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InfoQ Homepage Podcasts Andrew King of Ocado Technology on Great Hiring Practices and Designing Culture

Andrew King of Ocado Technology on Great Hiring Practices and Designing Culture

In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Andrew King, Organisational Scientist at Ocado Technology about the hiring practices they use and how to design the culture you want.

Key Takeaways

  • Context effect says that anything that happens in decision making that is altered by the context in which the decision is made
  • The compromise effect – when faced with a choice of options we try to avoid the extremes
  • These types of effects impact hiring processes and culture design and have to be actively mitigated against
  • Design your interviewing questions very carefully to explore the things that will actually help in the decision-making process
  • The content of an interview is the candidate’s responses, not the questions that are asked
  • To implement effective change, follow the principles rather than blindly following a process

Show Notes

  • 00:22 Introductions
  • 00:42 The goal of building the best tech in the best possible way
  • 01:12 People are irrationally fallible, in predictable ways
  • 01:47 Describing context effects – anything that happens in decision making that is altered by the context in which the decision is made
  • 02:28 Examples of how context effect plays out
  • 02:50 The compromise effect – when faced with a choice of options we try to avoid the extremes
  • 03:30 Ways that Ocado is using these ideas to improve their hiring process
  • 05:20 Distinguishing criteria for interviewing questions to help avoid the context effect
  • 05:45 Design your interviewing questions very carefully to explore the things that will actually help in the decision-making process
  • 07:06 The Ocado culture of building exactly what is needed rather than using off the shelf products
  • 07:48 The content of an interview is the candidate’s responses, not the questions that are asked
  • 08:20 Identify what someone in the role needs to know and craft the questions to expose that knowledge
  • 08:56 The value of behavioral interviews to explore a values match
  • 09:18 If someone doesn’t pass the behavioral interview they are not even considered for a role, irrespective of their technical competency
  • 10:07 Designing a culture and ways to help imbed cultural values in a group
  • 10:38 There is no single approach – different techniques and tools will be applicable in different areas of the organisation
  • 11:09 There is no easy way to imbed a culture – you have to work out the nuances in the different areas
  • 11:32 Follow the principles rather than blindly following a process
  • 11:42 Changing the culture of an organisation takes up to seven years
  • 12:03 The importance of the onboarding process to the culture of an organisation
  • 13:05 The way the couching group support the various areas of the organisation to support the culture
  • 13:57 In order to be effective the coaches need high empathy and facilitation skills – they are part of the organisation
  • 14:49 To adopt some of these ideas, use a Kanban approach – start where you are now, identify what needs fixing and work on one thing at a time
  • 15:32 Identify where the biggest problem is and address that first
  • 15:58 Use small steps and nudges an environment that brings out the best in people
  • 16:13 Complex effects will be rife – it is inevitable
  • 16:32 Use the sprint backlog idea from Scrum or WIP Limits in Kanban to help the people leading the change not become overwhelmed – focus on the next small step rather than the entire problem space

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