Spawned from a series of recurring discussions that keep popping up around the internet on how hiring sucks and how to improve the candidate experience, this repos is intended to collect a series of works on the subject of how to sit on the other side of the hiring table.
Thanks for stopping by! The goal of this project is to help compile a working set of best practices within technology hiring. Production of the document will be built out in stages as I get time. I expect to be able to dedicate 1 to 2 hours a week on this and schedule the work night around other side projects (the current priority of this ranks as a side project to my side project so you can expect a certain, incredibly hacky level of quality here).
I expect the project will have a number of phases:
- phase 1: compile documents and available information on the topic turning this into a curated list of docs
- phase 2: read, summarize and organize existing advice into clustered recommendations
- phase 3: synthesize the clusters into a robust framework in creating a great candidate experience that is both valid and reliable
Readers are welcome to contribute or just join in on discussions
- signal
- fit cultural
- fit complement
- compensation
- Kyle Simpson (the javascript guy) - https://gist.github.com/getify/4f4b7886d181d5fe9c6b1bfdf134709f what hiring should look like
- Laurie Barth (twitter & lego) - her blog probably has some thoughts
- - // TODO: read these and summarize
- https://laurieontech.com/posts/interviews/ designing a technical
- https://laurieontech.com/posts/senior-interviews/ designing senior interviews
- https://laurieontech.com/posts/job-search/ her job search
- Jem Young - collect notes from frontent masters course
- Jem discusses "remembering the human" and ensuring a positive candidate experience.
- Note that Netflix DOES give candidate feedback on how to improve
- interesting link on retention: https://devopsdays.org/events/2019-chicago/program/pete-cheslock
I had watched so many companies spend countless time and energy in order to recruit the best staff possible. But after you were in the door, it seems like none of them really cared about how you might retain all those people you spent years investing in
- https://eng-hiring.18f.gov
- https://stripe.com/en-ie/guides/recruiting-hiring-and-managing-talent stripe's playbook for how to hire engineers
- https://www.rubick.com/candidate-packet-for-interviews/
Interviewing is a stressful process. Candidates have no idea what to expect, because companies tend to jerk them around and expectations for the interview are unclear. You can solve this with a candidate packet!
- via moj
We found it an interesting exercise (besides hiring, but also in support of hiring) to do a "technology and skill landscape" write-up. In other words, looking at all the software products and modules, what technology is used (for development, testing, deployment, monitoring, etc.) as well as the type of skills needed (we frame it in the pioneer-settler-town planner) and then wrote up where we want to be (e.g. standardize on certain development, deployment, testing, etc. technologies where necessary) and then it seemed to reveal what sort of skills we were lacking. Not sure if that makes sense (I can answer questions in 🧵 ) but in essence: where are we - where do we want to be - what do we lack for product, technology and skills
also via Mojtaba in his reading of the talent war:
Reading a book and it says these about hiring:
- Hire for what you can't teach
- Hire for character, not skill, nor experience
- Character is not the same as personality (or likeability)
- Do not overemphasize hiring based on prior experience
- Do not factor in industry experience
- Just because it's hard to hire for character and potential and easier to hire for experience/skill, don't go for the easy option
This is not to say that we should under-value work experience HOWEVER
- one should really make sure that experience is relevant before making it a filter
- if above is true, one should really make sure that the minimum bar is set to be the true minimum ultimately you should consider and evaluate candidate's experience, but don't obsess over it
-
Setting up an internship program https://codingsans.com/blog/creating-an-internship-program
-
How to avoid hiring great engineers https://www.getparthenon.com/blog/how-to-avoid-hiring-the-best-developers/
-
Wepay how we hire engineers https://wecode.wepay.com/posts/software-engineering-interviewing-wepay
-
Interviewing at Wepay https://wecode.wepay.com/posts/interviewing-at-wepay-the-why
- https://zety.com/blog/illegal-interview-questions Illegal Interview Questions an Employer Cannot Ask [So Don't Answer!]
- https://www.humu.com/blog/why-the-best-way-to-hire-is-incredibly-boring Why the best way to hire is incredibly boring
- https://www.holloway.com/g/technical-recruiting-hiring/sections/improving-di-in-the-hiring-process Improving D&I in the Hiring Process
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470128356/ Hire With Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great Teams 3rd Edition
- https://whothebook.com WHO: the A method of hiring
- Make sure interviews build on each other and don't let every interviewer do their own thing
- Make sure you have a very well defined hiring rubric/scorecard
- Grade candidates on what they did and not what they would do (e.g. instead of hypothetical scenarios explore scenarios they went through in their previous roles)
- https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Hiring-Manager-Mark-Horstman/dp/1119574323 The Effective Hiring Manager
- https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/06/05/smart-and-gets-things-done/ book by Joel (the stack overflow guy! kindof a big deal :) )
- https://www.jrothman.com/books/hiring-geeks-that-fit/ - hiring geeks that fit