Top Tech companies always aim for the best: the best talent, best resources, best practices, and best everything. But what truly differentiates a wannabe top company from a real top company is the high standards they set in their talent acquisition and recruitment. The way they treat their recruitment cycle.
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The biggest myth is that recruitment is a pay-as-you-use thing. That part is utter rubbish. Recruitment is a continuous cycle. When you are looking to hire, you need to be active, and when you aren’t hiring, you should be proactive.
The best way out is always to keep hiring, but when in doubt -don’t hire, keep looking.
In a particular case for technical hiring, the former VP of engineering at Amazon and Zynga, Neil Roseman, says that companies have no idea how to go about hiring the best. In his interview with First Round Review, he explains how companies and candidates oversell things and achievements.
Steps to Consistently Hire Remarkable Engineers
The key to getting there, in reality, is by taking the following baby steps.
Define yourself as a company and explain your vision
You should define what your company stands for. Write down a purpose for your organization. You do not have to be different, but you must show focus. Good prospective employees will “buy-in” to a company that shows that it has a vision. Try to generate enthusiasm for your company’s mission. This will speed up the interview process and improve your company’s retention rate.
Not just this. Add a bio for the founders and the team. A personal touch for someone who is inspired enough might be the required shove in the back to accept the offer. Besides, it is motivational to know that I will be working for someone who is probably my age but is better than me and has achieved things I can only dream of.
Why? Because it is the vision of the company that defines the quality of challenges that the employees shall work towards resolving. Great companies like Tesla or Apple have this work cut out for them, and it is usually people like Mr. Jobs and Mr. Tesla that we envision when we think of a reason to work at these companies. It is these people and the values they instill in the company’s work culture that make one want to work for them.
Flaunt Latest Tech
Indian IT companies and a few startups have abused and misused the talents of developers by either underpaying them or overworking them. Today’s developers are looking for a healthier and more balanced lifestyle.
Show that the company is ahead of the curve by constantly moving away from legacy technologies and embracing new ones.
When you are looking to hire ambitious people, you should show that you are equally tech-savvy. Show people that you are in for the latest advancements in technology. The best developers are the ones always looking to learn new things. Most of the young developers love companies that are adaptive and are more likely to join you.
Identify the Leaks in your Hiring Funnel
At top tech companies, typically, 60+ people apply before a final candidate is chosen. Make sure that you spread the word. A lot of companies overlook this part and assume that the quality of candidates is just the responsibility of the staffing firm.
But is it?
Explore all the avenues for hiring
One of the bigger mistakes companies commit is sticking to only one hiring partner/method. In this digital age, that is a sin. Your referrals/Naukri/Agency might’ve been amazing for you to date. But if you are going to be obnoxious to the existence of amazing solutions that can solve your problems, you are inviting trouble unto yourself.
Best talent doesn’t go about advertising their availability on various portals. But why try your luck? The following are the things that you should do at the least when recruiting for your company:
Job Boards
Job boards are amazing to build a large pool of developers who show interest in your company. But there is a clear problem: you have to sit and screen each resume.
Use various ATS to streamline the process
Automate processes like Screening, Assessment, and Scheduling of interviews with the help of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Automation of the entire process does not mean that you are left behind. It is optimizing the whole process to provide you with more power and information. When you automate the entire process, you get time to focus on the more important things.
Use social media to hire platforms like LinkedIn and even Facebook
Social media is where you get to interact with all your fans. People who are interested in your company and want to stay updated about you are best found here. LinkedIn is a professional social network where you can find various potential employees. Similarly, a less formal medium is Facebook and even Twitter, to an extent.
Standardize the entire Talent Acquisition
Mostly, there are two ways to go about it – Like Google & Directi, keep it centralized. Developers are very choosy. Centralizing the entire process ensures diversity and an equal standard at every workplace in the company. The other way is to leave it to the individual teams, in which case they will not progress. It will limit diversity.
It doesn’t matter which team/project/vertical the individual will join, make sure that each one passes through a final filter, making it a centralized process and ensuring that there is a set standard maintained across departments. Collate the info on each interview. This removes any bias and helps add to diversity.
Pay more to hire the best developers
If your best developers are leaving, it is one of two reasons. While most of these cases are related to work/managers being a problem. There are also cases where developers are grossly underpaid, and hence leave when they get a better opportunity.
Handling internal issues with constant monitoring is one solution. However, addressing the monetary aspect is equally important. You should not lose any good developers because you think they are asking for too much. It is hard to believe, but the startup explosion has inflated the salaries of developers.
Good developers are almost twice as expensive to hire now. But that should never be a block for you to hire. If an amazing developer is asking for compensation that is a little over your budget, go for it. It will pay itself back a hundred times over, compared to getting a substandard developer.
Keep the wheel spinning
As I have mentioned before, you must have a constant hiring process. This is where the best companies beat the rest. With a team that keeps an eye out for the best talent, their engagement is what defines their success. Even when people are not joining you, if someone has a great experience interviewing with you, it is a win. Believe it or not, with the advent of forums like Glassdoor and Quora, people talk, and the way you treat people goes way further than you may think.
Another key aspect is the way you respond to people who apply for roles that are not available currently. Because, at times, amazing people apply to you, but for roles you aren’t looking to fill. It is again important to keep them engaged, and tell them politely that there is no position for them currently. That you will inform them if there is one.
A company is only as good as the people that work for it. And it is important to have the best engineers working for you all the time(not meaning 24 hours a day). In order to do that, you should have a process that is effective, efficient, and simple.
At Xobin, not only do we help you with the full recruitment cycle, but we also provide you with that human touch even when automating the entire process. Our Bot (the World’s First Intelligent Interview Bot) is capable of screening, assessing, and even scheduling interviews for developers based on your requirements. Now, all you have to do is sit back and monitor the progress.
Use Xobin and hire the best developers. Never miss out on another good developer ever again. Book a Personalized demo today!
