Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky's Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent | 
 enlarge | Author: Joel Spolsky
Publisher: Apress
Category: Book
List Price: $16.99
Buy New: $5.94
You Save: $11.05 (65%)
New (50) Used (15) from $5.94
Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 12364
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 182
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 1590598385
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.311
EAN: 9781590598382
ASIN: 1590598385
Publication Date: May 31, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New book, ships out within 24 hours, 100% satisfaction guaranteed, some may have slight shelf wear
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Product Description
A guide to attracting, recruiting, interviewing, and hiring the best technical talent. - A comprehensive system for hiring top–notch technical employees
- Packed with useful information and specific advice written in a breezy, humorous style
- Learn how to find great people?and get them to work for you?in an afternoon!
The top software developers are ten times as productive as average developers. Ten times. You can’t afford not to hire them. But if you haven’t been reading Joel Spolsky’s books or blog, you probably don’t know how to find them and make them want to work for you. In this brief book, Joel reveals all his secrets?from his years at Microsoft, and as the co–founder of Fog Creek Software?for recruiting the best developers in the world. You’ll learn: - How to create a pipeline of excellent developers using internships?and why this is not optional
- How to build a workplace where the best programmers want to work
- The secrets to reading resumes, interviewing technical people, and deciding when to make an offer
If you’ve ever wondered what you should be looking for in a resume, if you’ve ever struggled to decide whether to hire someone at the end of an interview, or if you’re wondering why you can’t find great programmers, stop everything and read this book.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
A perfect reference June 7, 2008
Confession: I'm a long time fan of Joel Spolsky and his writing, and this book is no exception.
In usual Joel style, it's a very easy, witty and insightful read. He tell you to set the hiring bar high and shows some simple ways of separating the potentially high performing from those less capable.
Contents:
- Hitting the High Notes
- Finding Great Developers
- A Field Guide to Developers
- Sorting Resumes
- The Phone Screen
- The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing
- Fixing Suboptimal Teams
- The Joel Test
This book can easily be related to all recruitment and not just those in the technical fields.
In an age where finding talented people is becoming increasingly difficult, this book is a certain must read.
 Big ideas in a small shell May 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
When I got this book, I was quite surprised how small it is. But there is a lot of useful information in it and it's fun to read (as You can expect from Joel). It's well worth its 12 bucks. I wish more people, who are hiring or managing people, would read this book and follow at least some of ideas in it.
It was fun to find out that Joel mentions Estonia (on page 75), a little beautiful country in Eastern Europe, where I'm living.
 Gives some good advice March 2, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Overall I think the book is worth the read but I feel that the author does take some things a bit too far (pick interviewees up in a limo!?). The book has enough good points to outweigh the bad. Nice short read that can be read in a day and worth the $10.
It achieves its intended goal January 2, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The book is a quick read at 169 small pages and engaging. The book meets its intended goal of finding the best rock star technical talent for product development. He acknowledges that rock stars are not needed for many types of development (page 16).
Knowing that he was concentrating on rock stars, I bought the book anyway, looking for tips that I translate to my world where my customers are late adopters of technology and development is usually mixed in with O&M.
I did find some tips. Some just confirmed what I already believed to be true. The most useful chapters for me were Chapter 4 - Sorting Resumes (3 of my 6 dog-eared pages are in this chapter), and Chapter 7 - Fixing Suboptimal Teams.
Good nuggets of wisdom, not always broadly applicable November 10, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As ever, Joel Spolsky has good insight into software engineering and this book for technical talent-finding continues that trend. Many ideas are applicable for anyone seeking technical hiring advice and ideas but some are more applicable to certain domains. This caveat, however, does not diminish the value of the book.
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