Tech That Matters

Hacker recruitment: When it is safe to have a hacker on your IT staff

An entry on Network World's site by Mich Kabay got me thinking about how corporations should go about hiring a hacker. Kabay makes a lot of good points, especially to re-think the entire interview process to delve deeper into the personality of the potential employee and whether s/he has "reformed" enough to be suitable for your shop. But the more I looked at some of his suggestions, the more I began to realize that much of what he says is germane for highly skilled staffers, even those that don't come with arrest records or who have done something questionable in their pasts.

Kabay suggests that you pose a hypothetical case of someone who is badly treated by a supervisor and feels abused. What should the candidate do? How does the candidate feel and what actions should s/he take in response, if any? We all get a bum rap by our supervisors at some point in our lives; the question is how to absorb that treatment and how we move on.

How much of a sense of entitlement does a candidate have, and how much do you (or the greater organization) have as well? One time when I interviewed with Microsoft in Redmond I couldn't get over this sense of corporate entitlement – it was one of the biggest turn-offs that I had during my interviewing day there. I got the feeling that I wasn't going to fit in, no matter how smart I thought (or they thought) I was.

Kabay also suggests posing another hypothetical case of criminal hacking that steals someone's identity, and then ask the candidate how the victim would feel. You are looking for signs of empathy or its absence. Finally, evaluate the candidate in terms of their honesty and how they discuss their past behavior, how they justify or gloss over things that you think they should have gone into more detail or been more contrite.

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