5 Do's and Don’ts for Closing Top Engineering Talent

You need engineers and you need them quickly. You’ve pored through resumes and completed the technical interviews for a group of candidates. You’ve identified who has the skills needed for the job. What now?At this stage, the hiring process is far from finished. The next step is to choose which candidate will fold successfully into the wider team and then sell them on your company. As competition for engineering talent remains fierce, it’s important to get this part right.The interview process is time- and resource-intensive, with recruiting fees ranging from 12-22% of a position’s salary. In order to make the most of that investment, there are a few guidelines that can help you choose the right candidate and ensure they choose you, too. Don’t limit culture fit to personality traits.Hiring someone who complements your company culture is important — but that doesn’t mean choosing someone who you want to go get a beer with after work. Choosing the right candidate is not about selecting people who look or act the same way as others in the company. Doing so can lead to serious diversity problems, which could impact effective decision-making, morale and retention.Do look for shared values. The right way to hire for culture is to look for candidates who share your company’s most important values. This could include values like teamwork, passion, or putting the customer first. Doing this will foster a sense of community while setting your team up for success. At Andela, we base culture fit on three qualities: values (do they share our sense of community?), output (do they have the technical skills we need?) and feedback (have they shown they can learn from feedback?).Don’t rely only on one-on-one interviews.One-on-one interviews are effective for learning what a candidate’s core technical and soft skills are. But as you start to identify the most promising candidates, group interviews become valuable for closing the deal. They allow a candidate to get to know the team they’ll be working with day-to-day, which can set them up to accept your offer. Do provide a product demo.Many engineering candidates are motivated by the problems they’ll be solving in a potential role. When it’s time to sell your company to a candidate, give them a demo of the product, show them the roadmap and explain why the market opportunity is compelling. Do bring in the big guns. When you’ve found the ideal candidate and it’s time to close, get the CTO or CEO involved in the process to show how much a candidate is valued. Having a salesperson talk to them about why they’re excited about the product can also give them a better understanding of the opportunity. Curious to learn more about how top engineering leaders hire for the best talent? Register now for our live webinar on Thursday, February 6th, to hear insights from engineering leaders at Homebase and Andela: It’s Time to Change How You Hire Engineers - Four Ways to Expand Your Talent Pool in 2020.