So you think you know how to hire Software Engineers?

There are no right answers or crystal balls in recruiting as you know. If you are focused on the big picture and take directionally appropriate steps, you are doing well compared to the industry. Most companies are struggling with hiring in the current market. 

 Hiring is a numbers game at the top and bottom of your funnel. If you hire 3 people and only one is a dud, you are doing very well. No one is 100% and if they claim to be, they are on the wrong side of the numbers and are leaving a lot of qualified candidates on the table. You should also be able to recognize a bad hire early on. An obviously bad hire should last no longer than 90-120 days.

General rules of the road:

• Yes’s or No’s are good, stay away from Maybe’s. This should apply throughout the entire process. If someone passes a certain threshold and they have the requisite skills they should advance to the next stage, ideally a full round.
• Selling must be done at each step of the process. Treat each new candidate as a top prospect which means selling and making them feel included during the initial and all subsequent steps. 
• In addition to the technical screening, a candidate should come away from the initial conversation with a better idea of what the company is building, how they would fit into the organization, and what they would be working on if they were hired.  You can ask them what they know about the company, and what you can share to help them understand about the company better. Share your vision and mission with excitement early on in the process to help get them excited. 
• Level with candidates at each stage by sharing your concerns regarding what they may be missing. This honesty along with a clear understanding of what motivates them will make it easier to close them if they are the right candidate. Give candidates a chance to understand your concerns and answer them.
• In the current market active candidates have plenty of options and are very busy, so the old methodology of expecting them to spend hours researching the company just isn’t realistic and isn’t a good indicator of a right or wrong candidate. Take the proactive approach and tell them why your company is great and why they want to work there. It’s much easier to do this at the beginning of the process, then later (after all of the technical grilling). 
• Try to gain an early understanding of what motivates the person (a short talk about what they do for fun is always good) and use this to help position the opportunity with each candidate. This type of early discussion can also tell you the hiring manager whether the person has PASSION or a lack thereof.  In the long run this is often as critical as knowing REACT vs Vue, etc.
• Explain the engineering organization, the key players, why the candidate might get great exposure.
• Recruiting is not about perfection but about hiring people within your own risk/reward channel. Try to understand what you are willing to compromise on in a candidate. You won’t learn everything about a person during a few interviews. Design a simple process based on simple math (weighted averages) that throws off enough signal to make an educated decision. This varies from team to team but should not be a 100% consensus agreement. Instead leave it up to a score and your best assessment, blended with input from your team.
• Hiring is not a science which makes it difficult to put process and rigid thoughts behind it. Make more offers faster to people who stand up to your process. You will make some mistakes, and that’s okay.
• Hiring must be a top priority and worthy of investing time and effort. 
• Atmosphere of passion, fun, inclusion… a clear vision which is echoed throughout the process will pull more great candidates into the funnel. Engineers are notoriously slow to warm up so give them a chance and the platform to show their creativity, not just their ability to recall syntax. 

 Consider this:

• Only 50% of software engineers stay in a role for 2+ years.
• Shortening the overall time from introduction to a Yes/No decision is beneficial for all involved and will lead to less falloff during the process. 
• One of our start-up clients VPE’s has 30+ years of experience at companies ranging in size from 8-person start-ups to FAANG. In the past year alone, they have made 3 poor hires and 4 good ones. Despite the mistakes they have made progress because they have made hires.  
• Many great engineers interview poorly and do even worse in live coding exercises. Consider giving candidates the option of a take-home exercise instead. 
• If a certain amount of otherwise qualified candidates are failing during your interview process, it may be time to take a harder look at the interview process itself and what it’s really testing.