{"id":597,"date":"2015-08-20T05:41:51","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T13:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/?p=597"},"modified":"2015-08-20T06:11:59","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T14:11:59","slug":"how-to-hire-engineers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/20\/how-to-hire-engineers\/","title":{"rendered":"How to hire engineers"},"content":{"rendered":"

From IRC:<\/p>\n

\"how_to_interview_chat\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s a saying that you are the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with. If we apply that logic to hiring, it means that hiring is really<\/em> important (but we knew that already).<\/p>\n

My friend’s question was an interesting one. As an engineer, I know about writing code, \u00a0and engineering fit. If I put my bizdev\/marketing hat on, I start to think about the process of interviewing, and how to best allocate my resources (time) in order to qualify a target and convert them (hiring).<\/p>\n

There’s one concept that I think is important to share with my engineering friends is the idea of a conversion funnel. The gist is that in a lot of business situations, you have a group of people, you have an action you want some percentage of those people to do, and you have a series of steps that they go through (the stages of the funnel).<\/p>\n

A (hilariously simple) conversion funnel for Apple might be<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Find out about new iPhone (begin funnel)<\/li>\n
  2. Read about new iPhone on internet<\/li>\n
  3. Try new iPhone in store<\/li>\n
  4. Purchase iPhone (end of funnel)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Hiring engineers (or any role) can be thought of in this way. For example:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Create awareness of your company\/the job.<\/strong> This could be through blogging, buying ads, or posting on Craigslist.<\/li>\n
    2. Create enough desire to get the person to submit an application.<\/strong> This could be talking up perks, describing the work environment and technologies used, or having a really great application process<\/a>. Anything that makes your company attractive to work at goes in here.<\/li>\n
    3. Review applications\/resumes.<\/strong> This is early in the funnel, so you want to spend very little time on. Are they worth\u00a0any<\/em> time at all or are they totally not a fit? I recommend having a non-interviewer conceal the person’s name from the reviewers. There is strong evidence that people with good intentions can have something as simple as a name affect their judgement.<\/li>\n
    4. Send them a\u00a0screener problem<\/a>, and review answers to it.<\/strong> Ideally you should be able to decide to move to the next step (or reply with “no thanks”) with about 15-20 minutes of effort. Again, do this with names concealed, the goal is to focus totally on the code.<\/li>\n
    5. 1-2 hour interview.<\/strong> Be sure to talk about their screener problem and understand their engineering sense. Also, you should start getting a sense of what the person might be like to work with, but try and stay open minded about this one until the next step. I like to start the discussion by asking the person how they feel about interviewing — if someone is nervous about being on-the-spot, spending a minute or two to talk about that feeling of nervousness can help them get rid of the feeling so they can focus, and this means you will get a better picture of what they are really like. Also, I typically do this interview\u00a0via Skype, and ask them to screenshare with me and write a blog using whatever tools or resources they normally would. You can quickly learn a lot about an engineer\u00a0by spending 15 minutes watching them code in their own comfortable environment.<\/li>\n
    6. 4-8 hour pairing session.<\/strong> This should be in-person, unless you’re hiring a remote engineer. The best way to find out\u00a0what someone is like to work with is to work with them under the most realistic circumstances possible. If possible, ensure that you’ll encounter specific\u00a0scenarios so that you can gauge skills consistently from one candidate to another. The more objective you can be here, the better your results will be.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Notice that the intent is to minimize effort at the beginning of the process, and do the more intense quality screening at the end.<\/p>\n

      Above all — customize your funnel in a way that makes sense for you and your situation. There’s not necessarily a right or wrong answer. Some people prefer take-home interviews<\/a>, and I can see the merit of that as well. If you document your process for this, you can experiment with it over time and end up with a formula that gets engineers who are a great fit for what you need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      From IRC: There’s a saying that you are the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with. If we apply that logic to hiring, it means that hiring is really important (but we knew that already). My friend’s question was an interesting one. As an engineer, I know about writing code, \u00a0and engineering fit. … Continue reading “How to hire engineers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[460,145],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":619,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timrosenblatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}