Yeah, I know, the web is full with posts about how to land your dream job, how to get that one special job interview that you will change your life — but this post is different!
If you’re a company looking to hire, you might be making mistakes that will eventually turn off the right people and attract the wrong type of talent.
I’ve been on both sides of the hiring table, as an interviewee and as an interviewer — and I have to admit: yes — many interviewees make mistakes but in many cases, it’s actually the interviewer making the mistake causing the interview to go south. This, of course, wastes precious time for both sides and neither party goes home happy.
These mistakes can be easily avoided, resulting in a perfect match with a super fast process.
Looking to hire your next Rockstar-Ninja-Guru-Wizard Software Engineer? This post is for you!
The Market Has Changed And So Should You
The market of employers and employees has changed so much in the past decade or so. Not so long ago, people would stay at their company for at least a decade, sometimes even longer.
Nowadays, according to a survey performed by Careerbuilder in 2014, by the age of 35, 25% of workers have held five or more jobs. For workers ages 55 and older, 20% have held ten jobs or more.
“Information Technology, an industry with a notable talent shortage and highly competitive recruitment tactics, has the largest percentage of employers who expect workers to job-hop.” — Careerbuilder
So What Does This All Mean?
It means that not only do you need to work harder to keep your talent from leaving your company, you also have to work harder to get it in the first place and you should start with your hiring process. Ready? Let’s begin!
We’re All Story Tellers
The best way to attract the right people for the right job is to tell them your story, the better the story is, the more attraction you’ll get — start with how you tell the world about your new job openings, it can be a careers page, a post on social media, or even a casual chat with people who might be looking and/or know people who are.
If you really want a leg up on top talent, you can open your position on Workey, which uses AI to match your open positions with ideal candidates who remain completely anonymous until they choose to reveal themselves to you. You’re only presented with relevant candidates to save you time and effort.
The first and probably the most crucial step is to tell your story as unforgettably as possible, remember — you’re not just offering a job but an opportunity to join the best Startup company in the business, plus he/she will be working with you (yay)!
Don’t believe that? You might need to reconsider your own status or perhaps you’re just not the right person to do this and that’s okay.
Don’t lie. Good people will smell your lies from far away and won’t even bother coming for an interview. You expect interviewees to be honest with you about themselves so return the favor.
Focus on the good. Is the office located in the best spot in town? Mention it! Are you using cutting-edge technologies? Explain how you’re using them. Got well-known talent on your team? Talk about them and their contributions, better yet — introduce them and have them be part of your hiring process.
Remember, you might be thinking that you’re interviewing candidates but they’re also interviewing you and your company — and this doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon so you better adjust and go the extra mile to bring real talent to your company or suffer the fate of mediocrity.
It’s Game On
You’re now getting some attention, people start applying to the job and you need to start filtering the good from the bad and interviewing. Here’s my idea of an ideal quick, yet efficient hiring process:
Step #1 — Phone Interview
A phone interview is the very first time you talk to the person who applied for the job, this is a great chance for you to explain more about your company, the product, and what you’re looking for in your potential future employee.
This should be a casual short call (up to 30 minutes or so) where both sides get a chance to introduce themselves and based on that, decide whether or not there is a future for this collaboration.
Step #2 — Introductory Interview
Your new candidate just arrived for the first on-site interview — be friendly, show them around the office and start by talking about the company, the products, solutions, challenges, milestones achieved, anything you have to make a first impression that will end up with a big huge WOW!
I truly believe that the first interview is all about the introduction between the two sides and to see if there’s any chemistry. If not, there is no point in moving to the next level which is more technical. I know that you want to but try to avoid any technical questions during the first interview — there will be time for that later on the process.
Some companies start their hiring process with a technical task. I believe this is a mistake because it’s time consuming (for both sides) before even knowing if they even like your company’s mission, work, and general vibe.
Your candidate doesn’t know anything about you or the opportunity that you’re offering, therefore they might not be willing to take the time and effort before at least an introductory meeting.
Now that you’ve set the ground work and gave your best story about your company and the opportunity you’re offering — get personal, ask about their hobbies, ask about their likes and dislikes. Of course, it goes without saying to still keep it professional. At the end of the day, you want to see if you’d get along professionally because at the end of the day people who get along work better together.
Step #3 — Technical Interview
After you’ve met your candidate and you hit it off, now it’s time to get technical — some prefer doing a Q&A session, some prefer giving a task that can be done on-site or at home.
I personally think you’ll get the best results out of a task that can be done at home with no time limit. The reason for that is because that when there is no time limit — there are no excuses for mistakes or anything other than super efficient and clean code. Also this is an excellent chance for your candidate to impress you with his or her coding skills.
In case you decide to give a technical task — don’t make it long and exhausting, it should be something that takes up to one or two hours to finish, try to make it both challenging and fun like building a game app or something cool.
The reason that I like giving technical tasks is because you can learn a lot from it. One technique I recommend is to review the task together, ask questions about what libraries/frameworks were chosen, data structure, solution and more — you’ll be surprised how much you can learn about someone from a simple technical task.
Step #4 — A Second Technical Interview
Just in case you weren’t quite satisfied with the results so far or perhaps you are missing some information to really decide on the candidate, it might be a good idea to ask someone from your team to interview your candidate as well — this will provide you with two great things.
The first is additional technical feedback and the second which is even more important, feedback about the fit from someone that will actually have to work with this person on a daily basis.
Step #5 — HR Interview
If you got to this point, it means that you found real talent to join your team — that’s awesome! Now it’s time to speed things up, your rockstar candidate is probably meeting with other companies and might have already gotten an offer or two so time is against you.
Ask your HR manager to do the next interview, this will get you even more feedback about your candidate’s personality, career goals and maybe craziness, I’m always amazed at how good HR managers are at bringing hidden insights to the surface.
Do everything you can to act as quickly as possible, I once waited a day longer than I should have and ended up losing an excellent software engineer who in the meantime signed with another company. Needless to say, time is crucial here.
A very common mistake is not being in touch constantly with your candidate or even worse — a late response might seem like you’re disorganized or not really interested.
Make sure to let people know what’s going on and yeah — always respond, especially if the answer is no. People have spent time and effort to come for an interview, you owe them at least an answer.
Step #6 — Make It Official
Boom! The stars have aligned perfectly and everything worked out, you’ve found your next teammate and he or she has found you! This is the time to make it official, send out your offer, expect some back and forth but do everything within your power to make this step way less awkward than it should be and as fast as possible.
I’ve witnessed and heard about so many times that things went south pretty fast in this step and in most cases, for no good reason. Do everything you can to close the deal, the sooner the better.
Bonus Step — Onboarding
Some people think that the hiring process has ended once the new employee had signed the contract, but that’s not necessarily true. In most cases, they will be joining the company within 30 days or so.
Stay in touch, ask what you can do before their first day, invite them to important meetings or a fun night out with the team — make them feel they are already part of the family.
This is something we try to do here at Workey and it’s gone very well. :)
I joined a company trip two weeks before I started working for the company and it was awesome because it gave me a chance to meet my new co-workers in an unofficial scenario which then made the process a whole lot easy and nicer.
In addition, keep in mind that onboarding a new member of your team is an on-going process, make sure they have everything they need on their first day, schedule in advance time slots on your calendar available for one-on-one sessions, this will help them know that you’re doing everything you can to get them whatever they need to do their job well done.
That’s all I have for you this time!
Any questions or suggestions? Please ping me or comment below.
In case you liked this post, please recommend it and share it to your friends!
You might also enjoy one of my last posts:
“Stop Being Afraid of Git and Start Using It The Right Way”
“6 Reasons Why React Is Today’s Best Way to Build Your Web Apps”
