I have been working for a very large Australian website for over six years and during this period have been fortunate enough to hire many Infrastructure Operations Engineers that now work for that company. I want to detail the evolution of the hiring process and what I have driven it to over the last six years.
How was I hired This is the interview process I went through at my current company:

• A technical and cultural pre-screening from a recruiter
• A short phone interview with a small set of adhoc questions around technical skill set. How does DNS work?
• An hour long face to face interview with the hiring manager and another senior engineer testing both technical capability and culture fit
• Another hour long face to face interview with a HR representative testing cultural fit 
• Lastly, a reference check to confirm technical capability and cultural fit performed over …

At MySQL I think I once instituted something which became sort of a tradition. If you are not a current or former MySQLer, the rest of this post may not be too interesting, and possibly it's not that interestying in the general sense either. But as I no longer work for MySQL, and many other MySQLers who remember this are also former MySQLers today, I use this medium, my blog, for this years review of the #1 swedish delicatessen, Swedish New Potatoes. And yes, I am aware that this has little to do with the MySQL product, although it does have something to do with the culture of the old MySQL (i.e. you could email company-wide about potatoes and still keep your job).

So, what about this years new potatoes? They are kinda early this year, it's not even June yet, and I had my first last night. Newly, and lightly, boiled, eaten with some butter and a pinch of salt. The verdict? In potato-technical terms, the term is Yummy! This exquisite …

While this blog is co-authored by the whole MySQL Telecom team, many members in or around the team also write their personal blogs, which you will find very useful. So please follow me on a tour on the absolute top MySQL Cluster blogs in the world:

Johan Andersson is the MySQL Cluster Principal Consultant, and has been with MySQL Cluster since the Ericsson days. He travels around the world to our most demanding customers and shares his guru advice. Rumor has it that recently on a training gig the students made him sign their MySQL t-shirts, can you get closer to living like a rock star than this? Occasionally he also shares some great tips and status info on his blog. Like right now you can find a set of handy scripts to manage all of your MySQL Cluster from one command line, definitively recommended to try!

…

While this blog is co-authored by the whole MySQL Telecom team, many members in or around the team also write their personal blogs, which you will find very useful. So please follow me on a tour on the absolute top MySQL Cluster blogs in the world:

Johan Andersson is the MySQL Cluster Principal Consultant, and has been with MySQL Cluster since the Ericsson days. He travels around the world to our most demanding customers and shares his guru advice. Rumor has it that recently on a training gig the students made him sign their MySQL t-shirts, can you get closer to living like a rock star than this? Occasionally he also shares some great tips and status info on his blog. Like right now you can find a set of handy scripts to manage all of your MySQL Cluster from one command line, definitively recommended to try!

…

While this blog is co-authored by the whole MySQL Telecom team, many members in or around the team also write their personal blogs, which you will find very useful. So please follow me on a tour on the absolute top MySQL Cluster blogs in the world:

Johan Andersson is the MySQL Cluster Principal Consultant, and has been with MySQL Cluster since the Ericsson days. He travels around the world to our most demanding customers and shares his guru advice. Rumor has it that recently on a training gig the students made him sign their MySQL t-shirts, can you get closer to living like a rock star than this? Occasionally he also shares some great tips and status info on his blog. Like right now you can find a set of handy scripts to manage all of your MySQL Cluster from one command line, definitively recommended to try!

…

We (in the Telecom team at MySQL) have been debating whether we should call this blog 'MySQL in Telco' or 'MySQL in Communications'. Naming discussions tend to take long time, and this one was no exception.

From a US perspective, it appears that Telecom is an outdated term. Wireless carriers and cable television companies do not consider themselves as Telecom companies. Maybe for this reason, large US-headquartered vendors including Sun, HP, IBM and Oracle all have a 'Communications & Media' practice.

From a European perspective, Telecom is used for equipment vendors and service providers. Companies like Logica, Cap Gemini, Atos Origin and TietoEnator refer to the vertical as 'Telecom & Media'.

Of the global SI's in India, Wipro and TCS refer to Telecom while Infosys talk about Communications.

As a working title we at one time used 'MySQL blablabla' blog, and funnily enough, there was a compromise …

We (in the Telecom team at MySQL) have been debating whether we should call this blog 'MySQL in Telco' or 'MySQL in Communications'. Naming discussions tend to take long time, and this one was no exception.

From a US perspective, it appears that Telecom is an outdated term. Wireless carriers and cable television companies do not consider themselves as Telecom companies. Maybe for this reason, large US-headquartered vendors including Sun, HP, IBM and Oracle all have a 'Communications & Media' practice.

From a European perspective, Telecom is used for equipment vendors and service providers. Companies like Logica, Cap Gemini, Atos Origin and TietoEnator refer to the vertical as 'Telecom & Media'.

Of the global SI's in India, Wipro and TCS refer to Telecom while Infosys talk about Communications.

As a working title we at one time used 'MySQL blablabla' blog, and funnily enough, there was a compromise …

We (in the Telecom team at MySQL) have been debating whether we should call this blog 'MySQL in Telco' or 'MySQL in Communications'. Naming discussions tend to take long time, and this one was no exception.

From a US perspective, it appears that Telecom is an outdated term. Wireless carriers and cable television companies do not consider themselves as Telecom companies. Maybe for this reason, large US-headquartered vendors including Sun, HP, IBM and Oracle all have a 'Communications & Media' practice.

From a European perspective, Telecom is used for equipment vendors and service providers. Companies like Logica, Cap Gemini, Atos Origin and TietoEnator refer to the vertical as 'Telecom & Media'.

Of the global SI's in India, Wipro and TCS refer to Telecom while Infosys talk about Communications.

As a working title we at one time used 'MySQL blablabla' blog, and funnily enough, there was a compromise …

I’ve started working on a session on the practice of online ombuds ? especially as it applies to Free Software and Open Source communities. The session is based on my work in the Free Software, PHP, Mozilla, MySQL and Open Source communities - in particular, recent work (which I need to get back to) on the Open Source Initiative mailing lists.

So far, the session has been pitched to the following events: CommunityOne 2008 (waiting), FOSDEM 2008 (accepted), JavaOne 2008 (declined), Open Web Vancouver 2008 (waiting) and OSCON 2008 (waiting).

I’ll start posting alpha versions of slides and so on as they are ready. …

My friend Monty (of MySQL fame) has started blogging at http://monty-says.blogspot.com/. After just a day, he already has two posts ? one on the Sun acquisition of MySQL and a longer one on the new Maria engine.

If you are interested in MySQL, you should definitely check the blog out.