How to Simplify Your Dev Recruiting Strategy and Hire Smarter

Recruiting developers is hard — this process makes it easier

Do you have a simple-but-strategic inbound developer recruiting process? If not, it’s time for you to get one.

Anyone who’s done it knows that hiring developer talent is not the same game as hiring non-technical talent. And when it comes to hiring developers, its even more critical to have a good (and quick!) process in place. Let me quickly tell you why:

• Developer “skill” runs the gamut, even within job titles. They may say that they’re a senior java developer, but are they really?
• Educational background alone cannot be trusted to indicate whether or not someone is a good dev in general, and it definitely can’t tell you if they’re the right dev for your team.
• It takes a talented dev to know a talented dev.
• Talented devs have the pick of the litter. If you want to hire them, then you have provide an excellent candidate experience coupled with a quick-but-effective hiring process.

You can see that this is obviously a lot different than say, recruiting a certified public accountant. A big reason for that is standardization. To become a CPA, you have to undergo a stringent process. You have to get the degree, pass the certification exams, and spend some time working with other CPAs before you can become one. By the time you’ve attained the certification, there is reasonable expectation that you can perform the duties of the job.

Not so with developers. And maybe thats a good thing, because writing code is an art.

The good news is, there are strategies for simplifying your inbound recruiting process to hire excellent developers. This advice was designed with smaller companies in mind — especially those who are just starting to build out or scale their dev teams — but larger teams can take it under consideration too.

The look you want your candidates to have when they open your emails

A simple and effective 6-step inbound developer hiring process looks like this:

1. The candidate submits their CV and perhaps some supporting materials
2. Someone from the hiring team will review that submission (typically a colleague from HR, but in really small teams, maybe its the CTO or tech lead)
3. Promising candidates are invited to an introductory phone interview (30 minutes) with whoever screened their application
4. If that phone call goes well, then the candidate is invited to complete a skill assessment

There are a lot of ways to assess developer skill, but the best way to do it is with a take-home project that can be completed on the candidate’s own time. But keep in mind: candidates hate nothing more than completing an assessment and being “ghosted.” The hiring team should review the take-home and ideally get back to them with feedback (for this reason, I always suggest having hiring manager interviews after the assessment!)

5. If the assessment goes well, then the candidate moves onto the final phone interview with the technical hiring manager (here is the perfect opportunity to discuss a take-home project in greater detail!)

6. The candidate is then invited for a final onsite interview to ascertain “culture fit” and to meet their potential team. You may decide to check their references around this time too.

If the fit feels right, then its time to make them an offer. Congrats! You’ve got a pretty good hiring process!

What Not to Do: Skill “Screening”

You may have noticed that I’ve put the take-home project toward the back half of the hiring process. There are three major reasons for this.

1. Screening questions in the form of brainteasers are not worth anyone’s time (yours or the candidate’s). Senior developers aren’t interested in proving to you that they can solve FizzBuzz. Nobody wants to reverse a binary tree. Using these types of “tests” aren’t helping you screen candidates by talent — they’re helping you screen by willingness-to-comply (read: desperation). Facebook uses these types of screening questions because they have the champagne problem of way-too-many-candidates. If you’re looking for the best candidate for your growing startup, then you’ve got to provide a better hiring experience than the competition.
2. Candidates want to talk to a human before they invest time into your skill assessment. Absolutely nobody wants to spend hours working on something that is never acknowledged. Asking candidates to complete a coding test before you jump on a phone call with them is going to put some people off. So — as mentioned above — ditch the screener questions and give promising candidates a call.
3. Moving the take-home to the end of the hiring process saves hiring teams time. This way, hiring teams will only have to spend time reviewing the submissions of candidates they’re already invested in. And it goes both ways: if a candidate makes it this far in the hiring process, chances are that they’ll invest the time to do your take-home. Quality of submissions improves and completion rates can jump to nearly 100%.

And thats it! A simple but strategically structured process for tech hiring.

Don’t forget to check out CodeSubmit for all of your developer assessment needs :)