Best hires are passionate engineers with major past accomplishments

The interview candidate may end up clearing tech interview rounds with flying colors, however does that mean that he is a passionate programmer with major past accomplishments? Great tech companies are there where they are today because of passionate engineers like you. What do I mean by passionate? Is the candidate treating the job as a 9 to 5 job, or is he motivated to do coding/technology related work outside of work and sharpening his technical chops. For instance, he could be trying out the latest open source library, or building some cool app, reading technical blogs or books or brushing up on design patterns and skills.

Why is passion important? Let me share a story with you first. When I was doing my PhD in US way back in 90's, half the class was from the Far Eastern countries such as China, Korea and Taiwan and a few were from East European countries such as Romania, Hungary and Russia. When we started, these students could hardly speak English and struggled to speak even one English sentence right. But that did not stop them from raising their hand and asking questions in the class while consulting an English dictionary! We had plenty of interesting moments in the class where some of us used to make fun and wonder how they would be able to get through the class. But we were equally confused and also quite amazed at the same time to see that American Professors would try very hard to understand what is being said and respected the effort being put in. We slowly became friends with these students and many used to have conversations with us while consulting a dictionary. We learned that they have studied in Chinese/Russian/Romanian throughout their life, even their Engineering! The first time they got exposed to English was when they appeared for TOEFL and GRE exams to come to a grad school in US.

By the end of the year, not only did they pass but topped the class in both theory and project work!

By 2nd year, their English had improved and we were able to have a decent conversation while understanding each other without much effort. We wondered if we traded places with them, how we would have fared? We were amazed to see these developments and were humbled by their dedication, humility and passion.

Sometimes I wonder if China has progressed to where it is today more so because of many such passionate and proud people at the grassroots level and less because of the government policies at the top.

Needless to say, down the road they did some great work and are professors, scientists and engineers in various institutions around the world.

How is the above story relevant to Software Engineering domain, or for that matter, any domain? Passionate people on a team bring in high energy and motivate other people on the team as well to learn new things. Such folks are self-driven and are not affected by roadblocks or how cool their project is - in fact they find ways to make uncool projects cool. I have hired a few passionate engineers in the past where they brought new ideas on the table and helped disrupt & build high quality products. Many of them have progressed to become Directors and Chief Architects in the industry today and carrying on with the tradition of disruption in their orgs. Some of them didn't even have formal education in technology and were from liberal arts or graphics designer background.

Such folks possess high degree of Learn & Be Curious leadership quality, which is one of Amazon's 14 such Leadership Principles. They tend to have a growth mindset, are always looking to improve themselves and are willing to change and adapt if needed.

But how do you find such an engineer during the interview? By digging into her past accomplishments and understanding what metrics were used to measure success, what abstractions did she use on products she built and why, what design decisions and trade-offs she made and why, initiatives she took to remove roadblocks and resolve challenges along the way, new skills she learned along the way and any formal recognition she received. This measures the pattern of high achievement in the past and such folks tend to continue to carry forward the torch of high performance. Another question I usually ask is how do you keep yourself updated with technology and what are your passions outside of work and then dig deeper from there on. It's amazing how much you as an interviewer can learn from a passionate candidate and probably even get introduced to new things which you were not aware of before.

I have also hired a few awesome engineers from interiors of India where I conducted interview in Hindi and they showed the same passion and hunger as Chinese/Russian students mentioned above.

Newer and shiny technology comes very fast and also becomes obsolete equally fast. A candidate's past achievements when combined with passion and right attitude goes a long way in learning new skills and staying on top of technology trends while building a successful tech organization. Don't get me wrong, many other behaviors such as leadership, mentoring, influencing etc are also important to be successful on the job.

But if I had to choose top 2 traits, then it is passion + perseverance to deliver significant results. Passion without accomplishments cannot go far, but passion combined with accomplishments feed into each other and keep the other going strong.

Top performers with major past accomplishments continue to be motivated to stay at the top wherever they are. Needless to say, these are the folks who get the best performance appraisal.

We need to ensure that these high performance candidates get a fair opportunity as outlined in 5 well-balanced tips Hiring Manager should follow to hire top engineers. After all, its the company which stands to gain most if it were to hire such a top engineer.

What do you think? Please share your valuable thoughts in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: All the postings and views on this site are my own and has no bearing whatsoever on my employer's position.

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