8 Essential Tech Recruiting Concepts For Frothy Times
Dedication. Culture. Sincereness. Psychology.
One of the things I’m asked about most is the art of recruiting software engineers. I’ve done a lot of it. I would estimate that I’ve personally interviewed and hired almost 100 engineers in the last decade. In order to do that, I’ve probably had preliminary conversations with 500+ engineers. A friend recently asked for some feedback about his recruiting process. Below are some distilled thoughts. Hopefully they can help you as well.
“We’re hiring!”
NEWS FLASH: Everyone is hiring, all the time (and they’ve been doing so since 2000). Startups are hot, and they have been for a while now. I went to a great presentation on Docker/CoreOS by Erik Osterman last night. 70% of the attendees made it known that they were personally hiring, or that their companies were hiring “for everything.”
The level of froth seems more intense than ever. Is it? Maybe. In any case, you have a job to grow your team, so stop worrying about how things are, and just get out there with a nice approach. You will succeed.
1. It takes more time than you think, really.
So you’re a CTO or Engineering Manager and you need to hire 10+ elite engineers? You have to be completely dedicated to recruiting until the job is done. There are no shortcuts. You should be spending 120% of your time on recruiting. That’s 80% of your regular day, then 40% of all your nights and weekends. Really.
At Beachmint we started with a team of two and recruited and hired over 40 engineers and product people in 18 months. I had dinners 3–4 nights a week. The local coffee shop was my other office. Lunch time was recruiting time. I had at least eight external recruiters working for me at any given time. We lost only two engineers in our first 18 months. Read more below on “Culture is King.”
2. Psychology of the Software Engineer.
Software engineers are some of the most genuine and sincere people you will find. They’re just the best. If you treat them with respect and you empathize with how their minds work, they will stay by your side and give you their best energy.
They don’t care about your Rolex watch. They don’t care about your cashmere sweater. They also don’t care what your valuation is, or how hard you crushed it at Stanford biz school.
They just want to build rad stuff, to solve cool problems, to talk bytes and code and db’s and repos and distributed architecture and containers and continuos deployment and cacheing and IOT and arduinos and raspberry pi’s and drones and pull request process. Their minds are always turning with cool ideas and infinite scenarios. Embrace these characteristics and be proud of them, but also help them achieve, help them with constraints, help them build frameworks for success.
INSIDER TIP: Engineers judge you if you don’t know the difference between Java and javascript. Don’t try to trick them. They know. They’re honest people. They can spot a non-technical person a mile away. Do your homework, study and be sincere. If you lie or scheme just to sound smart, they will never forget that.
3. Most great engineers are not 24 years old.
There are two engineers I’ve worked with who were younger than 28 that I would bet my career on: Ryan Day and Drew Stokes. These reliable young geniuses exist, but they are the exception. If you are an established company with a cache of resources, you can train and groom young engineering talent to meet your standards. If you lack resources or will be constrained by headcount, don’t waste your time on young, inexperienced engineers. Senior engineers with computer science training are easy to work with and RELIABLE. They have a ton of experience estimating time and level of effort. They also have lots of experience with conflict resolution and compromise.
Furthermore, I think our industry has turned its back on craft, on mastery, on apprenticeship, on our skilled trade. There are certainly some young engineers who break the mold, and what a glorious experience it is to work with them. But generally speaking, I want to work with learned masters, I don’t want risky cowboys and cowgirls who shoot first and ask questions later. Any battle tested engineer has learned how unpredictable software is. She knows a healthy fear of software systems, but also how to pragmatically mitigate risk and establish frameworks for success while still leaving space for creativity.
4. Culture is King.
Your culture will only attract engineers that thrive in your type of environment. Talk to most investors and founders, and they will advocate for a relentless employee culture of working 80 hours per week, free meals, eating and sleeping at the office. Where did we acquire this mentality? It is completely unethical. Thankfully our industry seems to be changing for the better, but we still have a long way to go. If our engineers or product developers need to work 80 hours per week to achieve success, maybe we should rethink what we are building and re-prioritize their workflow.
Consistency, predictability, cadence. These things carry our team over time. Teams that frequently work through the night fueled by the latest energy drink are prone to erratic and emotional behavior, unreliability, and health crashes. If we encourage developers to keep a healthy work-life balance, they will surely use some of their free energy to solve problems and create efficiencies. Their brains will also solve our problems with less fatigue. They will operate within any constraints our culture mandates.
If you have great a culture like Github or Etsy, great engineers will work for you. If you have a jacked up culture with scary legacy systems, lack of automation, testing and process, great engineers will not work for you (no matter how much you pay them). [Tweet this]
5. Code tests are not optional.
The single thing that has saved me the most time with recruiting is requiring code tests from every engineer. CODE DOESN’T LIE. We don’t need anything complex, just a nice thorough exercise to express oneself in code.
I have found that recruiters with strong relationships are always able to get their candidates to complete a code test in advance. Recruiters (and candidates) who refuse to comply are not worth your time.
6. Spend sincere time with candidates.
Spend sincere time with candidates. Take them to lunch and dinner. Drink beer with them. Learn about their personality. Learn about their families. Talk code, talk process. Tell jokes. Have a laugh. Don’t talk too much business.
They made it in front of you for an interview because they’re smart. Everyone knows that. Smarts only carry one so far. Can you work with this person every day? Will they mesh with the personalities of your team? If you spend time with them away from the office, your intuition can tell you what type of fit they are for your organization.
7. Meetups are usually a waste of time.
Going to every tech Meetup every night is a waste of time. The only events worth your time are the hardcore, specialized tech meetups. Even better if you run/sponsor said hardcore tech meetup. Avoid anything ‘entrepreneurial.’ If there are a lot of recruiters at an event, just leave. It’s the wrong event, and you have sleep to catch up on, or a relationship to salvage.
8. Recruiters add a ton of value if you manage them properly.
Good recruiters are invaluable to our industry. Recruiters are often the first people to know when the top candidates get back on the market. This is because the good recruiters build long-standing relationships. Good recruiters EARN the trust of engineers over time. Good recruiters can weave a strong web across different segments of a city’s industry.
Engineering is not an overly social pursuit. In our industry, rock stars are built on open source commits, not charisma. When evaluating new opportunities, engineers value TRUST over almost any other thing. Engineers will generally reach out to the safest, most trusted resource when searching for a new gig.
Good luck out there.
Get out of the office, have some fun, be sincere, and build some relationships. The stronger your relationships, the easier it will be to find great people during your long career.
