Getting “Hello” Right – Why Good Interviewing is Vital for Success

Recruitment is stressful, for candidates, hiring managers, and existing team members. It’s also the first impression for all parties. So why is it often a haphazard, barely planned affair?

Through circumstances I won’t detail, early 2023 saw me job-hunting and encountering familiar old bad processes. Why haven’t we got better at this?

Okay, some companies have and there are many skilled recruiters supporting both clients and candidates to success. But too many avoidable errors remain; overly-complicated processes, unrealistic demands, delays, and out-of-date thinking.

Companies fail to hire the right people, candidates lose roles they’re perfectly suited for, because of bad practice.

Worse, candidates accept roles only to fail within weeks, or leave because those first weeks didn’t set them up for success.

Surely we can do better than this?

Job Description Mistakes

Recently I’ve read a lot of Job Descriptions. The quality has often left much to be desired. Let me highlight a few issues.

Location, Location, Location

Zoom, Teams, etc., and the pandemic lockdowns saw the remote working trend accelerate. We can work from anywhere yet the percentage of tech jobs with high in-office is increasing. Why?

There are benefits to face-to-face. Many junior developers find it beneficial to work with seniors to learn. Planning meetings can be easier with everyone in a room.

3+ days/week though? This restricts you to hiring within a few miles. Not the best people nearby though, they’ll be working remotely.

Ask yourself why you want this. Unless you have a solid answer, one that benefits your bottom line, focus your attention on the value and flex more.

Unicorns

I get it. You’re not really hunting unicorns. You wrote a wish-list JD. You don’t need it all. But if you make it too long, the candidate you want won’t apply.

I’ve heard of candidates skipping roles having seven skills of eight listed. Seven of twenty and no one you want will click? On the basis of your JD, they wouldn’t think they’d have a chance.

Equally, too many responsibilities will deter applications. An eighteen-month journey to burnout, thanks I’ll pass.

Here’s a recent example. A JD on LinkedIn the day before writing this had the following “What you’ll be doing”

-?????????Technical Lead

-?????????Team Lead

-?????????Product Owner

-?????????DevOps Lead

-?????????Technical Expert

That’s at least three jobs. If you need to deliver each, hope you don’t need sleep.

Be realistic. Think, if your current employee resigns because of workload, don’t just parrot out what they’d been doing. After all that’s why they’re leaving.

Salary

Most techies I’ve known are not driven first by money. However, they don’t want to be taken advantage of.

Salary ranges for the technical jobs are readily available. It doesn’t take long to check salaries on jobs boards. Offering below market rates is a recipe for disaster.

An email arrived today for a leadership role, 2 days/week in office. Reading the description it’s a fairly standard Development Manager position… until the salary line. They’re offering ￡45K… in 2023 - quick search on LinkedIn, first 4 roles (that stated salary, more later) in ￡70K - ￡90K range.

Only, and here’s the trick, despite the write-up, this role wasn’t titled “Development Manager”, but “Team Lead”. Sneaky, but a more junior title doesn’t hide what the job is. You won’t get the person you need. Be realistic. Either adjust your budget to get what you need or lower expectation to budget.

Secondly, why no salary on the job ad? Why use “competitive” or “excellent”? When I see this I think two things.

“Competitive” salaries are anything but. My expectation, from experience, is you get two or three stages in, to the point they’ve think they’ve hooked you then the bombshell is dropped.

Do they think that the candidate is so far in they’ll overlook being short-changed?

Unless the JD has some stand-out feature, I’m not going to apply without knowing salary. In all likelihood, neither is your ideal candidate – companies stating everything up front will get their attention first.

And if salary meets market rates when verbally stated I’d worry about culture. If it’s reasonable why isn’t the salary on the JD? Is their current team not paid market rate? Are they trying to hide new hire salaries.

It’s a dangerous tactic. What happens when the current team find out they’re 25% underpaid, despite all their service.

Well they hope no one finds out but keeping a secret long term is impossible. Benjamin Franklin, in 1735, wrote “three may keep a secret, if two are dead”. ??So they find out and the exodus begins.

Consolidate what you have before hiring. Assess whether the people you want to keep are adequately paid then put salary in the job ad.

Not Using an Agency

I’m not saying you should always use a recruitment agency when hiring technical staff. However, I want to highlight the issues you’ll face if you don’t.

Firstly, you’ll not get the consultancy good agencies provide. Agencies will tell you when you’re being unrealistic. They’ll help you improve your JD, avoiding pitfalls, and then provide the most useful service. They’ll stop you being overwhelmed.

How many responses are you expecting? A quick skim through LinkedIn shows several jobs indicating “Over 200 applicants”. I discussed this with one agency yesterday and they’d had 400+ for one role.

Do you want to sort through that many, weed out the chancers, and put the possibles into first tier, second tier, etc.? Do you realise how much time you’ll need?

If you’re going to handle recruitment internally and don’t have a dedicated talent agent, be aware of the time it will take to create a short-list.

Factor in agencies do initial screening calls, checking right to work, etc. before putting candidates forward. Without them, you’ll have to do that.

Also, if you advertise you’ll be able to pull from the pool of candidates who apply. An agency will have a network of passive candidates, people who might be perfectly suited but aren’t checking out the jobs boards.

Not saying you shouldn’t go direct to market. Just be aware of the effort required to be successful and the limitations. Assess your chance of success against time spent.

Interview Process Issues

Too Many Steps / Too Demanding on Candidates

The last few years have seen positive strides towards making more efficient interview processes. But not all companies are on board; some have even rolled back to a 1990s approach.

Four stage (or longer) processes for mid-level devs won’t cut it. It’s disproportionate. Technical tests/exercises taking many hours (one I saw this week c.18 hours) are hurdles top developers won’t jump through.

Are you trying to fail? Think what’s appropriate for the level you’re hiring. Don’t have unrealistic expectations. Don’t fail junior devs because they can’t tell you how to set up deployment pipelines in Azure. Be aware of the candidate. Tailor your interview to what they’ll do day to day.

Delays

Even though the market has slowed down in 2023, good developers have options. Lengthy stages to your process will mean to lose out on the best people.

If you’ve read through the 400+ applications I mentioned above, you may have found it difficult to narrow your shortlist sufficiently. So you book 20 first stage calls.

Conducting many calls is difficult to complete quickly – you have your regular job to do and can only commit a fraction of your time. As a result stage one takes four weeks.

When done, you contact your preferred six, asking for second interviews. Only four have taken other roles and are off the market. So you go back through the almosts, select the next four and contact them, only to find they’ve also found other roles.

Keep going and you’ll soon be reconsidering candidates rejected for good reason.

Don’t blow the final stage either. If you take time getting the offer and contract out, you could lose your candidate even after verbal confirmation. Waiting two weeks for the paperwork undermines your credibility and sows doubt.

Prepare beforehand – you know what you want to offer so have the contract ready. You may have to tweak it after negotiation but so what. Be efficient.

Poor Feedback

The worst thing, as a candidate, having taken the time for an interview (and the time beforehand to research company and interviewer) is to get poor or zero feedback upon rejection.

Simply saying you’re proceeding with other candidates is rude. It doesn’t help in any way and it doesn’t give a good impression of you or your company.

What if your preferred candidate rejects your offer, gets a better offer elsewhere, or accepts the dreaded counter-offer. If you’ve left things on good terms with the nearly candidates you can revisit, see if they are still on the market. If you’ve given poor feedback, why would they?

Worse still is ghosting during active applications. Two weeks for feedback is unacceptable. You, the manager, are being interviewed as much as the candidate. Slow responses show poor organisation, why would anyone want to work for you? You’re disorganised.

It’s simple – interview the candidate, give rapid feedback, even if you’re still building the next round shortlist. Tell the candidate what you liked, and the concerns you have. If you move forward, they have the chance to address your concerns.

False Economies with Offers

You’ve got to the end game. Now don’t blow it by getting clever. Under-offer, trying to demonstrate budget awareness, risks ruining all your good work.

Imagine you have a budget of ￡55K and a perfect candidate. Only you’ve discovered they’re currently paid ￡38K – massively undervalued, why they’re talking with you.

So you offer ￡45K, still giving the candidate a significant pay-rise but saving yourself ￡10K on your budget. Well done, you. You sit back in your chair thinking you’re the perfect manager.

Then their previous company counter-offers, matching, or exceeding, your offer; or another company offers at ￡55K. The candidate rejects your offer. You’ve lost them.

Well, you say, I’ll offer what I had in the budget in the first place. But by then it’s too late. You’ve already showed your hand. You’ve proven yourself no better than their previous manager. The trust isn’t there.

You have to start again. All your time is wasted.

Even if they did accept, you’ve not guaranteed longevity with this decision. Good technical types are constantly approached by recruiters. You are exactly the same danger as the company you poached them from. Within months they could be offered ￡55K elsewhere, and you’ll be back at square one.

If your budget allows for ￡55K and you believe the candidate is worth ￡55K, offer them ￡55K. You’re more likely to succeed if you do.

~*~

Of course, even if you get the interview process right, that’s only half the battle. You still have to onboard your new hire successful and that brings its own perils. More on that later.