The key question is, are the same old hiring processes suitable for the modern world? We think the answer is a resounding \u2018no\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We think many organizations are sleepwalking into problems they\u2019ll struggle to backtrack from. Even if everything seems fine today (and you\u2019re lucky, if that\u2019s you). It\u2019s like getting tangled in a bramble bush: the harder you fight, the more trouble you\u2019re in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s talk about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An invisible challenge in technical hiring <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nMost organizations struggle with the same problems around hiring technical talent, especially in the context of severe skills shortages. The US Department of Labor estimates that the global shortage of software engineers<\/a> will reach 85.2 million by 2030, for instance. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe symptoms are near-universal: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- Lack of quality applications<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- High candidate attrition<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Declined offers<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Unfilled roles<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- High churn<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
To address these issues, teams often take the same approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- How do we attract more, better candidates so we can hire them?<\/strong> That\u2019s logical \u2013 and an important conversation. If you\u2019re not attracting great engineers at the top of your funnel, you won\u2019t hire great engineers at the bottom.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
\n- And how do we improve efficiency, so we don\u2019t lose good people to speedier competitors? <\/strong>That too is logical. The average global time-to-hire across all roles is 42 days \u2013 leaping to 62 days within Engineering.<\/a> Hitting \u2013 or, better, improving on \u2013 benchmarks keeps you competitive. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
These are worthy focuses. But they miss one of the biggest causes of those uncomfortable hiring symptoms, because they make one fatal assumption: that you\u2019re good at reliably identifying what \u201cgreat\u201d talent looks like.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\nThat is, they assume you\u2019re struggling to hire because there aren\u2019t enough great people and because competition is high. Ergo, if only you could attract more great talent and move them through an efficient recruitment process, you\u2019d make more great hires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem is, many organizations don\u2019t realize they just aren\u2019t good at evaluating talent. The technical recruitment process isn\u2019t set-up to facilitate good decision-making. So even when you improve your inflow, you still struggle with many of the same symptoms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s what\u2019s happening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recruitment vs. reality: the great disconnect <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nA harsh truth: most organizations\u2019 evaluation processes for technical talent aren\u2019t fit-for-purpose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They don\u2019t reliably identify the best people \u2013 so you either miss great hires or, worse, hire poor ones. With all the costs and consequences that entails. And they usually derail the candidate experience at the same time, exacerbating existing issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Think about what recruitment is meant<\/em> to evaluate. Who\u2019ll thrive in this job? Who\u2019ll add the most value, for longest? To empower those decisions, technical evaluation processes must align closely to the actual job you\u2019re hiring for. That is, they must be realistic<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIf you\u2019re hiring for a sales rep for your contact center, for example, you need to evaluate how they function in a contact center environment tackling the same sorts of scenarios they\u2019ll handle day-to-day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That might sound obvious, but when it comes to technical hiring that\u2019s not what\u2019s happening in most organizations. Frequently, technical evaluation processes bear little resemblance to the job at all. Look. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Screening<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nYour recruitment team exists because it would be inefficient and unproductive for technical managers to handle first-stage screening. But recruiters are specialists at recruitment \u2013 not software engineering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even the best technical recruiters can struggle with deep technical nuance, especially for niche or senior roles. Especially given that managers often fail to give enough role information to empower effective screening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/coderpad.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AD_4nXceOBkOG9lWoT3yvpPD8Y9HMTzW26Y6q5iaKfW_NR4JyUtnt86qMtNOQU5HGjl_lpssjzd3UZUE31lYztLSFezHlyOo5_e3JBJ2tx77b5ePxmqqCt9sH047qH1kB3eYnE5UyRth8p3u-UvOaks0s2U.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Source<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd that\u2019s before you consider AI, which has totally blown-up recruitment over the past 18-months. Arctic Shores report<\/a> that 58% of candidates use AI to boost their chances of securing a role, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNow, recruiters are swamped by 10x the application volume and it\u2019s harder than ever to tell resumes apart. Plus the whole process takes ages, which doesn\u2019t help time-to-hire woes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The result is an inefficient, ineffective screening process that doesn\u2019t consistently progress the best applicants through to interview. Little wonder that 25% of technical hiring managers say a shortage of skilled talent is their primary obstacle<\/a> to recruitment. <\/p>\n\n\n\nInterviews<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/coderpad.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AD_4nXe3NLOmJTta8iTw3uHvCUOoaGLNZ4Edvde_HRQUdWrMZ4zRit12ruCVW6O9MevkzyEZq5xMV_PNsmLEH1VTRSvyj9aZ-cL421W4gxM68wrKmU-aPJjNFrcsYCugz1LGgUDIG3RU_CGvBp0qw9coJOY.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Source<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\nSure, recruiters might\u2019ve missed some great candidates at screening \u2013 but surely your managers are good at spotting the right devs for their teams?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately not. For many organizations, coding interviews are broken. Often they\u2019re:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- Generic, relying on stale questions candidates have seen time and again<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Unrelated to the job or company, telling candidates nothing valuable<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Language-specific, forcing candidates into arbitrary boxes<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Unfamiliar, using platforms and hardware candidates don\u2019t normally use<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Time-consuming take-homes that candidates don\u2019t like<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Heavy-handed anti-cheat measures, assuaging concerns about cheating<\/a>, but stopping candidates using everyday tools <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Unreasonable and disrespectful, asking too much in too little time <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Coding interviews like this do a terrible job at evaluating whether candidates will thrive on-the-job. And they do a terrible job at helping candidates evaluate the role and company too, so poor-fit applicants can\u2019t self-select out. And they drive away some of your best applicants, who simply won\u2019t waste time on processes like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The upshot? Same as screening. An ineffective, inefficient process you can\u2019t trust to identify and hire the best people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In both cases, candidate evaluation isn\u2019t realistic. <\/em>Instead of evaluating how candidates will perform on-the-job, they evaluate candidates\u2019 ability to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n- Write CVs (or use ChatGPT)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Memorize past questions<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Recall snippets they\u2019d normally Google and build on<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Make time for over-long processes<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Code in languages they don\u2019t usually use<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Churn out code as fast as possible<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
If your job description doesn\u2019t look like that, it begs the question why you\u2019re interviewing for those skills\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So why does this matter? And does it matter in the first place, if you\u2019re not currently struggling to hire and your technical teams are mostly performing OK?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The answer\u2019s lots, and yes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why your organization should care (even if everything seems fine)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nIf, like 95% of organizations told Hays last year,<\/a> you\u2019re struggling to hire technical talent then it\u2019s obvious why this stuff matters. <\/p>\n\n\n\nYou need to hire more, better developers, but there\u2019s this big, meaty, often overlooked problem sitting right at the heart of your technical recruitment process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A big, meaty, often overlooked problem that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- Increases time-to-hire which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- damages the candidate experience which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- skyrockets candidate attrition which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- makes hiring harder.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
and <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- Bungles your candidate experience which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- damages your employer brand which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- hurts candidate attraction which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- makes hiring harder.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
and<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- Hinders smart decision-making which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- increases the risk of poor hires which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- decreases productivity and increases turnover which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- makes hiring harder.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
\u2026 all of which translates into increased recruitment costs<\/strong> and lower productive output.<\/strong> The opposite of the successful business equation. <\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd the issue is, it mightn\u2019t be immediately obvious without crunching the numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The symptoms are near-universal: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Lack of quality applications<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- High candidate attrition<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Declined offers<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Unfilled roles<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- High churn<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
To address these issues, teams often take the same approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- How do we attract more, better candidates so we can hire them?<\/strong> That\u2019s logical \u2013 and an important conversation. If you\u2019re not attracting great engineers at the top of your funnel, you won\u2019t hire great engineers at the bottom.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- And how do we improve efficiency, so we don\u2019t lose good people to speedier competitors? <\/strong>That too is logical. The average global time-to-hire across all roles is 42 days \u2013 leaping to 62 days within Engineering.<\/a> Hitting \u2013 or, better, improving on \u2013 benchmarks keeps you competitive. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
These are worthy focuses. But they miss one of the biggest causes of those uncomfortable hiring symptoms, because they make one fatal assumption: that you\u2019re good at reliably identifying what \u201cgreat\u201d talent looks like.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is, they assume you\u2019re struggling to hire because there aren\u2019t enough great people and because competition is high. Ergo, if only you could attract more great talent and move them through an efficient recruitment process, you\u2019d make more great hires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem is, many organizations don\u2019t realize they just aren\u2019t good at evaluating talent. The technical recruitment process isn\u2019t set-up to facilitate good decision-making. So even when you improve your inflow, you still struggle with many of the same symptoms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s what\u2019s happening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recruitment vs. reality: the great disconnect <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A harsh truth: most organizations\u2019 evaluation processes for technical talent aren\u2019t fit-for-purpose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They don\u2019t reliably identify the best people \u2013 so you either miss great hires or, worse, hire poor ones. With all the costs and consequences that entails. And they usually derail the candidate experience at the same time, exacerbating existing issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Think about what recruitment is meant<\/em> to evaluate. Who\u2019ll thrive in this job? Who\u2019ll add the most value, for longest? To empower those decisions, technical evaluation processes must align closely to the actual job you\u2019re hiring for. That is, they must be realistic<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re hiring for a sales rep for your contact center, for example, you need to evaluate how they function in a contact center environment tackling the same sorts of scenarios they\u2019ll handle day-to-day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That might sound obvious, but when it comes to technical hiring that\u2019s not what\u2019s happening in most organizations. Frequently, technical evaluation processes bear little resemblance to the job at all. Look. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Screening<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Your recruitment team exists because it would be inefficient and unproductive for technical managers to handle first-stage screening. But recruiters are specialists at recruitment \u2013 not software engineering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even the best technical recruiters can struggle with deep technical nuance, especially for niche or senior roles. Especially given that managers often fail to give enough role information to empower effective screening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Source<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s before you consider AI, which has totally blown-up recruitment over the past 18-months. Arctic Shores report<\/a> that 58% of candidates use AI to boost their chances of securing a role, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, recruiters are swamped by 10x the application volume and it\u2019s harder than ever to tell resumes apart. Plus the whole process takes ages, which doesn\u2019t help time-to-hire woes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The result is an inefficient, ineffective screening process that doesn\u2019t consistently progress the best applicants through to interview. Little wonder that 25% of technical hiring managers say a shortage of skilled talent is their primary obstacle<\/a> to recruitment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interviews<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Source<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sure, recruiters might\u2019ve missed some great candidates at screening \u2013 but surely your managers are good at spotting the right devs for their teams?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately not. For many organizations, coding interviews are broken. Often they\u2019re:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Generic, relying on stale questions candidates have seen time and again<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Unrelated to the job or company, telling candidates nothing valuable<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Language-specific, forcing candidates into arbitrary boxes<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Unfamiliar, using platforms and hardware candidates don\u2019t normally use<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Time-consuming take-homes that candidates don\u2019t like<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Heavy-handed anti-cheat measures, assuaging concerns about cheating<\/a>, but stopping candidates using everyday tools <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Unreasonable and disrespectful, asking too much in too little time <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Coding interviews like this do a terrible job at evaluating whether candidates will thrive on-the-job. And they do a terrible job at helping candidates evaluate the role and company too, so poor-fit applicants can\u2019t self-select out. And they drive away some of your best applicants, who simply won\u2019t waste time on processes like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The upshot? Same as screening. An ineffective, inefficient process you can\u2019t trust to identify and hire the best people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In both cases, candidate evaluation isn\u2019t realistic. <\/em>Instead of evaluating how candidates will perform on-the-job, they evaluate candidates\u2019 ability to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Write CVs (or use ChatGPT)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Memorize past questions<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Recall snippets they\u2019d normally Google and build on<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Make time for over-long processes<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Code in languages they don\u2019t usually use<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Churn out code as fast as possible<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
If your job description doesn\u2019t look like that, it begs the question why you\u2019re interviewing for those skills\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So why does this matter? And does it matter in the first place, if you\u2019re not currently struggling to hire and your technical teams are mostly performing OK?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The answer\u2019s lots, and yes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why your organization should care (even if everything seems fine)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If, like 95% of organizations told Hays last year,<\/a> you\u2019re struggling to hire technical talent then it\u2019s obvious why this stuff matters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You need to hire more, better developers, but there\u2019s this big, meaty, often overlooked problem sitting right at the heart of your technical recruitment process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A big, meaty, often overlooked problem that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Increases time-to-hire which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- damages the candidate experience which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- skyrockets candidate attrition which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- makes hiring harder.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
and <\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Bungles your candidate experience which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- damages your employer brand which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- hurts candidate attraction which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- makes hiring harder.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
and<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Hinders smart decision-making which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- increases the risk of poor hires which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- decreases productivity and increases turnover which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- makes hiring harder.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
\u2026 all of which translates into increased recruitment costs<\/strong> and lower productive output.<\/strong> The opposite of the successful business equation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the issue is, it mightn\u2019t be immediately obvious without crunching the numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- increases the risk of poor hires which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- damages your employer brand which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- damages the candidate experience which<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Heavy-handed anti-cheat measures, assuaging concerns about cheating<\/a>, but stopping candidates using everyday tools <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- And how do we improve efficiency, so we don\u2019t lose good people to speedier competitors? <\/strong>That too is logical. The average global time-to-hire across all roles is 42 days \u2013 leaping to 62 days within Engineering.<\/a> Hitting \u2013 or, better, improving on \u2013 benchmarks keeps you competitive. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
- How do we attract more, better candidates so we can hire them?<\/strong> That\u2019s logical \u2013 and an important conversation. If you\u2019re not attracting great engineers at the top of your funnel, you won\u2019t hire great engineers at the bottom.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n