IT Career Advice: Are You A Jerk, Would You Want To Work With You?
March 12, 2014
Dear Mr. or Ms. IT pro, are you a “jerk”?
Or a “brilliant asshole”?
Are you self-aware enough to know?
A few weeks ago I was in a room with a dozen or so VP of IT and CIO’s talking about how to grow the local IT talent pool, what the current demand is for different skill sets, we tried to predict what would be in demand and some other things.
Another topic was, do we hire for skill set and being able to code or do we hire for personality and we can train.
There were varying opinions with most leaning towards hiring for personality, culture fit and working on the skill set. The idea being technologies change but people… not so much.
One of the comments made was:
“I am tired of brilliant ass holes”
And everyone responded with a nod, giggle or “yep”.
I am reminded of this because I had a conversation last week with a Project Manager (a friend of a friend) who is currently employed, very good at what they do and looking.
The thing is the Project Manager is getting into 2nd and 3rd interviews but not to an offer stage and they were wondering what the issue is.
I figured it out about 15 minutes into the conversation… they come across as a pompous jerk.
They are not one and don’t intend to be.
They just don’t listen to how they sound or think about what is being heard.
This is not an IT thing.
This is an everybody thing.
I do suggest that in the IT world this is becoming more of a thing.
As demand increases and salary and rates go up there are some, many who think they are “a big deal”.
Well… OK, good luck with that.
My advice:
Stop and think about how you are saying what you are saying.
And think about how it may be received, heard
Most of all… would you want to work with you?
Here is an article on Dice.com that talks about this:
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