Stop the fluff: A beginner’s guide to tech recruitment

Stop the fluff: A beginner’s guide to tech recruitment

Starting your career as a tech recruiter can be quite challenging. I still recall my first days at Intuit, trying to keep up in a fast-paced, detail-oriented environment to provide exceptional service to my stakeholders.?

Working with engineering managers requires you to step up your game if you want to become a trusted advisor. I once heard that managers are not interested in the “sauce-making” of hiring. In a sometimes chaotic world, many busy managers look for the bottom line, especially when dealing with the complex process of trying to predict human behavior.??

In other words, they don’t care about “fluff,” which refers to half-baked assumptions not based on any data (either qualitative or quantitative). Now, you might be asking, “OK, so what DO hiring managers care about?” The answer is this: Engineering managers are often interested in root cause analysis, rapid experiments, quick iterations, and actionable insights.?

Let me unpack some of this for you. In this post, I’ll introduce Intuit’s hiring process and share four lessons I’ve learned as an entry level recruiter looking to distinguish myself and bring true value to my stakeholders. If you’re considering establishing your career as a recruiter in the tech space, this post is for you!??

Intuit’s data-driven hiring process

In order to assess candidates without any bias, Intuit has created an interview experience called A4A or “Assessing for Awesome.” Candidates are given a task in a similar way they would experience it on the job and are asked to present it to a small group of interviewers, who are their future colleagues.?

Candidates are assessed against “skills and values,” a premade set of criteria accepted by the hiring team. Assessors are encouraged to use behavioral interview questions, to avoid groupthink, and to ensure the candidate is an awesome fit. The A4A process is highly structured, taking the candidate through a set of four kinds of interviews, yielding the result of a same-day decision.?

At this point, you may ask yourself how it’s possible to provide a same-day decision to a candidate. How can we be so sure that a candidate is the right fit for a role? It can actually be quite simple as long as you leverage data throughout the whole hiring process, from the first intake session to the decision meeting, as part of ongoing communication with the hiring manager.

Four lessons learned

On your quest to become a trusted tech recruiter, you may want to reflect on how to leverage data in order to remove bias.?

Here are four lessons to build your rapport with engineering managers so that you become the person they trust with hiring decisions.?

1. Know the size of your targeted audience?

How big is your candidate pool, considering the specific tech stack you are looking for? Do you have a potentially large number of candidates, or is it a niche role that requires a unique skill set that can only be found in a small portion of the population? The common tool for determining this number is LinkedIn.

Share this number with the hiring manager and provide your recommendation. Based on my experience, when they understand this (especially if the candidate pool is relatively small), they may reconsider the job requirements. Then go back to your skills and values doc with the manager and fine tune it. Verify that all you have there is an actual “must-have'' for this role – nothing more, nothing less.?

The hiring manager isn’t willing to compromise and drop some of their requirements? I suggest you set a timeline for a rapid experiment. Search for a candidate using the current profile, but limit your search to one to two weeks. Make sure to update the hiring manager with your data-backed insights. There may be times when they need to see with their own eyes that finding the right candidate can be very difficult (or even impossible).?

2. Set KPIs for your recruitment funnel

The next time you have a hiring need in the tech sector and are trying to build rapport with the hiring manager, it’s recommended that you work with the data you already have or that you can at least develop or estimate.

Set some weekly targets for:

  • Number of candidates to reach out to (from Linkedin, career websites, recruiting agencies, employee referrals, etc.)
  • Number of initial screenings
  • Number of CV submissions to the hiring manager
  • Number of on-site/advanced interviews (A4A)
  • Number of offers extended

How many of the above do you need in order to get to one hire? See example below:

No alt text provided for this image

Feel free to share your weekly goals with the hiring managers. Being transparent and proactive often increases the level of confidence they have in you, knowing that you're working hard to boost the candidate pipeline.?

In addition, tracking your funnel makes it easier to diagnose and find the root cause if things aren’t moving as smoothly as you would expect. For example, if you can’t seem to submit enough candidates to the hiring manager, you may want to explore your outreach response rate, the effectiveness of the source for hiring, or job posting. I recommend setting weekly targets so you can quickly iterate if any change is needed.?

3. Use a behavioral interview approach for candidate assessment

The behavioral interview approach has become more and more common over the last few years. Employers understand that current and past behaviors are the best predictors of future performance. With this approach, the hiring manager and panel strive to get away from assumptions and general phrases and ask the candidate to provide some actual examples of relevant situations they’ve faced in the past.?

As part of Intuit's A4A process, we take the “show, don’t tell” approach with presenting a craft demo or a code assignment. This gives us a chance to witness the candidates facing a similar challenge to what they will face on the job. This way, we can deeply assess the candidate’s ability to perform in a similar “real-life” situation. We consider this process to be data collection, gathering all information needed in order to feel confident in our hiring decision.?

Encourage both the hiring manager and panel to prepare their questions before the interview, so they can be fully focused on listening to the candidate and extract hiring insights that can help you during the decision meeting.?

4. Drop the FOMO!

Can you imagine hiring the first person interviewed for a role? At Intuit, that happens quite often! Review your skills and values, the actual must-haves you?

decided on with the hiring manager at the beginning of the process. If you’ve done a good, detailed job, assessing your candidate against it could create confidence that you’ve removed unnecessary bias from the hiring process – yes, even if it’s your first interview.?

At this point, I know many people think, “But what if there’s a better candidate out there?” Indeed, there might be qualified candidates, but do you REALLY need to interview them if the one you have already ticks all the boxes? If so, I suggest you consider fine-tuning your criteria, as they just might not be detailed enough. Then ensure there aren’t more changes that need to be made in your process (e.g, editing your job description or Linkedin). Finalize your iterations, and relaunch the process.?

An invitation to become truly customer-obsessed

Think of the engineering managers as your internal customer. How can you make sure you deliver an unrivaled benefit? At Intuit, we usually advise people to “fall in love with our customers’ problems.”

Engineering managers aren't recruiters; that’s you. They are not supposed to know how to hire the best talent; that’s why they need you. Seeing the talent world through their eyes could be equivalent to you staring at a screen full of code. I bet that code is challenging for you to fully understand!?

Don’t be afraid to embrace your impact on the process and drive it along with them. Be data-driven, sweat the details, and deliver excellence.?

Any thoughts? Feel free to comment below and share your best practices!?

Amichai Oron

I Help Tech companies transform their vision into paying products. Proven success with $100M+ Industry Leaders, Align your product with customers and investors in 90 days

4 天前

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Svetlana Ratnikova

CEO @ Immigrant Women In Business | Social Impact Innovator | Global Advocate for Women's Empowerment

3 周

???? ??? ?? ?? ???????? ??? ?????? ???? ?????? ???: ?????? ????? ??? ??????? ?????? ??????, ?????? ?????? ??????,?????? ????? ????????. https://chat.whatsapp.com/BubG8iFDe2bHHWkNYiboeU

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Netanel Stern

CEO and security engineer

3 周

???? ??? ?? ?? ?????? ??????? ??? ???? ???? ????? ???? ?????? ???: https://chat.whatsapp.com/HWWA9nLQYhW9DH97x227hJ

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Lital Behar

Head of HR, Business & Corporate

1 年

Love it! You always had it??

Dar Kahana Chetrit

Global Sourcing Specialist @ RAD

1 年

Wow Mor so inspiring! Personally, I learned so much working with you on the recruitment funnel and building KPI’s. Spread your knowledge - looking forward for more articles from you!

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