What HR can learn from software engineers when it comes to recruiting

by Andrew McGlinchey, Indeed’s Senior Product Director for International Business

It takes a special approach to hire people with great tech skills. More and more employers require employees who are skilled in areas like software development, data science, quality assurance engineering and user experience. Demand is rising faster than supply and therefore people with the right skills can be picky about where they choose to work.

And demand for tech skills is not just coming from big tech or internet companies. Almost every industry — from publishing and entertainment, to automotive, medicine, finance and legal — is innovating with tech-focused solutions. By way of example, Australia is already home to 93 tech-focused law firms, and this figure is set to rise. Every company is becoming a software company.

In a recent Indeed survey of over 1000 hiring managers, 86% said they found it challenging to find and hire tech talent. That makes sense, because in a market where demand outstrips supply, adopting a business-as-usual approach to hiring doesn’t give you a competitive edge.

Indeed as a company is growing fast and therefore hiring and retaining tech talent is something we invest heavily in ourselves. Having helped grow Indeed’s software development offices in Tokyo and Singapore, we’ve had to learn to optimise our own hiring efforts in order to find and attract talent.

To achieve greater success in hiring, we took a cue from the engineer’s way of thinking: carefully measure, try to see what works, and then ‘debug’ the process. In applying an engineering mindset, we looked at the hiring process as a system that you can analyse, to identify what works and what doesn’t. We then make changes, closely measure, and make adjustments to the recruiting process according to what we’ve identified. And its greatly helped in our sourcing, interviewing, and closing of talent.

Sourcing the right talent in the first place is difficult
It takes a mix of referrals, great job descriptions, prospecting passive candidates both locally and abroad, and building up an employer brand at conferences and with universities.

Hiring managers play an active part in selling prospective candidates well before reaching the actual interview stage. The talent attraction team at Indeed quizzed the engineers working there now, in order to craft a great pitch to prospective candidates.

We observed that the people we want to hire are interested in intellectually interesting work, meaningful missions, and great culture and colleagues. So we use this intel to our advantage. Knowing what candidates look for, and then putting your strengths forward in a way that makes sense to them, is key. In contrast, leading a job post with a list of job requirements is a sure way to get a talented engineer to ignore you.

Interviewing is a two-way process
It’s important for candidates to get a good impression of an employer during the process. Even if the interview doesn’t lead to an offer, candidates who leave with a good impression do often refer their highly skilled friends.

After debugging this process, we’ve learned some important lessons.

The basics, such as punctuality of the interviewers or clear communication about timelines and expectations, are the obvious baseline.

But Indeed also strives to be fair and consistent. Interviewers are calibrated so that we are making consistent judgements to the same evidence seen in an interview. Interviews are done by multiple people, with their feedback collected and aggregated, to minimize potential for bias.

Work samples are really important in assessing core skills, because unlike other (academic) credentials, certain skills can only be proven in work scenarios. When we’re assessing tech candidates, we ask them to write code on a white board while the interviewer interacts with them. This enables the interviewer to interject and make suggestions so we can see how the candidate reacts to feedback, and whether they understand verbal instructions as well as written ones. We’ve found this is the best way to assess both technical and soft skills; while allowing prospective employees to get a sense of the company’s way of working.

We also measure which questions in interviews are predictive of successful outcomes. This means keeping track of how candidates respond to each question we ask during the interview and keeping track of the long-term performance of those we hire. From this, it’s possible to reverse-engineer and learn which responses are good indicators of how well somebody will do in the job, and which are not helpful.

A ping pong table and beanbag chairs don’t seal the deal in 2019
Closing the candidate needs to get the right balance of factors, since the best candidates are choosing between job offers.

Compensation is competitive. It’s critical to build your knowledge about compensation, and what your competitors are paying for talent. But for most talented tech people, compensation is just one part of the package.

Being able to articulate a story about the purpose of the work is important. At Indeed, our mission is to Help People Get Jobs, which is something that feels genuinely meaningful to us.

Beyond that, the technical challenges, the colleagues, the opportunities for growth and learning, the potential impact -- these are all factors that many people value very highly.

Attracting and hiring the tech talent that your business needs for the future is challenging. Breaking down the challenge step by step, and fixing each element -- in other words, thinking like an engineer -- is what it takes to get it right