Be the First to Make a Job Offer

The technical recruiting world in the last few months has been eye opening. The truth is that the current job market, at least in technology, is as competitive as ever.  If you haven’t hired this year yet you need to read this article because things have drastically changed.

Across the country, different markets typically have very different market trends for a similar type of skill set. As an example, it might be much easier to find a C++ embedded candidate in San Jose than it would be in Philadelphia because of the type of companies located in either city that attract a certain type of skilled workers. Today it doesn’t matter if there’s a plethora of companies that employ a certain type of candidate or there’s only a few, the same blanket of frustration is draped over every metropolitan city in their hunt to find an appropriate candidate. You don’t have to be desperate to know that it’s frustrating and damaging when a position stays open.

The frustrating part of this is that when you do find that candidate you usually have plenty of competition. Aside from moving quickly which a lot of your competition is already doing, the key to landing your candidate is to make the right offer first and don’t seek to make an offer that you know you can counter.

Yes, you’re right, in negotiating a price everyone knows the tactic of lowballing and countering. You never know, they might accept your lowball offer first or you can meet in the middle somewhere. When you’re hiring someone, lowballing someone can and will be taken personally so if you make someone an offer that’s lower than their asking price it will turn them off even if you intended to counter them at a higher price. Lowballing says that if the person doesn’t take this offer than it’s not a big deal to you. That’s how they’re taking it and if that’s what you mean by making that offer, why are you making that offer in the first place?

So that concept should be cemented into every hiring manager’s head before extending an offer. Now what do you do when you want to hire a candidate that’s interviewing at multiple places with a few final round interviews scheduled? Do you make the offer and have them shut down their search or do you wait until they finish those final rounds to potentially beat your competition’s pending offers?

Be the first because:

• There are candidates that know where they want to work before any offers get made and then there are candidates that will wait until all options are laid out in front of them. My thought is that if they’re willing to risk losing an offer to see the rest of their suitor’s offers then the first offer wasn’t their first choice anyway.
• You’ll know quickly whether the candidate is serious about your opportunity and you don’t risk waiting for them to get all their offers to extend yours only to lose out anyway.
• It shows confidence in your opportunity to be the first ones to extend an offer. Waiting to counter the candidate’s other offers shows you’re not a leader and not willing to take the first step.
• Making the first offer also shows your decision making abilities, when you make a decision to move forward you move. How a company hires is how they manage.

So how do you make offers? Do you put your best foot forward first or do you wait until you see what the candidate is getting before slapping together your offer? 

Hiring Managers: Work With People Who Want to Work With You

Reflecting back on this post, I recognized a significant improvement in the hiring expectations throughout the community over the past two to three months. That being said, there are still enough needs out there that seem to be unbalanced that I thought to revisit the topic from another angle.

In many cases a simple request for smart engineers often times morphs into a half-human half-robot engineer request which, as far as I know, is still unrealistic. If one’s expectations refuse to be compromised then perhaps the project need should be revisited as well. This fast-paced M&A market, IPO in less than 4 years market, is pushing lean environments and agile shops that continuously look for the “top 1%”, “A Players”, “rock star”, etc. but seemingly do not often stop to ask, what is the long-term outcome of that recruitment target?

In many cases though, the end all be all skill set recruited is one that will inevitably run out of challenges and motivation just months into a project. This should come as no surprise though because it all starts in the interview and hiring process. (more on this)

Can I just put name tags on them?

Wouldn’t that be great if a candidate walked in with a name tag that said, “Hi, my name is Primadonna” or “Hi, I’m really looking for the top dollar and cutting edge technology with no allegiance to the company or product even though that is devastating to a consumer and overall product-centric market.” So the last one was a bit much but you get the point. Unfortunately the answer is no. I’m not even entirely sure that would be legal.

How to identify people who want to work with you

Look for people who seem interested in you, your company and your product from the beginning. This day in age there is simply too much information at our finger tips not to have researched an opportunity beforehand. With so much information available, what you should look for is someone who is passionate about your product/company, with a strong foundation, and great research skills. That is the person that will wake up in the middle of the night to research CoffeeScript and Node.Js to implement your latest web solution without you having to tell them to do so in the morning. If you are working with a recruiter then you should be able to rely on them to increase pre-interview interest and excitement by sharing your story with the candidate beforehand.

People who want to work with you know who you are when they meet you. They have a general understanding (if not more) of the industry, product and technology stack you are working with. Minimally they’ve googled your name to confirm it is something they are interested in at the root and walk in with an open mind and positive attitude. Positive and progressive thinking will lead to production. If you are looking for reasons to hire and people who want to work with you and the candidate is looking for a great opportunity and something to believe in, then the result will always be more productive than two parties coming together with the intention of screening one another out.

Six Ways to Think Like a Great Recruiter

When you’re managing a successful team you know it. You see and hear it happening to other people but it hasn’t happened to you - yet. You’ve even done it to other teams whether you know it or not in order to build your existing team. The better your team is, the more likely they will get recruited or leave for something that’s better for them. At least they think it’s better.

Face it, one of the prime characteristics a successful employee possesses is to think bigger about things and act. When a successful person conquers a project or a role they seek for the next great challenge right around the corner. If it’s not right there, they’re going to find it somewhere else. It’s crucially important to offer that type of mobility and challenge at work. The truth is that you can’t keep the great ones forever unless you give them the golden handcuffs and even that has been known to self-destruct.

So think like a recruiter. An even better way to say it is to think like a great networker. No matter how great your team may be now, there are always other people that will add a new element to the team and the way the market is going, it’s better to be proactively recruiting than reactively.

Here are six ways to think like a great networker:

Build outward, not inward.  Start by remembering that the point of collaborative networking is to connect people who wouldn't ordinarily work together. You are the reason they got together in the first place and they never forget this. Most people make the obvious connections: recruiter to jobseeker, single male to single female, etc., but it’s the great networkers who think like a great recruiter and after listening, realize that a connection can be made. Don't waste your time deepening connections with people you already know. Balance these connections by staying in touch with people in other teams or in other companies. Don’t make the trunk larger but make the branches reach further.

Focus on quality, not quantity.  Rather than aiming for a massive network, focus on building an efficient one. An efficient network requires knowing people with different skills and viewpoints. They should be different from you, of course, but also different from one another. Just applying this rule alone can make the previous a lot easier. Don’t preach to the choir, collaborate with the unpopular.

Build weak ties, not strong ones. The strong ties are already there, they are the people you already know well and talk to frequently and probably someone who knows a lot of the same people you do. A weak tie forms a bridge to a world you don't normally walk in. To maintain a weak tie, you only have to maintain it once or twice a month. Keeping this tie is more beneficial than not having it at all. The road less traveled isn’t built with a highway.

Use hubs, not familiar faces. Usually when you’re faced with an issue at work, you gravitate to the people that you’re closer with to ask for help. But because we tend to befriend people at our own level, our closest contacts are unlikely to know more than we do. Instead, identify the "hubs" in your company or community who are already great organizational networkers and ask them to connect you to someone who knows more. These hubs tend to be long-tenured people who've worked on a variety of teams and projects. If you're in a leadership role, consider it part of your job to help develop more hubs. Weave a web not a flock.

Swarm the target. This will help you capture value, which if you think of networking as a vehicle to only capture value you’re already looking at it poorly. If you’ve built a network that is based on complexity, using the help of a hub you find someone who can help you: a target. But before you approach that person, the smart networker enlists the help of their network to increase the odds that the target will listen. Ask a shared contact to reach out to the target person. Ask someone high in your network to talk to someone high in your target’s network. Share your vision of building a team, starting a company, recruiting for a client and remember reciprocity: make sure to highlight how this benefits them. The best leaders think of themselves last.

Strengthen ties by investing time. Now you’re building a team, and while the term "Team building" is a little cliché there are times when it's crucial. If you’re managing a team that is facing a challenging task (who isn’t?), make sure to invest time and resources to build stronger connections. Help the team get to know each other better. You'll start to see results very quickly and you won’t need to be the aggressor all the time, the bond becomes so tight that you no longer need to be the glue. Once you have the ropes in place, you need to tighten them for the mast to sail. 

To begin this and be comfortable at it, start by mapping the networks internally in your business, both formal and informal. Look at the structure and how the organization is set up. The larger the company the more hubs will exist and most likely you’re not a part of all of them and there are a lot of people who are outside of them that are on islands by themselves. Measure the diversity of the hubs, is it mostly junior people and senior people separate? Are they close because of geographical distance? Gender? Once you can work internally, you can easily see this exist if you go to a networking event and watch the crowd disperse into small hubs.

Break into the hubs, make a connection, and think like a networker. It’s better that you do it because someone is, and sooner or later, the target will be on your team. 

The Damage Not Hiring Does to Your Team

There are many opinions on hiring the right way. One of the most overstated and obvious opinion is centered around the fear of hiring the wrong person. That paranoia can paralyze a hiring manager’s decision to hire at all, finding flaws in everyone they interview. News flash, no one is without a flaw.

I understand the logic if you hire someone that’s wrong for a position then you’re setting yourself back a few steps to recover from the damages and loss of resources used in training – but to what extent is not hiring anyone damaging your existing team?

When you’re hiring, there’s one main reason for doing so: to alleviate the stress on you or your team. They’re essentially doing their job as well as some other duties that can be funneled into a new or replacement position. When you wait for the “right fit” and potentially screen out valued candidates based on criteria that might be of little consequence to the actual job, you prolong this stress on your team that could lead to the ground breaking underneath them.

I commonly come across people that are contemplating a leave from their organization because they feel understaffed and overworked and are looking to leave solely based on that. I ask if their manager is looking for a new hire and they always say yes, but their interview process is either too long or too selective to ever find the perfect candidate so the position stays open. I also talk to hiring managers that have a laundry list of criteria both on the technical side and on culture itself and say they will act quickly to secure the perfect candidate but are willing to wait it out until they find that perfection. The question is whether you’re willing to wait long enough that you start losing more people in the process.

As your position stays open, here's what your team is thinking: 

• I’m frustrated in your inability to make a decision.
• I’m questioning whether you want that position filled at all or just making me do more work while   the company essentially saves money.
• My value is going up here, so why am I being overworked?
• If I got this job and it’s so hard to find someone comparable to me, I wonder what my value is on the market?

As the market for good technical talent gets more competitive, the average technical hiring manager’s criteria is staying the same as it was during the recession – refusing to admit that supply is limited. There has to be a balance on what you absolutely need versus the nice to haves. The reality is, is that the market is very competitive for technical people so you must weigh the importance of culture versus the ability to hit the ground running with pre-existing technical skills. Everyone’s looking for the incredibly intelligent Software Developer that can also be client facing or gel with the team. You’re no different.

Try and Buy

So what do you do if you don’t want to compromise on being picky for the right person? Try and then buy.

It’s a simple concept that gets overlooked. Have the ability to hire your strong “maybes” on a 2-3 month contract to hire basis, have them check you out while you invest your attention into whether this person would be a fit overall and begins to gel with your existing team. I am seeing more hiring managers go this route with candidates that may not be the perfect fit but have most of the essentials to do the job and, with a little time, will grow into that perfect fit. It makes the decision not as heavy and more nimble in your ability to make a decision.

Ultimately, if the contractor doesn’t work out in the 90 day window, you can alleviate some stress from your team and will show them that you’re not just leaving an empty desk stay empty. Actin is much better than reaction and increasing your urgency to hire because you’re losing people makes you desperate to fill your position as opposed to being urgent. Don’t feed the incredibly competitive technology hiring market with your own people just because you’re waiting for that diamond in the rough.

If you’re hiring – just hire. 

Interviewing Is a Team Game

Interviewing is a skill. Interviewing is a team game. It requires strategy, communication, and leadership. The current market is fast-paced and in many ways the most competitive market we have seen since 1999. This competition means you need to remain agile and iterative in your hiring and interviewing processes.

Strategy: Think Like Apple, Inc.

I am not an Apple employee, nor have I ever been, but I have spoken to several people who fall into one of those two categories and I am a dedicated Apple product user. Based on my observations, I think it is safe to say Apple does not compromise on design or user experience. I imagine the think tank meetings go something like this:

"We should do this" or "We need to do this" or "What if we did this"
…And rather than hearing "We can’t because…"
The immediate response is "Great idea, how can we do it?"

I advise taking a similar approach when it comes to hiring. When meeting and engaging candidates, get to know them, look for their strengths and identify their weaknesses while keeping the team’s business needs in mind. Look for reasons to hire rather than reasons not to hire. After all, no one is perfect.

Communication: Pass the Torch

Most companies have a candidate come on-site to meet with several members of the team. Somewhere along the process, it is important that team members strategize before the candidate arrives. Establish a goal or purpose to the interviews beyond just hiring someone. Each team member must know what he or she is responsible for discussing or not discussing with the candidate. If a candidate is asked the same question twice or even three times it is clear the hiring team has not prepared or communicated after having met with the candidate individually. The lack of communication is a direct indication of how that team typically communicates and executes.

Leadership: As the Hiring Manager, You Must Own the Interview Process

Take the time to sit down with your team. Prepare them and make sure everyone understands their responsibilities within the interview process. Set up checks and balances, but stay open-minded as long as the goal of the hiring process remains clear. Last but not least, remind your team that this candidate is someone they could be working with, so they should treat him or her well, no matter what their first impression is.

By speaking with engineers who are currently and actively interviewing in Silicon Valley, I have learned that one bad interview experience can taint the entire process. For example, say a candidate has met with three people where the synergy was obvious. Then they meet with someone who is unprepared and unimpressive. That is what will resonate, not the three previous interactions. You are only as strong as your weakest link! And you just lost that candidate to a more organized and ultimately more impressive organization. Just hope it’s not one of your direct competitors.

As a manager, it is important to make sure the people conducting interviews are able to do it well. They should be able to admit their own strengths and weaknesses before critiquing others.

Great candidates give great feedback after meeting with companies that make the interview process feel more like two engineers or researchers talking than a pop quiz designed to stump everyone but the abstractly brilliant.

Be the architect: design a solution and have your team execute it while establishing the first and final contact with each candidate. Ask candidates at the end of the process for feedback on your interviewers and their interview methods. Keep an open mind, take candidates’ feedback constructively, and thank them for being transparent.

The Insider’s Guide to Evaluating Placement Agencies

The technology hiring market is once again a challenging place for hiring managers to locate and hire talent. Many companies are reopening their vendor lists and beginning to evaluate placement agencies. As a hiring manager you will have to decide which recruiter is best suited to your needs. Your phone is going to ring incessantly and every time you pick it up there will be another recruiter vying for your attention and your business. Here's how to figure out who to work with:

Product & Specialization

Do they have the types of people you need? Ask what type of placement they and their company specialize in and decide if it's in line with your needs. If you were a baseball owner and you needed a pitcher, you wouldn't waste your time talking to the guy who recruits soccer players. So don't talk to a recruiter that doesn't recruit candidates who do what you need. The more specialized, the better. There are hundreds of firms that do technical placement but if you're looking for a Java Software Architect, spend your time talking to someone who places that specific type of person. You don't want the recruiter who has to go out and find the people you are looking for. Instead, you want the one who already knows dozens of qualified people and will sift through them to find your next hire.

Ask questions about any candidates that are mentioned to you. Does your recruiter meet with candidates face to face? Do they know the candidates beyond what's on their resume? For example, ask them why candidates have left jobs in the past. Ask them about how the candidate spends their time at work. Does the recruiter understand the candidates' daily responsibilities and can they articulate the details of projects they've worked on? If you ask a question and they read you an excerpt from the candidate's resume then you need to wonder why you would pay an agency fee for someone to read to you.

Background

Do your research. Every recruiter has a LinkedIn profile (if not, they don't understand professional networking and you should not work with them) that you can view, which will help you understand who you're dealing with. Look at their track record in the same way you would evaluate a resume of someone going to work for you. How long have they been in the industry? Do they bounce from company to company? Do they show career progression? All of these factors tell you about their ability to deliver for their clients.

One trick in evaluating someone's background is to pay attention to how different recessions affected their career. In particular, did they leave their job (or worse, the recruiting industry as a whole) in 2001 or 2009? It's not foolproof but it does provide a canvas on which to evaluate their performance. You can also look at things like recommendations, Twitter profiles, and blogs to decide if they are your type of recruiter.

Industry & Technical Knowledge

Do they know what they are talking about? The best technical recruiters take their craft seriously and as a result have a deep understanding of technology. Don't expect them to know how to code (after all, the best baseball scouts can't throw the ball 100 mph) but do expect them to have a strong knowledge of their market. Do they ask intelligent questions based on what they know of your company and your position or are they simply reading a generic list of questions from a script? Watch for contradicting lines of questioning. For example, if you're a Microsoft shop they should assume you are looking for a .NET Developer or a Windows Admin, not a LAMP expert. Do they bring information to the conversation regarding salary expectations and the availability of extremely specialized skill sets? If you want to test someone tell them you are looking for a candidate with 10 years of experience who will take a salary of 55k and see what they say. If they respond "Yes, no problem" then it's probably time to move on.

Communication

Do they listen? A good recruiter will need a significant portion of your time to understand the details of what you're looking for, take feedback on interviews and keep you informed about the interest level of candidates throughout the interview process. That said, your interactions should be planned and organized with clear goals for each of your phone calls. Do they take your feedback regarding interviews and learn from it when qualifying future candidates? A good recruiter should obviously ask about technology but they should also inquire about your work environment and culture. It never hurts to have your recruiter visit your office so they can meet the types of people you have hired in the past and see the physical work environment.

As the market continues to pick up, you are going to get a ton of "Mom & Pop" agencies and entry-level recruiters hammering your phone. Just like with any profession, some recruiters are better than others. If you find yourself disappointed with the person you are talking to, the easiest way to address the situation is to politely ask to speak with their manager. Most managers in the technical placement industry have been in the business long enough to know how to take care of a client and you'll likely receive a high level of customer service.

Extending Job Offers Too Late

Sometimes I wonder why, after completing many rounds of interviews and deciding to hire a candidate, it takes more than three days to come out with an offer. Why wait? You lose momentum from the last interview with every minute that goes by. Take advantage of the moment and make the offer you intend to make within 24 hours of the candidate’s final interview. Otherwise you run the risk of stunting the momentum you’ve worked so hard to create and souring the experience for the job seeker.

Everyone has been in this situation: you go to a restaurant, you have a great meal, the experience and vibe of the place is amazing and the wait staff is very friendly, timely and informative. Then you finish your meal and your cocktail and you wonder where that wonderful waiter went. It’s obvious that the server is busy with other tables, but all they need to do is get the check for you and you’ll be out the door! As time goes on, the great dining experience you had turns sour and while it won’t completely ruin the experience it will stick in your mind and be the last thing you remember about the place. All that hard work the server put in at the beginning is forgotten and his tip will, no doubt, be drastically reduced.

Similarly, while the job seeker reflects on the interviewing experience and wonders why it’s taking so long to make a decision, they start resenting how long they’re being made to wait. Put yourself in the shoes of a job seeker after a final round interview. Imagine that you felt it went very well and maybe the hiring manager even said that they will be getting back to you shortly with an offer or a positive decision. A day passes, then two days, then the weekend.

Here’s the job seeker’s thought process:

• They’re interviewing other candidates so I should check out other options to see if there’s anything better out there.
• Did I say something that put them off in the final interview? It wasn’t a technical interview so maybe they just didn’t like me and were putting on a fake façade.
• I have an offer already from my #2 choice. Since my #1 choice is taking so long I had better accept the offer from my #2. After all, a bird in hand is better than two in the bush!
• If they take this long to make a decision, how do they make other decisions?
• Do I want to work for someone that can’t make up their mind?

Ultimately you can see that letting a candidate sit for too long is not a good thing. Job seekers are not wine or cheese! They’re people who want to be hired. I understand that larger companies have processes in place for a reason and an approval strategy must be gone through before any offers are extended, but you can get all of that done before the final round interview. You can get ready to go so you can make a timely decision.

Here are some other tips:

• Make a verbal offer and let the job seeker know that once you get verbal acceptance you will generate the offer letter.
• Alert your hiring “party” that you have a candidate that you’re strongly considering, in order to get the necessary paperwork out of the way before the final round interview.
• If you’re working with an agency make sure that they set the proper expectations with the job seeker ahead of time so it doesn’t become a frustrating “hurry up and wait” scenario.
• Follow up with the job seeker every day to update them on what’s happening. The worst thing you can do is let the job seeker simmer without any updates.

In a perfect world you’d find a job seeker that you want to hire and you’d make them an offer. There are certain procedures for doing things that you must adhere to but don’t let them stand in the way of hiring the right candidate. The market is, once again, incredibly competitive for good candidates and sometimes the only thing that keeps you from getting the candidate you want is the slowness of your hiring process. Full speed ahead!

Hiring Managers: Your New Title Is Brand Manager

Whether you like it or not, hiring managers, your responsibilities include brand management. This concept is never more crucial than during the hiring process. As a hiring manager, you are a representative of your organization. Each interaction with candidates (over the phone, in person or via email) leaves an impression no matter what. If handling the hiring process with this level of accountability sounds challenging, I would suggest you remain in a lead role until you feel up to the challenge.

The hiring manager must take ownership of the hiring process and responsibilities. How would you appreciate being treated? There are three major points of the process where you (the hiring manager) can win by giving a great impression of yourself and your organization:

1. People Hire People, Not Paper (Resumes)

Common Tendency: You see an impressive paper pedigree. The candidate has a solid computer science education, uses good buzzwords and name brands, has experience with start-ups and big companies, and it is one to two pages in length. Perfect! You put in the call and immediately realize the resume made the candidate much more exciting than he or she now seems on the phone.

Insight: Most hiring managers feel confident in their ability to identify communication skills, technical knowledge and career search mindset from a ten-minute phone call. People tend to light up and give good energy when connecting with a solid candidate and remain stoic and disengage quickly from a weak candidate. I have interviewed over 4,000 technical candidates in the past three and a half years and I have realized that candidates can sense and feel it when you disconnect. They would not mind if you gave them a quick explanation why they are not a fit, instead of the age-old, "We’ll get back to you." Candidates know they will never receive further information and, on the rare occasion they do, they will only get an automated email containing no constructive feedback.

Improvement: Ideally, you should have a trusted source who understands business and technology handling that first round phone call for you. The first call should have the ability to highlight the organization’s attractive qualities and educate, prepare and interest the candidate. Then your first in-person interaction can be a short on-site meeting to cover culture and high-level technical details before introducing a candidate to the team. Their time on the production line is valuable so let them know you appreciate them.

2. On-site Interview

Common Tendency: If you hit it off from the get-go, the conversation will carry itself and the candidate will get a full tour of the place and be escorted to the front door or even outside. Conversely, a culture misfit will experience an abrupt conclusion to the interview, a point towards the exit and a friendly wave (instead of a reassuring handshake).

Insight: Human resources and internal and external recruiters prepare candidates for the interview process based on information given by the hiring manager himself. If a candidate goes in for a three-hour interview and it does not go well, they will experience an abrupt end halfway through because of some candy-coated reason why the next interviewer could not make the time even though in some cases, specific scheduling of said interview was leveraged on that one’s ability to make a specific day/time. Some interviewers will go as far as to say, "We will see you back here soon," knowing that will not be the case.

Improvement: Keep face-to-face interviews short to allot an extended period for on-site meetings with the team. During the meeting, treat every candidate with professionalism and interest. Not every candidate will be an appropriate fit, but don't burn any bridges. You never know when you or your organization will cross paths with that person again, or whom they will affect directly or indirectly.

3. Follow Through Constructively

Common Tendency: If the interview goes well, an update giving positive feedback and outlining the next steps immediately follows. If it does not, there will be either no feedback at all or a general closing statement by email.

Insight: The candidate took the time to prepare and interview. Your job as an interviewer is to assess their ability to address a business need and fit into the culture. Maybe after a phone interview, on-site meeting or full interview process, you have to tell the candidate that it is not a good fit. Most hiring managers provide no additional information beyond a simple "no." Next time consider extending some constructive feedback or explaining the logical reasoning behind your decision.

Improvement: Be honest and transparent the moment it becomes obvious that the candidate is not a good fit. Only tell them you are taking time to decide if it is true. Follow up with constructive feedback within 48-72 hours and be clear.

Every candidate deserves the same level of kindness and professionalism, or social media (Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, etc.) will hear about it.