Congratulations! You’ve Made It!
You’ve got big opportunities in the pipeline. Your business is growing, so now’s the time to expand your technical team.
But as leader of this organization you’re missing the experience and knowledge required to evaluate technical talent. Making a mistake here will derail the enterprise.
A bad hire in the early days of a company always brings the whole thing to a screeching stop.
The good news is you are aware and have come looking for help.
Here’s How to Hire Top Technical Talent
First of all understand that the fight for top talent is fierce. Yet, most people go about this process all wrong and that’s where your opportunity begins. If everyone else is bad, then being good can be part of your competitive advantage.
Evaluating Technical Talent
Vision Alignment
Hiring is Sales!
Your Job To Be Done is to attract great talent and close the deal with an offer. That’s why your Hiring Funnel deserves the same respect as your Sales Funnel.
Be sure to focus on finding people who share the vision and show enthusiasm for the company goals.
You do this by selling the vision during the hiring process. You make the candidates want the job for the future it offers not for the compensation it carries.
Table Stakes
Far too many orgs focus only on the table stakes. A heavy reliance on a gauntlet of technical interviews only chases away talent.
Much better to establish a baseline minimum demonstration of skill than burden the applicant with performing in a talent show.
Core Values
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This one’s not a joke.
Stereotypes like “Rock Star” and “10x” programmers serve to normalize antisocial behaviour. When you allow low EQ people onto the team you make it a little worse for everyone else.
The correct approach is to spend time evaluating the candidate’s core values and know how it supports the culture you want for your company.
How does it work?
The best way to think of this process is to treat it like a marketing campaign because it is.
The side effect of a good hiring campaign is that it makes the next one easier.
A good campaign will grow your reputation through the halo effect. All the materials and landing pages that highlight your Core Values and Vision build your brand. The candidates that interview get indoctrinated and your mind share increases.
Hiring Services
We’ll guide you through the process and do whatever parts you feel comfortable offloading.
A typical engagement follows this form:
1. Planning to Win
Before you speak to that first candidate you need to know what to say.
We begin all engagements with a deep dive into your company to understand what is the secret to your success. Then we go about finding the talent that enhances it, because technical screening is easy, and hiring for culture or vision is hard.
2. Building the Campaign
A job description is not enough. In fact most job descriptions do more harm than good.
We show you how to attract candidates with a great job ad and then we work with you to design a hiring flow that gets you the best candidates.
3. Hiring Funnel
While the campaign is up and running your candidates need to feel good about your position. They need to have a positive sentiment about everything that your company represents.
We run your funnel with integrity and transparency to the the candidates. Customer service with a smile. No candidate should come away from an interaction with your brand feeling anything but a desire to work for you.
4. Onboarding
It’s not enough to just make the offer. Retention of top talent depends on that first impression. Your hiring success is made during their first day, week, and month.
We’ll work together on a plan that makes the new hire feel welcome and productive right away.