Recruitment Etiquette

Happily, it seems that we are soon going to be quite busy recruiting for DataDIGEST. Most of us by now are aware that recruitment is hard and that the costs of getting a hire wrong are high. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that our early hires will make or break the company. They will also be part of establishing our culture. Getting this right matters.

If you spend a couple of minutes researching online you will find a lifetime’s worth of reading on the job interview. Websites groan under the weight of “Top 100 Interview Questions”, “10 interviewing rules”, and clever techniques for employers to sort the candidate wheat from the chaff. Some of this is good stuff, a lot of it is stating the bleeding obvious (I still cannot believe that there are people who need to read an article to know that turning up to an interview on time is essential). There is also plenty of literature available on how employers can find the right people. As in most things related to the business of software development I think Joel Spolsky nailed this from an employers perspective with his Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing.

Whilst a lot of this stuff is good, the majority of articles still convey the idea that the recruitment process is a competition that an employer runs. “Roll Up! Roll Up! For your chance to win the right to spend all your waking hours with XYZ Inc!” In fact, we might be better off thinking of recruitment as online dating for employers and candidates. Both share small amounts of what they think their best qualities are (job ad and CV). If there is some mutual interest then they progress to an initial conversation. If they like each other enough they will meet in person and then if things go well before they know it they will be moving in together.

Therefore it follows that there must be certain rules of etiquette that the employer and candidate should follow. Plenty has been written on this for candidates, but not so much for employers that I’ve been able to find. So here are my tips on recruitment etiquette for employers.

1. Know the law and act within it at all times. This one’s obvious, right? But you have to know the law, even if you don’t have an HR department to do that for you. Ignorance is no excuse.
2. Be open and honest. This is expected of candidates and it should be expected of employers as well. I’ve asked about a company’s development process and been given a rosy description of backlogs, short iterations, continuous integration and so on only to discover when I took the job that there were two processes: chaos and extremely bureaucratic waterfall. How futile. The truth will be revealed if the candidate takes the job so just own it from the beginning. It is far better to appear behind the times or boring than it is to appear behind the times and dishonest. And don’t go promising rapid promotions or huge bonuses if you know that no such opportunity is likely to exist. Trust is important (but fragile) and your employees need to be able to count on you just as you count on them.
3. Keep it short. Do you really need a 6 interview, 4 week recruitment process? Candidates are either in a job at the moment, or needing to be able to make a decision. Asking them to make time for an endless series of interviews shows a lack of empathy and reflects poorly on your efficiency. A phone screen and at most 2 interviews (1 technically focussed, the other on personality), preferably on the same day, should be sufficient in most situations.
4. Practice what you preach. So you think a coder should write code in their interview process? Good. I agree with you. It is a great way to understand what the candidate’s capabilities are. But it is also important for the candidate to see how you (if you are technical) or your current programmers write code. So if you are going to spend 30 minutes discussing some code the candidate brought with them, then be prepared to spend 30 minutes discussing some real code that you or your team have produced.
5. Follow up. The more time a candidate has invested in the recruitment process, the more personal and detailed should be the feedback you provide if they weren’t successful. But they all deserve some kind of feedback, so it is up to you to find out how to manage that effectively.

I’m sure there are some more that I haven’t thought of. What do you think employers should handle better during recruitment?