Software engineers are in significant demand today. It takes an average of 120 candidates to make one engineering hire. No wonder many companies are having difficulties recruiting engineering talents.
In this post, we share tips and tricks that will help you find an ideal candidate. Proceed to a detailed guide aimed to provide you with advice on how to hire a software engineer including different positions behind the title, hiring models, and qualification levels.
First of all, let’s take a closer look at the very persona we are talking about.
Who Is a Software Engineer?
Before the recruitment process begins, you first need to have an understanding of the duties and peculiarities of software engineers.
In essence, a software engineer designs and develops computer software and applications. The terms software engineer and software developer are essentially interchangeable in most industries and used for someone who designs software or applications loaded onto a computer or that runs as software-as-a-service (SaaS) through a web browser. The design the engineer creates is sometimes handed off to a computer programmer who implements the actual code that runs the software or application. Engineers are typically expected to have a degree in computer science.
You may expect the following hard skills from a software engineer:
- Programming, coding, databases, software development environment
- Software design and architecture
- Computer science
- Algorithms and data structures
- Information analysis
- How to debug software
- How to test software
Apart from hard skills, you may look ahead to some outstanding soft skills such as interpersonal and communication skills. The reason for that is that engineers often collaborate closely together with clients, their teams, colleagues, and end-users to understand the business needs that a piece of software or application solves.
Must-Do When Hiring Software Engineers
Focus On a Role
Devote 70% of the job description to the candidate’s responsibilities. Department and stakeholders description, as well as a company’s mission, would deserve another 30%. Keep in mind that it is a game for both sides: the candidate who is willing to impress the potential employer and the recruiter who is selling his company.
Define Technical Skills
When describing the required skills, try to be as specific as possible by writing down each programming language and framework needed for the role. Also, ensure the job description is verified by an in-house expert.
Be Clear About The Project
Exclude the general phrases and get straight to the point by describing the product you’re currently developing, its goals, what has been already done, what you expect to achieve. Also, you can include the team composition, stakeholders, and customer profile.
Upgraded Steps To Hire A Software Engineer
Here are 4 ways to up your technical hiring game.
Prioritize Qualified Candidates
Focus on the most efficient sources of hire to try to reduce the number of unqualified candidates. Without more ado, to cut short your job advertisements, you may be willing to optimize your recruitment funnel by putting a stronger emphasis on your employee referral program. Find out what kind of sources result in the most engineering hires at your company, including the specific websites you actively source from and post vacancies too, and take a further risk on those.
Personalized Outreach
After you have shortened the list of unqualified candidates, strengthen the top of your funnel further by addressing the issue of disinterested candidates. While you may have reached the 10% of people who are not interested in finding a new position, it’s much more likely that the candidates you source demand a little more getting round to fancy becoming a part of your company.
How to get the attention of the candidates you are willing to engage with? The answer is simple: personalized outreach. However, upper-class talents are typically bombarded with messages from recruiters, so what do you do to stand out among a load of your competitors? A little flattery will do nicely, so make sure the candidate knows that you have spent much time getting to know him and the reasons you find him/her a good candidate for the position. Short information about your company culture and what makes your opportunity unique will never be needless. If you have no reply in return, don’t hesitate to follow up and leave a little reminder to reply to ensure to keep the opportunity on top of mind in case they consider a new role.
Provide a Remarkable Interview Experience
Instead of positioning your interview process as an administrative task, use it to sell each candidate in your role. Learn their motivation for considering a new role, and illustrate how your opportunity fits what they’re looking for. Show a genuine interest in the candidate by asking questions that clarify things you’ve learned about them from a resume or social profile, rather than asking them to repeat information contained therein. Commonly, software engineers have numerous opportunities to compare, and they are likely to continue investing their time in your interview if you treat them like valued candidates.
Pre-Close Your Candidates
Statistics say that only 59% of engineers accept their offers as opposed to 69% of any other candidates. To win a competition for engineers of your dreams, there are a few steps you may be willing to follow.
First, pre-close your candidates to increase the chances of making a successful offer. Discuss the candidate’s motivation and his/her salary expectations as well as the advantages of your opportunity. Discover some extra needs of your candidate so that you include them in your offer before sending it out officially. If the engineer declines your offer, try to find out the reasons so that you consider them with the future candidates.
Don’t Delay Feedback
Your candidates might be reviewing a number of other projects or companies at the same time. The best strategy to get the candidate you need onboard would be to contact him straight away. In case of negative feedback, try not to postpone it as well so the candidate knows where they stand.
Final Thoughts
The process of finding a software engineer is no easy task. Be careful and try not to scare the best fit for your organization when choosing candidates. Work on constant improvement of your recruitment funnel to learn what steps to take to make changes based on the feedback you receive.
