Just published! The Interviewer's Pocketbook

25 September 2014


One of the biggest challenges that organisations face is finding and identifying the right talent, so I'm pleased to announce the publication of a book that helps to address that problem. The Interviewer's Pocketbook is a compact guide for hiring managers, showing how they can plan for and conduct successful recruitment interviews. A successful interview is one in which you can identify the right person for the job, and point to evidence that shows the candidate is best suited to the role. Too many interviews rely on gut instinct because there is little formal training for many interviewers, especially in small businesses, so this quick guide provides some tips to enable you to better differentiate candidates and hire with confidence.

A photo of the Interviewer's Pocketbook

The book was originally written by John Townsend in 1987 and updated by him in 1999. I updated this edition to reflect changes in equality legislation and business culture, and to focus exclusively on recruitment interviews. (The previous editions also covered other internal communications situations that required one to one meetings.)

For more information, including the table of contents, see my page for the Interviewer's Pocketbook here. I'll update it with a free sample in due course, and will let you know on the blog here when it' live.

The book is published by Management Pocketbooks and is part of their popular series that is often used in large companies for internal training. The book is also available through book stores and I've posted some links to where you can buy the book here.

I have a limited number of copies available for review in the UK, so please contact me if you're interested. If you know someone who might be interested in this book, please do share this blog post or the book page with them. Every share, tweet, comment and review is very much appreciated!

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Using the Raspberry Pi Minecraft API in the new version of Raspbian

23 September 2014


The Raspberry Pi Foundation updated the Raspbian software the week before last. The good news is that Minecraft is now preinstalled in Raspbian, so you can start playing it, and more importantly programming it in Python, straight away.

However, it installs into a new location, so you might need to update any programs you've written so they can find the Minecraft Raspberry Pi API. Here's the code you need to get Minecraft working again:

import sys
sys.path.append("/opt/minecraft-pi/api/python/mcpi")
import minecraft
mc = minecraft.Minecraft.create()
mc.postToChat("Welcome to Minecraft!")

The important line is the second one - the API is now found at this location. The rest of this code posts a message to Minecraft to show it's working.

If you're a Minecraft fan, try out my Minecraft Maze Maker program!

the maze being built

The program makes a life-size maze you can wander around in, seen here from the air

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Credits

© Sean McManus. All rights reserved.

Visit www.sean.co.uk for free chapters from Sean's coding books (including Mission Python, Scratch Programming in Easy Steps and Coder Academy) and more!

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