/Hiring

When Is Hiring Coming Back? Our Predictions For 2024

- Aline Lerner tl;dr: (1) 2024 is the year when hiring comes back (2) Mid-level & senior eng hiring will pick up significantly, come Jan 2024. (3) For at least the next 6 months, compensation at a given level will stay flat. (4) For at least the next 6 months, down-leveling will continue because of inertia. (5) For at least the next 6 months, recruiters are going to be increasingly stretched thin, which means that applying online is going to be an even less effective way to get into companies. (6) The hiring bar will not return to where it was for a long time.

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Hire Better Managers: 35 Interview Questions For Assessing A Candidate

tl;dr: (1) What are 1-2 questions you always ask your team members in one-on-one meetings, and why? (2) If I asked someone on your team about your leadership style, what would they say? (3) Tell me about a time when you delved into significant detail and got your hands dirty. (4) What ritual or practice have you found to be most effective for helping your team connect and collaborate? (5) Why did you leave IC work?

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The Engineering Executive’s Role In Hiring

- Will Larson tl;dr: Will discusses your role as an executive in your organization’s hiring, the components you need to build for an effective hiring process and provides concrete recommendations for navigating the many challenges that you’re likely to run into while operating the hiring process. He gives you enough to get started, build a system that supports your goals, and start evolving it into something exceptionally useful.”

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Hire For Floors, Not Ceilings

- Jacob Kaplan-Moss tl;dr: Jacob uses the sports performance analogy of "floors" and "ceilings" to discuss hiring practices. In sports, an athlete's "ceiling" denotes their peak potential, while their "floor" represents their worst performance. Jacob identifies four performance archetypes, from consistently excellent athletes to those who are unpredictably variable. Drawing parallels to hiring, Jacob argue that employers often mistakenly prioritize a candidate's potential (ceiling) over their consistency (floor). He emphasizes that a consistently average performer is often more valuable than an unpredictable one, stating, consistency and reliability should be prioritized over sporadic potential.

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The Best Approach I've Seen For Hiring New Engineers

- Jade Rubick tl;dr: A successful example of new engineer hiring through the "Ignite" program. In this program, junior engineers are hired to work on real company problems in groups, join different teams for several weeks, and then are placed on a permanent team. The program is effective in training and integrating junior engineers into the company's processes, providing a positive experience for them. Thoughtful management and structured onboarding can lead to more effective junior engineers, and the lessons from this program can be applied to companies of various sizes, especially those hiring 20-30 engineers annually.

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Hiring Engineers In The Age Of AI And ChatGPT

- Obasi Shaw tl;dr: Hiring in the age of AI? Here's how tools like ChatGPT and Github Copilot impact the role of engineers, how they’ll change technical interviews, and how companies can adapt their interview process to the mainstream usage of these tools.

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Hired’s 2023 State Of Software Engineers

tl;dr: (1) Engineers remain optimistic about the future. (2) Layoffs from May to December 2022 had the greatest impact on salaries and interview interest for junior and non-traditional engineers. (3) Demand for remote engineering talent remains high. Remote roles command higher salaries than local roles, especially in smaller markets. (4) The most in-demand coding skills and software engineering roles shifted.

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When Is Short Tenure A Red Flag?

- Jacob Kaplan-Moss tl;dr: "Here’s a question that comes up a lot. It goes something like: “I’ve only worked 10 months at this job, and it’s terrible. If I look for a new job now, will my short tenure be a red flag?” Or, from hiring managers: “I’m looking at a resume showing they’ve worked three jobs in the last four years. Is that something to be concerned about?” Jacob discusses his perspective here, as well as how hiring managers and candidates should evaluate and respond. 

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What We Learned About Hiring From Our First Five Employees

- Andy Vandervell tl;dr: The company founder shares the profiles of the first 5 company employees and key takeaway from each hire, including: (1) Test people out with paid work before you hire them full time. (2) Define your culture and your "ideal hires" from the start. (3) Go looking for great people in different places. And more.

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Bar Raisers, Hiring Committees, And Other Complex Ways To Improve Hiring Quality

- Will Larson tl;dr: Will discusses pros and cons of each. His "default advice" on the topic of increasing quality of organizational hiring is: (1) Introduce structured approval when you introduce your second hiring manager in a function. (2) Wait until organization trust grows sufficiently weak that there’s significant skepticism about hiring quality across teams, then introduce a hiring committee. (3) Avoid introducing bar raising unless you have a clear thesis on why the other approaches won’t work out.

featured in #348