out there with a site that truly saw every flippin’ hit … wouldn’t you?

Still Looking …

To that, I say, Bah!

It’s hard work that rewards, not taking the easy way out. Let me clarify, I am not advocating, in any way, that to provide a product/service/process to a larger community is wrong. In other words, I’m not dissing the SourceForge community! But everyone chooses their path, and Staff IT Right© is taking the hard, bumpy road, of those that have gone before us.

I’ve been at startups that chose (or were forced to choose) to begin to distribute via the open source arena late in their development phase. The strategy was proposed as a shot in the arm to an already stalling customer growth model - or, well, the hockey stick was busted and out comes the duct tape! While that was de rigueur back in the day (pre-DotCom-implosion), I’m unaware if it is still being proposed in back alleys board rooms. I believe this is more a last gasp than a first breath.

I am, at root, a capitalist folks. Sorry if that is unsavory, making you uncomfortable, but the tools we are developing are for profit. I believe that no matter what effort you have expended, you should be compensated at the value the market can afford. And, in capitalism, there is truly no easy path to success. There are always hard times that make us all pray for just a little less challenge, just a bit more momentum rowing through the muck-N-mire, to have a warmer day from which to bask … you get the picture.

Staff IT Right© is not going open source, just so you know.

Cinderella man
Hang on to your plans
Try as they might
They cannot steal your dreams

LYRICS: “Cinderella Man”, Rush, A Farewell to Kings, 1977

Back in those days, the exit from the sixties and entry into seventies was changing rock music. In a very short time stadium rock was really taking hold - in fact, we had the “Day on the Green” series here in the Bay Area. War protest rock grew up and transitioned into bringing the plight of the every-day man to the fore.

Did you read the verse above? If you have the heart of an entrepreneur, does that verse ring true, to your core? Every dang day that you get up, it’s a new day, and this new day brings another opportunity to fulfill your dreams in a big way. Whether you’re the “big cheese” or a one-person company, your dreams are important and those dreams will propel you to success - no matter the era from which you hail.

Just 100 years ago, it was a rarity that an every-day man would be the head of a company, large or small. In fact, those that were in charge of driving the economy were often benefactors of an inheritance. Today, anyone, woman or man, any race, any ethnic background, from any country around the world, can realize their dreams and succeed. No matter the size of the company and no matter how long it takes, realize your dreams!

In the powerful voice of Geddy Lee, “Hang on to your plans … They cannot steal your dreams.”

At this time two major components are under development: phone screen guidance and GUI controls. These two projects are actually more difficult than expected and therefore has extended beyond our original estimates.

To address a more objective approach to the phone screening process, we’re developing a structured series of questions to ask the candidate. This is not a form of placement test but more of a way to provide a suggested path of questioning.

A few GUI controls would make the website, blog, and application/tool suite work seamlessly. While this is not required so as to provide the best tool in the world to our users, it is just the way we’d like to present our product. The GUI controls we’ve envisioned also include a few blog plugins - more to come.

So, we’re plugging along here at Staff IT Right©, just not as quickly as we’d like …

Have you ever sensed during a phone screen or interview, either with the sourcer/recruiter or the hiring manager, there was something just not right with their tone, the direction of the questions, or even the consistency of the subject matter covered at different stages in the process? Hopefully you kept notes of the key concerns during the conversation? Because later, as you walk through or replay the conversation, a pattern might emerge to provide you a key insight into your inability to get that dream job.

In the field of quality, scatter grams enable you to perform an activity known as defect density analysis (I will refrain from getting into Poisson, DPMO, and Sigma, OK?!). This invaluable information gives you an opportunity to redirect your efforts early with greater precision and efficacy. If, however, your test reference is influenced, or weighted, by a single attribute or input sample, the density of error(s) can be skewed resulting in a false indication. In fact, for each iteration, if a different attribute is utilized at a higher concentration, your resulting data is completely useless. One needs to be consistent across all phases and with all forms of input to get the best predictive result possible.

Stick with me here while we go through a simple hypothetical scenario. Upon reviewing your notes of the phone screen a pattern emerged uncovering a particularly obvious focus, or weighting, on your education and less on your experience. Then, your notes regarding the interview process with the hiring manager (et al) uncovers a heavier than expected influence on your work experience. Based on the very simple density analysis process outlined in the previous paragraph, the result is a pretty obvious false indication. Remember, that false indication will greatly affect your candidacy and you’ll quickly drop off the radar. Weighting a different attribute over another at different stages of the process, therefore, is not a best practice anyone would ever view as, well, best.

School work, while helpful and supportive in a learning context, does not always prove the creativity in, or mastery of, a specific body of domain knowledge in the field. On the job work experience, while powerful and clearly a result of hard work and focus, doesn’t always translate into the best ability to excel in a particular domain, either. Allowing for differing perspectives or proclivities of the individuals on the reviewing team, the entire team must decide at the outset whether one attribute will have significant influence (EDU:60 - EXP:40) or if there should be parity (EDU:50 - EXP:50). Once the decision has been made to choose one over the other, stick with it to the end of the hiring cycle and ensure all participants remain consistent when interacting with the candidate pool.

If you had a tool that allowed you to lock in the percentage of influence (EDU:55 - EXP:45), do you believe your hiring process would be more effective and result in the best candidate joining your team? Let us know …

Staff IT Right© knows … let us help you … it’s sooo much fun firing on all cylinders!!!

OMG! What the heck is going to happen?! What to expect? How to be sure this effort is going to be effective and not waste time - for you and the candidate? And as the first person to make contact with these candidates, are you reasonably confident that you can recognize, record, and rank the “best of the best” during the phone screening process?

The most important thing to remember is that each phone screen is your opportunity to confirm that a candidate possesses the key attributes you discovered during the resume review process. Hopefully you have been able to develop a list of the most important attributes this new person will need to perform their tasks. For the sake of discussion, without getting career-specific, let me propose the most likely top ten key attributes related to team work that are required for any team to be successful:

• Promoting
• Collaborating
• Innovating
• Producing
• Leading
• Organizing
• Mentoring
• Inspecting
• Correcting
• Maintaining

These are in addition to, and sometimes more important than, any career-specific attributes required to get the job done.

It is unrealistic to expect any candidate possesses all ten wrapped up with a pretty bow. However, for a team to be successful, each one of these attributes must be present - regardless of the tasks needing to be accomplished. And more importantly, none of these attributes are specific to any one career field, such as software engineering or genetic research. These key attributes are important in sales, marketing, support, shipping, or field work.

When people are working together toward a common goal, these attributes are important. Sometimes, depending on the project or task at hand, only a few are being utilized at any one time. Your job prior to the phone screening process is to assess whether or not all ten are present in your current team. If not, ensure that the gap can be filled immediately by the candidate under review. And you need to stay on point and focused during the phone screen to successfully fill the gap - or worse, gaps!

But, how many times during a phone screen do you find yourself … wandering off … discussing more pleasant subjects not at all germane to your primary objective: fill that attribute gap? Countless tools provide an opportunity to guide the phone screener using questions tailored for a specific career or technology choice. However, very few are targeting these ten key attributes we have listed above. Well, except in the case where you are spending tons of cash and lots of time making the tool you bought work the way you want! Shouldn’t this just work outta the box?!

The tool you use may provide feedback on our list of attributes, and maybe even more than these ten, yet how laborious was it to get through the whole questionnaire? Do you sense any immediate benefit once you’ve completed the phone screen? Do you have to build the questionnaire content yourself to ensure you stay on track and on message? Wouldn’t it be nice if the tool you used to review someone’s resume proceeded directly to the phone screening process? Wouldn’t it be nice if the tool kept it simple, objective, high level (with just enough specificity), and provided clear transitions between candidate workflow check points - all the while supporting accountability?

I keep tellin’ ya, stay with me here, Staff IT Right© really does know your pain …

The new web application front end is being developed and is on track. Considerable progress has been made regarding the business logic and data store, to include a flexibility in the comparison of a candidate’s education and experience attributes with other candidates in the active queue. In fact, we’ve begun to add a new module that will provide an excellent transition from resume review to phone screen. And, the phone screen process is the topic of this weeks article in the Hiring Needs Objectivity series.

In last weeks update we mentioned that phone screens are a very important part of the hiring process and that it is important to be fair, or more appropriately to be objective. Several pieces of research have uncovered the need for some very important changes to our chosen direction in leveling the results obtained from the phone screening process. In fact, we planned on writing an article last week on phone screening, but research caused a hiccup, so to speak. Hopefully the article will be ready for this weeks installment. Cross your fingers!

Helping you to staff your IT organization, right … Staff IT Right© … stay with me on this …