How to Attract Software Engineers by Creating Meaning
All humans seek meaning. As long as our lives have meaning, we are happy, but when life loses meaning, we are bound to fall into existential despair. And this is not me saying this. These are the wise words of Dr. Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist and a survivor of Auschwitz, who’s famous for his best-selling book “A Man’s Search For Meaning”.
So people with no sense of meaning have the potential to go into despair. In reality, however, they just get bored. That’s why it makes sense that a study by Better Up found that 9 out of 10 people are looking for a meaningful job. And, they are also willing to sacrifice up to 23% of their salary for it! Thus, to attract the most talented engineers out there, we need to give them meaning. Once we are able to do that, we’re on the right track to winning the ongoing fierce competition over talent.
By now you’re probably asking yourself, is this a philosophy class or what? And to this I will respond with the immortal words of Philip Philiip: Settle down, it’ll all be clear.
How to offer meaning
Tough question. But let’s try to break this into 4 simple, yet practical tips.
Start with Why
You may have watched Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk on how great leaders inspire everyone to take action. Sink’s key idea is — people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
As a Talent Sourcer at Melio, I always make sure my intro calls with potential candidates start with why. Before spilling out your pitch, try to listen to what the person has to say about what inspires them as engineers, and what motivations and aspirations they might have for the future. Then, go on with your pitch, and adjust it to the ideas they talked about.
Examples:
- The candidate feels like they have no real impact on the product/company: Emphasize the main areas of impact they’ll have as engineers at your company.
- The candidate feels they have reached a glass ceiling and have no place to grow: Talk about the growth potential and the relevant career growth opportunities.
- The candidate lacks work-life balance in their current job: You must have already figured this out. Try to think of the work-life balance at your company (do you work in a hybrid model? Remote first? Flexible Work hours? Special day-offs policy?) and share that with your candidate. Remember, don’t just spill “work-life balance” as a cliche. Instead, put meaning into it, by explaining how your company provides a work-life balance.
Replace outreach titles with meaningful job descriptions
“Amazing opportunity!”, “We are hiring!”, “Join us!”… If you tend to use such phrases in your outreaches, you are not alone. The main problem with these headlines is that they are too general, and as such, they have no special meaning for the receiver.
Instead of using those, you might wanna try to replace the generic titles with meaningful job descriptions. Instead of offering a Backend Engineer position, tell the candidate what challenges they will face as a Backend Engineer at your company. Instead of promising them an “amazing opportunity”, tell them why this opportunity is amazing for them.
By doing so, you will add meaning to the outreach. And once there is meaning, you get the other person’s attention. From there, the ball is in your court — just make sure to use it wisely.
For example, when I speak to candidates about engineering positions at Melio, I emphasize the fact that Melio is at a unique phase where we have stability and satisfied paying customers on one hand, but on the other hand, there is still a lot of place to shape Melio’s future business and product as we are growing fast. I elaborate on the operating engineering teams and their responsibilities, and how the candidate, as a potential future employee, may use their skills to build and shape our product. In addition, I tell them about the various potential career paths and growing opportunities they can have as engineers at Melio.
Create a Meaningful Interview Process
Engineering interviews are not college exams. Their purpose is not to see if the candidate remembers a specific formula from their studies. Rather, they should focus on assessing the level of fit between the candidate and the position they are interviewing for.
At Melio, the technical interviews include day-to-day challenges that our engineers are facing or have faced in the past. Here’s why:
- This lets the candidate know what we do and how the day-to-day of an engineer at Melio looks like.
- This way we keep the candidate engaged in the process by solving real-life challenges instead of boring tasks.
- The candidate has the opportunity to keep the interviewer engaged with interesting stories they might have to tell about this specific problem.
Keep it Personalized
There has been a lot of discussion on the importance of personalization in the sourcing arena. We all know that personalizing the outreach will most likely increase the candidates’ engagement. However, personalization in sourcing is only the first step. If you want to have a winning hiring strategy, you need to make sure that personalization is present in every step of the hiring process. How?
- Inclusion: To avoid biases and unwanted psychological effects, make sure the interviewing process is inclusive. At Melio, we make sure that candidates meet our diverse workforce during the interview process. We also aim to have an inclusive workplace overall. When we hire candidates based on talent, we are more open to hiring people from different backgrounds and different stages in life. That can benefit the whole company. We, for example, hired pregnant candidates in the past. We believed that it would pay off, and needless to say, it did.
- Flexibility is a must: Talented candidates are often interviewing for more than one company. And If you snooze, you lose. Make sure you are able to adjust the interview process accordingly, but without making it unfair or inconsistent.
- Ensure the candidate feels valued: Make sure the candidate knows where things stand at every step of the way. Keep in close touch with them, even if you have no news. Keep them engaged, by inviting them to the office to meet the team in person, inviting them to special meetups your company hosts (that’s what we do at Melio), or find any other way to make them feel valued. I promise you, they will cherish that.
Give them meaning
Most people spend a huge amount of time at work. But work is more than just a way to earn money or climbing through the career ladder. It’s also a place where we interact with others, learn new skills and get to challenge ourselves. That’s why we want our work to be meaningful for us. And we are willing to pay for it. So if you want to be a competitive employer, you must ensure that you provide your candidates (and future employees) with meaning — every step of the way.
