The candidate's experience in recruiting software developers. Part 1
Good day, friends. Today's publication will not be quite typical for our blog, because it will be about recruiting software developers, and more precisely about the practical experience of the candidate. And this article is timed to the launch of a new stream on the course "IT-Recruiter" .
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If your job is to hire software developers, then I take my hat off to you. Finding it is like finding the perfect life partner. You have to go through a complex, expensive process to find out if you are suited to each other. If it works, you will be rewarded with lifelong love and companionship. If this does not happen, you can spend a lot of time and money on something that does not bring any benefit.
And this is no different from the developers. The right developer will do a great job for you, and the wrong one can cost you dearly and will not be useful. Therefore, it is not surprising that a ton of resources and efforts are invested in the search and evaluation of candidates. But, oddly enough, the same cannot be said about the experience of the candidate.
Candidate Experience Matters
Think about all the little things that bring two people together. At first you can find each other through friends or a dating app, but this is not something that brings you together. This happens when you arrange exciting dates, cook soup, while you are ill, and meet friends and family. In other words, the experience you share brings you closer.
This is no different from hiring software developers. They can come to you through a referral or recruiter, and if you match each other, you can take them on board. However, the experience of the candidate in the recruitment process may influence the process and lead to far-reaching consequences beyond the scope of this recruitment.
When an organization invests in a candidate’s experience, the numbers speak for themselves:
When hiring expensive and responsible employees, such as software developers, a candidate’s good experience can save a lot of money when searching, attracting the best developers as a result. But when a company makes mistakes, it can have negative consequences:
You will not just lose a potentially excellent developer, in whose search you have invested a lot, your company's reputation will suffer, which will reduce your chances of getting good developers in the future.
Why reputation is important
Source : Stack Overflow via Devskiller
First, it is necessary to take into account the specifics of the software development market. The Stack Overflow 2017 survey showed that, although 13% of developers were actively looking for a new job, 62% said they are open to changing jobs. In other words, with the right feed, you can attract almost five times more developers. Given that the best developers are in high demand and probably already have a job, access to this labor pool is crucial to the success of hiring. But how can you access these people?
Reputation is very relevant to this. A study by Corporate Responsibility Magazine / Allegis Group Services found that 84% of people would agree to quit their current job and move to another position with the same salary level, but to a company with a good reputation. At the same time, 69% would not agree to work in a company with a bad reputation, even if they were unemployed.
Take a second to think about it. How many people base their career changes on the company's reputation!
You would not mess with the loser, just to be in a relationship, so why a developer should want to join a company with a bad reputation. Only to have a job? Not only the top of your recruiting funnel has suffered. 55% of applicants refused the offer after reading a negative review about the employer.
And how can you count on maintaining a reputation in the developer community if the Internet is full of people saying that you are a bad company? Of course, no company starts the process of hiring trying to look bad, but often it turns out that way. While only 12% of companies looked for and never found negative reviews, 20% never even checked if there were any negative reviews.
You do not want any of this to be there:
Source : Glassdoor
Of course, the idea is only the first step. To improve your recruiting skills, you need to break the process apart and find out how you can improve each of the parts.
Search and research
The candidate's experience begins even before you have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with the developer. Regardless of whether he found you through a recruiter, through one of your employees, or simply browsing the job site, the developer will want to learn more about your company. Would anybody go on a blind date? The more information you give, the easier it will be for them to work for you. The more information you give, the easier it will be for them to see themselves working for you.
Job Announcement Paints a Picture
The job announcement should not be incoherent (the ideal length is from 700 to 1100 words ) and should include all the necessary information about the vacancy. Key details include:
Check out this nice example from Nested .
At the beginning, it contains the location and detailed job description, including specific tasks that the developer will perform daily:
Source : Nested
Source : Nested
Source: Nested
It goes without saying that a developer’s wages are extremely high, and any advantage an employer can get in wage bargaining can potentially save thousands of dollars. But by hiding salary information, you can lose a lot of potential candidates. 59% of developers want to know the details of compensation when they first hear about employment opportunities. After all, most of them already have a job, and they don’t want to invest in an uncertain process with a company that has gained a reputation for hiding information.
Even if your reputation is not caused a lot of damage, you will certainly not be able to attract as many candidates as you want, since the lack of salary information leads to a decrease in the number of applications by 33% .
Do not neglect your career page.
Source : Google
If a job ad is a detailed eHarmony profile, then the career page is similar to the match page on Facebook, a window into the wider world in which the person lives. It is not enough to imagine what products the developer can work on or what kind of mortgage they can afford for the money they are offered. Developers also need to imagine the environment in which they will work. After all, when you associate yourself with a person, you will spend a lot of time with his friends and family, so it is important to find out if this will be a joy or a burden.
64.5% of applicants consider sites with vacancies to be important sources of information, so it’s worth taking care that they have information about the company. Unfortunately, many companies have a simple page with some contact details and a mission, which contributes to the fact that only 45% of candidates believe that these job pages effectively report on how the company works.
This means that for more than half of employers they are missing candidates, since candidates are 41% less likely to turn to employers who do not show their culture. No company wants to reduce its pool of candidates by more than a third, due to the fact that they do not support a web page.
To really attract potential candidates on your page :
A good example is the Airbnb career page . In fact, this is not the main page dedicated to the career, but a subpage, created specifically to attract engineers. It contains information about the company, including their approach to creating products, contributing to the technology community through blogging, open source code and speeches, employee reviews, and many photos and videos of people working for Airbnb. It looks like a great place for developers, isn't it?
Source : Airbnb
If you want to learn more about the Airbnb approach, you can read a post about candidate-oriented hiring .
You want the developers to think that when they get up from the table to drink coffee, they will be in an interesting place, surrounded by interesting people who share their values. Developers should know exactly what kind of people who work for you, and understand whether they see themselves as one of them.
In the end, the company is like a family, and if you are going to join a family, you want to know whether you will get along with your relatives.
Bid can be terrible
But she should not. Think of it as creating a profile on an online dating site. You understand that information is important, but filling it out can be tedious, especially if the questionnaire is too long. If you set up profiles on several dating sites, you know what it looks like, since you probably answered the same question about ten times.
Both the job ad and the career page offer something for your developers, namely, a potential lifestyle in which they can present themselves. The vacancy response form is intended solely for you, the employer, therefore, monitor its effectiveness.
A good shape should be clear and short. It should request only the important information needed to verify candidates at this stage of the process, and not request extraneous information that can be collected at another time.
In the end, most of the labor pool you will draw from already have a job. They are not going to spend a lot of time filling out a long form. In fact, only 33.4% of candidates spend more than 30 minutes on completing a regular online application, and 60% stop filling out an application because of its length.
And these figures include all sectors, including those where there are more labor resources than vacancies. The demand for technical positions is much greater than the number of candidates on the market to fill vacancies. Only one vacancy is filled for every three advertised in the United States. Do you think software developers, who are very much in demand and often already working, will worry about filling out an application that is as long as Santa's list?
And if you think that the worst scenario for a long list is that it may bore some candidates, think again. The main causes of poor forms are unclear instructions and recurring questions. This is not just a boring reading, it can damage your reputation. One survey showed that 93% of respondents believe that incomprehensible forms negatively affect their opinion of the company, and another study showed that 90% of their respondents believe that repeated questions and long forms give a negative experience of the candidate.
Therefore, it is very important to evaluate your application form. Specify exactly what you want your candidate to do, and request information only once. Instead of people saying that your company is a mess, let them think that your company is a place for winners, not for time wasters.
Look at asana. Candidates really need to enter information in only a few fields, taking a few minutes to do this:
The end of the first part.
The second part of.
The material was great, so we decided to divide it into two parts. We hope that for many it will be useful. We are waiting for your thoughts and arguments in the comments, and also want to invite to a free open webinar , which will be held on April 16th. On the webinar we will analyze the search for candidates for Slack, new tools for boolean search, how to implement Devrel, if the company does not have a budget for it and more.
It has been proven that checklists (checklists) are incredibly helpful to professionals dealing with risky and difficult situations, such as pilots and doctors . Since the good experience of the candidate (candidate experience) is important for the successful recruiting of the best developers, we have created a checklist that you can use to provide candidates with a good impression of the recruitment process.Translator's note: “candidate experience” is a term that defines the candidates' opinion of the company that has developed during the hiring process.
')
If your job is to hire software developers, then I take my hat off to you. Finding it is like finding the perfect life partner. You have to go through a complex, expensive process to find out if you are suited to each other. If it works, you will be rewarded with lifelong love and companionship. If this does not happen, you can spend a lot of time and money on something that does not bring any benefit.
And this is no different from the developers. The right developer will do a great job for you, and the wrong one can cost you dearly and will not be useful. Therefore, it is not surprising that a ton of resources and efforts are invested in the search and evaluation of candidates. But, oddly enough, the same cannot be said about the experience of the candidate.
Candidate Experience Matters
Think about all the little things that bring two people together. At first you can find each other through friends or a dating app, but this is not something that brings you together. This happens when you arrange exciting dates, cook soup, while you are ill, and meet friends and family. In other words, the experience you share brings you closer.
This is no different from hiring software developers. They can come to you through a referral or recruiter, and if you match each other, you can take them on board. However, the experience of the candidate in the recruitment process may influence the process and lead to far-reaching consequences beyond the scope of this recruitment.
When an organization invests in a candidate’s experience, the numbers speak for themselves:
- The quality of hiring can increase up to 70% !
- They will have more than twice the chance to improve the cost of hiring (Cost per Hire).
- Candidates who are not recruited will be twice as likely to apply again.
- 57% will recommend to your company to others.
When hiring expensive and responsible employees, such as software developers, a candidate’s good experience can save a lot of money when searching, attracting the best developers as a result. But when a company makes mistakes, it can have negative consequences:
- 60% of the candidates from those 72% who share the candidate's experience on the Internet, had a bad experience.
- 42% of candidates will not get a job in an organization where they were treated badly during an interview.
- 22% will tell others not to work there.
You will not just lose a potentially excellent developer, in whose search you have invested a lot, your company's reputation will suffer, which will reduce your chances of getting good developers in the future.
Why reputation is important
62% of developers are open to new features.
13% of developers are actively looking for work
Source : Stack Overflow via Devskiller
First, it is necessary to take into account the specifics of the software development market. The Stack Overflow 2017 survey showed that, although 13% of developers were actively looking for a new job, 62% said they are open to changing jobs. In other words, with the right feed, you can attract almost five times more developers. Given that the best developers are in high demand and probably already have a job, access to this labor pool is crucial to the success of hiring. But how can you access these people?
Reputation is very relevant to this. A study by Corporate Responsibility Magazine / Allegis Group Services found that 84% of people would agree to quit their current job and move to another position with the same salary level, but to a company with a good reputation. At the same time, 69% would not agree to work in a company with a bad reputation, even if they were unemployed.
Take a second to think about it. How many people base their career changes on the company's reputation!
You would not mess with the loser, just to be in a relationship, so why a developer should want to join a company with a bad reputation. Only to have a job? Not only the top of your recruiting funnel has suffered. 55% of applicants refused the offer after reading a negative review about the employer.
And how can you count on maintaining a reputation in the developer community if the Internet is full of people saying that you are a bad company? Of course, no company starts the process of hiring trying to look bad, but often it turns out that way. While only 12% of companies looked for and never found negative reviews, 20% never even checked if there were any negative reviews.
You do not want any of this to be there:
Source : Glassdoor
Transfer:But there is hope. While 60% of employers have read at least one negative review of their hiring process, 99% believe that increasing their candidate’s experience can help them protect their employer brand. Therefore, if you read this post, you know that enhancing the candidate’s experience during the hiring process will improve your reputation and help you further.
Request
I applied online. The process took more than 4 weeks. I interviewed in *** (San Francisco) in September 2017.
Interview
Probably the worst interview process I've ever experienced. This is my first Glassdoor review, because I have always assumed that such posts were from angry candidates, but honestly, I feel that people need to know what to expect.
Responded online. A few days later I contacted a recruiter. The recruiter was a bit rude (“frankly, I am skeptical about your abilities”), but nonetheless missed me for the first technical interview.
The first technical interview was conducted by one of their engineers. Extremely boring, and it was very difficult to understand his English (Hindu). Having solved his problem, he said that I was fine and that they would be in touch.
The week passes without an answer. At that moment I was in touch with the original recruiter, another recruiter who had scheduled the first call, and an engineer (and another engineer who was in the email copy), so I was not completely sure who would answer. I sent a letter to the second recruiter and did not receive a response.
Another week goes by and I get in touch with the original recruiter. I am informed that I have moved to the second technical interview and will receive another letter to schedule it. A fifth person enters my email to schedule a call and asks about my availability. After that, I received an email from this person (two more engineers in the copy of the letter) confirming the call next week. A few hours after confirming the interview, however. I receive a standard copy / paste letter stating that they will not continue working with my application. I send them an email to confirm that the interview scheduled a few hours ago will not take place, and I receive “Yes, sorry.”
Pretty weird stuff. The seven different people involved in the process suggest a random recruitment process, and confirming the interview only to cancel it a few hours later is simply bad planning. Not counting how much time each step took. If you want to go through months of planning and re-planning, apply now.
About 60% of candidates have a poor candidate experience.Source : CareerArc
About 60% of employers read negative reviews about their processes on the Internet
Of course, the idea is only the first step. To improve your recruiting skills, you need to break the process apart and find out how you can improve each of the parts.
Search and research
The candidate's experience begins even before you have the opportunity to schedule a meeting with the developer. Regardless of whether he found you through a recruiter, through one of your employees, or simply browsing the job site, the developer will want to learn more about your company. Would anybody go on a blind date? The more information you give, the easier it will be for them to work for you. The more information you give, the easier it will be for them to see themselves working for you.
Job Announcement Paints a Picture
The job announcement should not be incoherent (the ideal length is from 700 to 1100 words ) and should include all the necessary information about the vacancy. Key details include:
- Salary
- Social package
- Allowances, benefits
- Specific Work Tasks
- Profile of the ideal candidate
- Working hours
- Expected goals to be achieved in the first year
- Education and training options
Check out this nice example from Nested .
At the beginning, it contains the location and detailed job description, including specific tasks that the developer will perform daily:
Source : Nested
Transfer:It then describes the ideal candidate they mean:
Lead Developer (Senior Software Developer)
Location: London, England. United Kingdom Engineering CO2
DESCRIPTION
Lead Developer
Want to be a mentor to younger team members? Want to create products from scratch?
Solving unique, technically challenging tasks is part of Nested everyday life. Become part of our novice engineering team and help shape our team, practice, product and culture from the very beginning. We believe that every homeowner in the UK should have access to an accurate and fair assessment of their property in a matter of seconds and be able to sell it in a few clicks.
Who are we
We are an ambitious team. Our goal is to become one of the defining technology companies of our generation, using technology to change the process of selling a home.
It seems to us crazy that the greatest asset of people is also the least liquid. Our vision is to allow every UK homeowner to get a fair offer for their home in minutes.
Earlier, we created GoCardless and Songkick and are already moving faster than they are, and receiving support from leading European venture investors and entrepreneurs.
Having done this before, we know what it takes to be successful. We are looking for exceptional people interested in creating something important.
Every day you will:
- Work as a member of an agile team that includes working together.
- Resting from coding for team members mentoring
- Develop a core product using Elixir and JavaScript using iterations based on customer feedback and metrics. We use a data-driven approach.
- Develop tools to support our internal team to improve operational efficiency.
- Work closely with our design team (Matt is the product manager and Sean is the designer) to implement a modern and high-quality interface.
- Indulge in new technologies to help expand the boundaries of what we are developing
- Work with these wonderful people to help build a world-class team.
- Phil Cowan (CTO)
- Darren oakley
- Sujay mansingh
- Deividas kariinauskas
- Tyler ferguson
Source : Nested
Transfer:At the end is a complete list of all the benefits, personal development options, benefits and salary range that the developer can expect.
REQUIREMENTS
We think you probably
- We are passionate about technology and have experience creating products for the web, ideally using Elixir (previous experience with Elixir is desirable, but not necessary, we are sure that you will quickly learn it).
- Watch the details carefully and take care to create reliable and well-tested systems.
- Want to work in a startup.
- You have the passion (on the verge of obsession) to make things more efficient and automated.
- Curious and keen on troubleshooting, actively looking for problems and then solving them.
- Have experience in training and coaching developers) Profile of the candidate.
- Have a deep understanding of the principles of Agile.
- Previously assisted in the selection of developers.
Things that would be useful, but not necessary:
- Experience in developing frontend, including client-side JavaScript.
- Experience Linux system administration.
- Experience in a team in a fast-growing company.
- You are involved in open source projects.
Have questions?
Want to learn more about the position or team before clicking on the red or blue button at the bottom of the page? Contact Phil (CTO) directly by writing to phil@nested.com
Source: Nested
Transfer:If done correctly, a good job posting is more than just a description; it allows developers to imagine what their life would be like at work and outside it, if they took it up. To do this, they need to know their salary in order to be able to evaluate their lifestyle. This means that you will have to bite the bullet and give information about the salary.
ADVANTAGES
Finally! This would not be a job description without benefits section. We believe that our values ​​distinguish us and are our main advantage. We take them very seriously, and they are at the heart of everything we do. In addition to our values, we have other great benefits that you can talk about.
- Flexible schedule. Most of the team works from home alone. It is important for us that you do your job, no matter where.
- Generous bonuses so you get your own piece of cake.
- We pay a competitive salary with regular revisions.
- Honored 27-day vacation + holidays.
- Budget (ÂŁ 3,000) in order to make sure you have the perfect workplace.
- A generous personal development budget and special company-wide training days aimed at employee growth (ÂŁ 1,000 per person per year).
- Breakfast, coffee and snacks are always at hand in the office to support you + monthly team events.
- Pension scheme (4% employer contribution).
- Medical insurance, which includes discounts in the gym, medical care and a dentist.
- In addition, if you ever buy or sell a house, we are very helpful in this :-).
Salary range: 60-80 thousand pounds + options. However, sometimes the ideal person is more or less experienced than we expected. In these situations, the planned ranges are out of the window. If you think this may be the case, please submit an application and just let us know in the application form.
Finally, if all of the above sounds good, please take 2 minutes to familiarize yourself with our hiring process. He is quite thorough and ensures that we are confident in every hiring. Please see how this works here.
It goes without saying that a developer’s wages are extremely high, and any advantage an employer can get in wage bargaining can potentially save thousands of dollars. But by hiding salary information, you can lose a lot of potential candidates. 59% of developers want to know the details of compensation when they first hear about employment opportunities. After all, most of them already have a job, and they don’t want to invest in an uncertain process with a company that has gained a reputation for hiding information.
Even if your reputation is not caused a lot of damage, you will certainly not be able to attract as many candidates as you want, since the lack of salary information leads to a decrease in the number of applications by 33% .
Do not neglect your career page.
Source : Google
If a job ad is a detailed eHarmony profile, then the career page is similar to the match page on Facebook, a window into the wider world in which the person lives. It is not enough to imagine what products the developer can work on or what kind of mortgage they can afford for the money they are offered. Developers also need to imagine the environment in which they will work. After all, when you associate yourself with a person, you will spend a lot of time with his friends and family, so it is important to find out if this will be a joy or a burden.
64.5% of applicants consider sites with vacancies to be important sources of information, so it’s worth taking care that they have information about the company. Unfortunately, many companies have a simple page with some contact details and a mission, which contributes to the fact that only 45% of candidates believe that these job pages effectively report on how the company works.
This means that for more than half of employers they are missing candidates, since candidates are 41% less likely to turn to employers who do not show their culture. No company wants to reduce its pool of candidates by more than a third, due to the fact that they do not support a web page.
To really attract potential candidates on your page :
- State clearly the values ​​and history of your company.
- Humanize your brand with photos, videos, and biographies of existing employees.
- Optimize for mobile devices.
A good example is the Airbnb career page . In fact, this is not the main page dedicated to the career, but a subpage, created specifically to attract engineers. It contains information about the company, including their approach to creating products, contributing to the technology community through blogging, open source code and speeches, employee reviews, and many photos and videos of people working for Airbnb. It looks like a great place for developers, isn't it?
Source : Airbnb
If you want to learn more about the Airbnb approach, you can read a post about candidate-oriented hiring .
You want the developers to think that when they get up from the table to drink coffee, they will be in an interesting place, surrounded by interesting people who share their values. Developers should know exactly what kind of people who work for you, and understand whether they see themselves as one of them.
In the end, the company is like a family, and if you are going to join a family, you want to know whether you will get along with your relatives.
Bid can be terrible
But she should not. Think of it as creating a profile on an online dating site. You understand that information is important, but filling it out can be tedious, especially if the questionnaire is too long. If you set up profiles on several dating sites, you know what it looks like, since you probably answered the same question about ten times.
Both the job ad and the career page offer something for your developers, namely, a potential lifestyle in which they can present themselves. The vacancy response form is intended solely for you, the employer, therefore, monitor its effectiveness.
A good shape should be clear and short. It should request only the important information needed to verify candidates at this stage of the process, and not request extraneous information that can be collected at another time.
In the end, most of the labor pool you will draw from already have a job. They are not going to spend a lot of time filling out a long form. In fact, only 33.4% of candidates spend more than 30 minutes on completing a regular online application, and 60% stop filling out an application because of its length.
And these figures include all sectors, including those where there are more labor resources than vacancies. The demand for technical positions is much greater than the number of candidates on the market to fill vacancies. Only one vacancy is filled for every three advertised in the United States. Do you think software developers, who are very much in demand and often already working, will worry about filling out an application that is as long as Santa's list?
And if you think that the worst scenario for a long list is that it may bore some candidates, think again. The main causes of poor forms are unclear instructions and recurring questions. This is not just a boring reading, it can damage your reputation. One survey showed that 93% of respondents believe that incomprehensible forms negatively affect their opinion of the company, and another study showed that 90% of their respondents believe that repeated questions and long forms give a negative experience of the candidate.
Therefore, it is very important to evaluate your application form. Specify exactly what you want your candidate to do, and request information only once. Instead of people saying that your company is a mess, let them think that your company is a place for winners, not for time wasters.
Look at asana. Candidates really need to enter information in only a few fields, taking a few minutes to do this:
The end of the first part.
The second part of.
The material was great, so we decided to divide it into two parts. We hope that for many it will be useful. We are waiting for your thoughts and arguments in the comments, and also want to invite to a free open webinar , which will be held on April 16th. On the webinar we will analyze the search for candidates for Slack, new tools for boolean search, how to implement Devrel, if the company does not have a budget for it and more.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/448182/
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