Ongoing Dilemma for CTOs and Hiring Managers
"The best candidate I interviewed last week just messaged me. She's dropping from our recruiting process because she accepted another offer.
We need to move faster!"
Competition for Talent Pushes To Shorten the Hiring Process
- Founders will push to cut interviews from the process
- CTO will question if the take home assessment is asking for too much commitment
- Engineers will question if the "cultural interview" could be dropped
Quality Standards Demand Keeping the Bar High
- CTO knows that cutting corners could lead to post-onboarding trouble
- Engineers want to hire peers whom they can learn from
- Founders want to make sure every hire is a culture fit
There is no silver bullet for this.
Typical hiring cycles in Engineering are around 3-4 weeks. But some companies are hiring on "gut feeling" after the first interview. These are "stealing" the best engineers (and also the average ones) from companies with longer hiring.
Companies can either optimize for:
- Avoiding false positives: Longer and stricter hiring process. This prevents firing after hiring.
- Avoiding false negatives: Short and loose hiring process. Will fire fast when required.
I'm hearing in the CTO community that companies with short and loose hiring processes are taking engineers away from the ones with longer hiring cycles.
There's clear pressure to shorten the hiring process.
A common line up of touch points with engineering candidates is:
- Introductory interview
2. Technical assessment
3. Technical interview
4. Cultural interview
What do you think can be removed to shorten the process?
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