Ask HN: Is there a "show us your work" for job hunting managers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there a "show us your work" for job hunting managers?

32 pointsmgrapplying8 comments

I'm a developer who followed the management track and found myself really enjoying it. After a few years of managing a decent sized IT department, I'm interested in putting out some feelers and seeing what else the market has available. No gripes with my current employer; I'm primarily looking for something that's more challenging. (A bump in compensation certainly wouldn't hurt either).

This is the first time that I'm job hunting as a manager and I'm not sure what's expected of me. One of the things we've always emphasized during the hiring process for developers is the same thing I see a lot here on HN: "We only care about one thing: what have you built and shipped? No resumes needed here, we just want to see what you can do." (From http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2542432)

Is there an equivalent for managers? I've really cleaned up my resume and made sure to highlight the things that I've achieved but it feels weird to be job hunting without a portfolio of things to show. Are my personal programming projects still relevant since I'll primarily be looking for a tech management position?

Any advice is appreciated.

As a recruiter, I can tell you that screening a manager is difficult. Y'all are usually good talkers. Good leading indicators to me are prior success, ability to articulate complex ideas to a lay person, and brevity in communication. It is also good to stay on top of communication, be patient, and nice.

- Can you build and run a team? Show you've done that (who have you hired, how have you created a hiring process, how have you created process around working (agile, ...), etc.. I would want to see a lot of detail around this in your resume.

- I don't think code samples are really relevant at this stage.

Most managerial interviews are based on Behavioral Interviewing. The logic is that how you behaved in the past is the best predictor of how you will behave in the future. If you Google, you'll find lots of typical questions. You should take time to think of specific situations from your past that demonstrate how you handled certain managerial tasks. You'll also find that companies will want to know if you are a "strategy" guy or an "implementation" guy, so it's good to think about what kind of decisions you want to have responsibility over. I think it's okay to say both, but you will need to back up your answer and give examples of how you acted in those situations in the past.

I always point to the team's accomplishment and say "We built this", and then point out the part that I worked on specifically.

People apportion credit to the leadership differently, so there is no shame in saying "I lead the team that built this thing" and letting the reader decide how awesome that makes you specifically.

On the management level much of the concern will be on your leadership skills and how you handle projects and the team(s) working on them. So to answer your question personal programming projects are still relevant, but interviewers will also be concerned with the business and leadership side of things.

I'm also having the same dilemma since I'll be attending an interview tomorrow for a tech lead position and the job post was specific about the functional/business responsibilities.

BTW If you're looking for a place to store your portfolio (or resume, however you want to call it) properly, here's my project just for that: http://www.cvstash.com It works because that's what I used that resulted in the call, which, in turn, resulted in tomorrow's interview.

I would still list programming projects. It depends on the company culture though whether they value that geek-cred.

I know as a developer I would feel more comfortable with a boss who can appreciate abstract concepts like code-quality or stressful working conditions.

A blog would be a very good idea - show what your ideas on management are. See, for example, Rands in Repose.

Hey, if you're still looking, we're doing early testing on an online portfolio service that might meet your needs. I'd be glad to send you an invite.

Email me at tim -at- bitsmachine -dot- com

http://bitsmachine.com

Example portfolio (mine): http://timbarkow.bitsm.com

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