Hiring complete
I’ve picked my Director of Digital Things. His name is Ryan Nelson, and his portfolio can be found here. He’ll be starting in April.
Longtime friend-of-the-site Nima Yousefi (he coded Scrippets) will be coming on board to handle a few special projects in the meantime.
With ridiculously good candidates to choose from, it’s not just protocol to say it was a tough decision. I learned quite a bit, both from video-chat interviews with applicants and calling references. I would have been happy with any of my final few choices; hiring just one was difficult. It forced me to focus on what I saw this person doing two, six and twenty-four months down the road.
I largely followed my original plan for the hiring process, starting with reviewing portfolios and emailing follow-up questions. I assigned a special project to my top few contenders, both to see what they could do and how they would discuss it afterwards.
You can read the assigment if you like. I’ve left it to the candidates whether they want to share what they did with the world.
If you feel like doing your own riff on the project, by all means go for it. If you’re using my text, I’d like attribution, but otherwise it’s free and clear.
Articles
March 2nd, 2010 at 11:31 am
Mazel tov! I’m impressed by your hiring process. It’s a model of patience and thoroughness. Gotta remind myself to remember it next time I need to hire someone.
March 2nd, 2010 at 11:55 am
Congrats to Ryan!
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Congratulations, Ryan. :-) John, you picked a good one. Thanks, Heather (Ryan’s partner)
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:22 pm
For a moment there I thought you had hired the captain of Blackburn Rovers and New Zealand’s World Cup soccer team – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Nelsen
The Ryan Nelson you did hire looks like a much better fit.
March 2nd, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Wow, getting flooded with txts, emails, tweets, messages. Thank you everyone, and thanks John. I would like everyone to see the fallacy project after I whip up a few missing pieces. I’d love to hear feedback on it down the road.
Also, regular visitors:
What would you like to see in a tastefully updated design of johnaugust.com?
March 2nd, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Ryan, you’re a great choice. I just took a look at your site and it’s very impressive.
There’s something very simple about John’s website, and I like that. There’s nothing extra that you don’t need. But it would be nice to get a more eye-catching header. Something that really speaks to you instantly. I really enjoy http://artfulwriter.com/ ’s header. I’m sure you’ll do great.
March 2nd, 2010 at 6:51 pm
Congratulations, Ryan, and excellent job, John. John, would you consider linking to some of the other finalists? It’s understandable why you might not want to, since you’d be giving away valuable information you worked hard to acquire. But on the other hand, you seem like an incredibly nice guy and it might help some of the runners-up find work.
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Yes! Yes! Yes! My goodness do I love Ryan. Cannot wait to see what he did with the challenge project.
March 3rd, 2010 at 7:27 am
Congrats Ryan!! :)
March 3rd, 2010 at 8:59 am
Very cool Ryan. :)
My favorite fallacy from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster:
http://www.venganza.org/images/PiratesVsTemp.png
There used to be a lot of pirates… and as you can see from the chart… as the number of pirates has dropped, the average global temperature has risen… therefore… A) Pirate Absence is the cause of global warming… and B) The most direct solution to the melting polar icecaps is to immediately pillage by sea.
March 3rd, 2010 at 3:40 pm
@Ryan: “What would you like to see in a tastefully updated design of johnaugust.com?”
Well, if it’s “tastefully” updated, that puts most of my ideas on ice. I guess John remembers when I put the “Liz Hurley Sandpapers Her Ass” headline on the IMDb homepage, and that’s why I didn’t make it out of round 1.
Good luck in the new gig, Ryan. Looking forward to seeing what you and John come up with.
@Synthian: If pirate absence is causing global warming, can we trace the severe winter storms along the East Coast to the upswing in piracy out of Somalia? How does the piracy of Hollywood movies factor into this?
@John: No doing your Les Grossman imitation until Ryan’s been in the job at least a month. ;-)
March 3rd, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Thanks again, everyone!
@synthian You’re speakin’ my language.
March 3rd, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Congrats, Ryan. Undoubtedly, at some point you’ll be required to make pretty something I made ugly. Good luck with that. :P
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:34 pm
@nima Thanks, Nima. I’ll be on the lookout for commented-out jokes.
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Congrats Ryan!
And I just heard through Leno that gay marriage has now been “approved” in D.C., so kudos to all fighting the fight for equality!
March 4th, 2010 at 5:14 am
@ Greg Bulmash…….. I don’t know!? Do you have a chart? – Things mostly depend on whether or not you have a chart.
March 4th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Congrats to you and Ryan!
March 13th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
What a strange assignment. What made you think of that John?