4 Lessons We’ve Learned About the Subtle Art of Hiring Engineers

A recent study conducted by the Recruitment Employment Confederation (REC) showed a shortfall of roughly 59,000 engineers annually in the UK.

Other studies have confirmed that the unemployment rate for engineers in the US is less than 1%, making them the most in-demand professionals in the world today. To further add to this scarcity, research also shows that 50% of people in technology are planning a career change.

The reality is apparent — world-class developers are not only hard to find, but they also have the luxury of choosing the organisation they work for. However, if you, as a business, can provide engineers opportunities to make an impact, challenges that they can grow from, and a supportive community, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t want to work for you.

1. Soft skills matter more than you might think

A fairly common assumption among recruiters and employers is that when hiring engineers, only technical skills truly matter while soft skills are ‘nice to have’. In fact, recruitment teams sometimes forget that soft skills are indeed skills that can be measured and evaluated.

So, if you’re a business that wants to grow 10X in the next few years, you need to assemble a solid team with the perfect balance between technical and soft skills to take you there.

At The Scalers, the engineers we hire must be equally skilled with both code and colleagues. The first step in our 7-step recruitment process is a pre-screening interview where our interviewers spend 20–30 minutes to understand the personality of a candidate.

Some of the questions asked during this round are —

• How do you communicate technical complexities?
• Have you been a part of a team that has had to be restructured or adapt to unforeseen changes? If yes, how have you reacted to it?
• Can you share examples of close collaboration across functions such as Engineering, Product, Design, etc.?
• What is your proudest achievement?
• How have you resolved conflicts with your peers in the past?

The answers to these questions throw significant light on the candidate’s thought process, their personality, how they approach conflicts, and more. If we’re satisfied with a candidate’s responses, we then proceed with the next interview rounds.

2. Measure, refine, and repeat

No recruitment process is ‘perfect’. However, what matters is finding a process that works for your organisation and your unique hiring needs.

For example, you may find that the coding exercise alone isn’t enough for you to determine who to hire. In other instances, your screening parameters may need to be tweaked depending on the profile you’re hiring. Whatever the case is, the key is to measure how your recruitment process is performing, refine it, and then repeat it all over again.

This is probably one of the most important lessons that we, at The Scalers, learned. And that’s why, once every few weeks, we measure how our recruitment process has been performing, the percentage of candidates that have passed the screening process, employee retention rate, performance reviews, and more.

We also gather valuable feedback from the pre-screening interviewers, the account management team, and the technical coordinators to further refine our process of hiring engineers.

Read the full article at: https://thescalers.com/lessons-we-have-learned-about-the-subtle-art-of-hiring-engineers/