Craftlogic Blog

I was planning to write a new blog post earlier this year regarding how badly companies perform technical interviews with IT candidates. So many companies assume that if you're a technical person on staff then you must know how to interview candidates. This is so far from the truth. Companies these days seem to try to figure how how NOT to hire rather than HOW to hire. They're not looking for smart people that can figure things out. They're looking for a wishlist of check-boxes and if not all bo...

This is a letter that our new clients get upon signing a new agreement and is by me. It shows my confidence in Craftlogic and what we can do for our clients. I don't take this lightly. I believe in our people and what we can do to help our clients. It's worth a read.

Craftlogic has added a new staffing model to our existing offerings. It’s called Recruiting-as-a-Service. We have a few clients who have already signed with us using this model and so far we are excited about the results.

As a follow-up to my previous post, Youth is Wasted on the Young, this post will give a personal example of how valuable experience can be. I was working on a project back in the late 90s on a 2-month contract which lasted over 2 years. I was hired as a C++ consultant to help them with the communication protocol between a VRTX, a real-time operating system, and Windows NT. Yeah, this dates me a bit but this will help explain may major point of this post. On my very first day, I sat in a me...

Craftlogic is pleased to announce that Brad Deppe is the new Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Kevin Ferguson, President and CEO of Craftlogic, is excited about the new direction of the company and Brad's role in helping make it all happen.

I see and review hundreds of resumes a week and have been doing so for over 10 years. Whether you’re sending your resume to a recruiter at a staffing company or sending it to HR at a company, you need to realize that certain information needs to be presented in the proper way to keep your resume from going in the bit bucket (electronic trash can). Most companies large and small use Applicant Tracking Systems. The ATS takes resumes that were submitted by email or via job sites or company webs...

All companies need to hire people from time to time. However, how a candidate is interviewed is often an afterthought. To hire the best people, you need an Interviewing Strategy. Interviewing done right is hard work. For the last 12 years, Craftlogic has been doing deep technical interviews when hiring people for our projects and for our clients' projects. Our focus is on the interview.

When I hit 50+ last month (you can guess at the + part), I thought to myself. “Would I hire me at my age? Would anybody else want to hire me?” The answer I kept coming up with? Probably not. I’ve been writing software for about 27 years. I work in IT every day and write software a lot of those days. The rest of the time I’m deep in software and technology for my career. Although I can likely do a better job than most half my age, I would have a hard time finding someone to hire me. Thankf...

Do you know this quote from Steve McQueen in the movie Le Mans? "When you’re racing, it... it’s life. Anything that happens before or after... is just waiting." There's a lot of truth to it. I've been road racing cars for the past 6 years. I've had the privilege to race on some of the greatest tracks in the world like Daytona, Laguna Seca, Sebring, Road America, Road Atlanta, VIR, and many others.

IT staffing firms SUCK! Yes, I mean SUCK! I think most people hate IT staffing firms like they hate used car salesmen and lawyers. I started Craftlogic in 2003 because I hated dealing with IT staffing firms. Anybody can match acronyms on a resume and forward it to a hiring manager. Why do you need an IT staffing firm for that? Just post the ads yourself and save the fee. Geez! After all, aren’t you doing all the work for them anyway by sifting through unqualified resumes hoping to find a gem...

Trying to hire IT talent in a seller's market is hard enough. Keeping the talent you have is even harder. There are a number studies and articles that go into this such as this Forbe's article which states in a nutshell, "employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less over their lifetime." That’s a pretty dramatic statement.

I've had a lot of experience hiring people over the years. Before I started Craftlogic in 2003, I was a software developer writing code on a daily basis like I had been doing since the late 80s. I had to hire people for projects I worked on and I saw how my fellow coworkers performed interviews and how much time was taken away from their work to do so. I saw how IT staffing firms were throwing resumes at us like a handful of darts and hoping one would stick while we did their job for them siftin...

People write articles, books, blogs, and such because they believe they have something important to say. They hope people will read what they wrote, appreciate it and maybe learn something or improve their lives and maybe even change the world! Well, I have no such naive aspirations. So, instead, I'm going to rant about something that WE should change in our business culture: the culture of non-responsiveness.

The business I'm in is always about talent. Whether it's talent for our development projects or for our clients', it's all about finding the right talent. Like I mentioned in my previous article, Are you trying to hire a Robot or a Human, hiring practices need to change with the times and you need to know the current market and job situation to do so.

I ask this question based on how I've seen companies hire people. I've interviewed many thousands of IT professionals and hired many hundreds of them over the past 12 years or so. What is it I look for? I look for smart people that can do the job.