Weekly Roundup: Top 5 Career and Tech Hiring Tips -- October 24, 2014

Welcome to CyberCoders' Weekly Roundup! Every week, we handpick the top five stories from around the web that offer great insight into hiring in the tech industry. 

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1. How Google Handles IT for its Workers [WSJ]

This in-depth Q&A with Google's Chief Information Officer (CIO) talks about the strong link between technology and company culture.

"I think that CIOs need to understand the cultural thing—they define the culture of their company by the technology they give to their employees."

"The first responder closes the ticket over 90% of the time in my organization. All kinds of things happen as a result. People are happier. Your organization can change technologies more easily, and your change management becomes so much easier."

2. The Last Word from Science: Your Goals Aren’t Tough Enough [INC]

A few years ago, researchers undertook a meta-analysis of decades of scientific research on the effectiveness of goals, depending on difficulty.

"They studied the performance outcomes of more than 40,000 goal-setters (and non goal-setters) in 100 different industries or tasks, from laboratory to real-world settings," he reports. What was the result of combing through this massive amount of data?

"The highest or most difficult goals produced the highest levels of effort and performance," researchers found.

As long as you have employees have two things:

• A stream of feedback--for direction.
• Self-efficacy--the believe that they can do it.

3. How to Exercise Your Creative Muscle [Fast Company]

Engaging in some form of creative expression: writing, painting, performing, etc. directly translates into higher performance in the workplace. 

A misunderstanding is that creativity is a talent. When, really, it's a skill that can be sharpened by exercise.

Start with something you love.

4. How to Recruit an All-Star Team for Your Startup [INC]

Investors won't back you unless you have a solid, talented team. "Simply going out for drinks and chatting is not the way to hire an all-star team," according to the article.

Tapping into your founders' network, LinkedIn and getting referrals is the best way to build a great team. Among some of the best questions to ask candidates:

Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your manager's position on an issue. What was the issue, how did you handle it and what was the outcome?"

5. Microsoft Sales Soar 25% on Huge Demand for Office, Surface, Xbox and Cloud [CNN Money]

Microsoft is no longer depending on its OS to make sales.

"Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) sales soared 25% in the last three months on the back of cloud, Xbox and, yes, even the Surface tablet and Nokia smartphones."

The real money is in the cloud.

"Sales of cloud services to businesses grew by a whopping 128% last quarter, driven primarily by the company's Office and Azure platforms. Eighty percent of the Fortune 500 are using Microsoft's cloud, Nadella said on a conference call with investors Thursday."