The Hiring Process
Part of The PIRATE Way — Stories about scaling up engineering teams
Acknowledgment
A significant amount of work occurs before a candidate applies and gets hired. Occasionally, a Hiring Manager, often the engineering leader, might engage in a call with a potential candidate who wishes to clarify certain aspects before diving into the application process. This scenario occurs more often with senior roles. Likewise, your Talent Acquisition (TA) Specialist may approach candidates directly or on your behalf through existing platforms, email, or phone calls.
Background
Like many of you, I have read books about organizational design, brand-building, hiring, onboarding, management, development, etc. Around the hiring topic, the one that impacted me the most by far is “Who: The A Method for Hiring” by Geoff Smart. I was inspired to shape some topics based on its teachings. If you wish to delve deeper into this topic, I highly recommend obtaining a copy.
I always define, or ask the Hiring Manager to define, what we’re looking for in every role and create a Scorecard. This scorecard encapsulates the mission (a summary of the job’s core purpose), outcomes (the achievements the person needs to accomplish in a role, THE WHAT), and competencies (the expectations we have from a new hire in terms of fulfilling the job and achieving the outcomes, THE HOW). We also determine what signals we will use to identify those candidates who will truly be A-plus additions to the team and what questions and processes will solidify the final hiring process for assessing these signals.
More recently, I also like to include the onboarding checkpoints to ensure the person is progressing in the expected direction and pace.
Later in this series of blog posts, we will evaluate the competency frameworks, which describes the behaviors we expect from the team members and how the member should evolve to develop their careers.
Your competency framework measures what a team member expects to succeed, so there is no better foundation for defining the scorecard for your new A members. Make sure you hire people who will be successful in your organization.
After raising a funding round, the priority can probably be deploying the capital and hiring/onboarding should be your primary focus. You don’t always have the time to invest in a competency framework at this particular moment, but make sure when you can build it. You revisit your hiring and onboarding processes accordingly.
Process Structure
In terms of structure, we must decide what to evaluate and how to do it. The first step is to assess the list of competencies for the role as expressed in the scorecard. These should originate from the competency framework and determine which can be checked during the hiring project.
Usually, a hiring process has two main sections:
- The preliminary Stage consists of two knock-out steps — Human Resources Preliminary and Hiring Manager Preliminary.
- The final Stage: This includes a final knock-out round.
Preliminary Stage
Both preliminary stages are crucial and need to be efficient as they are the most cost-effective steps in terms of team hours. This point is crucial, as interviewing candidates implies significant context-switching for the team and can contribute to burnout.
HR Preliminary
This part of the process is handled predominantly by the Human Resources team, specifically the Talent Acquisition (TA) Specialist, with minimal direct intervention from the Engineering team. The HR preliminary stage is set in motion once a candidate expresses interest in a job opening and submits their application.
There are cases, albeit rare, when the TA team might seek input from the Hiring Manager — usually the engineering leader — primarily when the company is recruiting for a new role or when a new TA Specialist is being integrated into the team. In such instances, the Hiring Manager’s expertise can be invaluable for scrutinizing resumes and fine-tuning the selection process.
The primary objective of the HR Preliminary stage is to ascertain whether the candidate’s skills and qualifications align with the job requirements. This is typically achieved through an initial 30-minute conversation with the TA Specialist, who uses this opportunity to gather basic information about the candidate and to elucidate the job description further. This step is crucial to efficiently filter through the applicants, either moving suitable candidates forward or politely declining those whose skills and experiences do not match the company’s needs.
To provide consistency, it is essential to script the questions the team will ask every candidate. Sharing some of the successful technical questions with past candidates with the TA team can enhance the effectiveness of this HR preliminary round. The goal is to identify as soon as possible if a candidate is not a suitable fit for the role or the organization, as this is in the best interest of both parties involved.
As the volume of applicants increases, the company might explore leveraging a Code Assessment Platform for unassisted interviews (examples include Codility, Coderbyte, etc.). However, this approach should be utilized judiciously, as requesting candidates to commit a significant effort without personal interaction with the team might not be well received in some instances. The key is to strike a balance between the effectiveness of the process and respecting the candidate’s time and effort.
Hiring Manager (Engineering) Preliminary
The Hiring Manager’s Preliminary stage is a crucial step in the hiring process. This phase often demands a broader perspective from the Hiring Manager, as the objective here is to assess the candidate across multiple areas, ensuring only high-potential candidates proceed to the next stage.
This stage begins by identifying the competencies that will be evaluated during the conversation. It’s essential to consider which critical aspects of the role can be assessed effectively during this stage and which will require further exploration in the later stages of the hiring process.
Next, identify the signals that indicate a candidate possesses these competencies. These signals can be behaviors, experiences, or knowledge that align with your desire. For example, if you aim to assess ‘Humbleness’ and ‘Learning Mindset’, you might look for evidence of the candidate’s ability to learn from past mistakes or failures.
You could initiate a conversation on this topic by asking: “Could you share a significant mistake you made in your career? What did you learn from it?”
In this interview stage, you’ll want to explore various areas depending on the competencies that are essential for your team. Here are some areas that I often find valuable to assess:
- General information: Seniority, communication skills, assertiveness, and motivation or interest in the role.
- Background: Previous career experiences, product mindset, problem-solving, or a blameless approach from past experiences.
- Product/Tech: Deep technical knowledge, the ability to acknowledge and navigate unknown areas, a grounded approach to incident management, familiarity with testing approaches, and a mature way of working.
- Culture: A mindset focused on learning and growth, humility, collaboration, and conflict resolution skills.
Remember, the HM Preliminary interview aims to gather information and better understand the candidate. The information you collect here will guide the rest of the hiring process and provide crucial context for later interviews.
Final Stage
The final stage of the hiring process allows you to dive deeper into the crucial competencies for the role. The specific steps at this stage will largely depend on the nature of the role itself. Is it for an individual contributor or a people manager? What level of seniority is the role?
Despite these variations, the fundamental approach to this stage should echo the process employed in the preliminary interview. Start by identifying the competencies that you wish to assess more deeply. Next, define the signals that would indicate the presence of these competencies. After that, decide on the exercises that would best elicit these signals.
Depending on the role, you could consider a variety of assessment methods, such as:
- Live coding (conducted remotely or onsite)
- System design (for more senior positions)
- Role-Play 1:1 (for Manager positions)
- Case Study (Take-Home) exercises: For instance, tasks related to organizational design (for Managers and Directors). Building these exercises around problems your team has recently solved can be insightful. This approach provides a valuable window into the candidates’ thought processes and problem-solving strategies.
Remember, the goal of these exercises is not just about finding the ‘right’ answer. Instead, the aim is to gather signals about the candidate’s competencies and how they approach tasks. For instance, a candidate might need help solving a live coding problem. Yet, they could still impress you with their analytical skills, systematic approach, or creativity — making them a viable candidate for the role.
Finally, wrap up the process with a “Meet the Team” interview. This is another valuable opportunity to assess the candidate’s cultural fit. Incorporating input from different team members — even those from other departments — can offer fresh perspectives akin to Amazon’s Bar Raiser concept.
Final Wash-up
After the process, a final meeting is held where all participants vote simultaneously on whether to hire the candidate or not. We debate, ensure everyone has a voice, and proceed with an offer depending on the resolution.
The Impact of AI
More recently, AI has impacted us in many of our operations and processes. Generative AI, for example, Chat GPT, has proven especially helpful in developing the hiring process.
In that sense, my way to interact with ChatGPT is providing business agnostic explicit context and relying on the LLM and their implicit context to generate pretty valuable content that speeds up the creation of the required foundational content for a new role.
I encourage you to prepare some content:
- What is the purpose of your organization
- What are the company’s core values
- What are the team principles this role will join
- What are your general expectations of this role, critical ongoing projects, or ambitions you would like this new joiner to contribute
With that explicit context, I usually ask the Generative AI something like:
Based on the book “Who: The A Method for Hiring” by Geoff Smart, can you generate a mission for a role “X”? Please suggest a short description? Can you suggest 5 to 8 outcomes that should be expected? Based on our core values and principles, can you tell us the desired skills we should expect from this role? What would be the checkpoints to evaluate after 30/60/90 days in the role? Can you suggest a set of 5 to 8 questions for assessing the specific field skills of this role?
You will get less than 100% of what you need from this interaction, but you can speed up the generation of the foundation of what you need to kick off the hunt for a new role.
Remember: This is a blog post from the series “The PIRATE Way”.
