Startup: which hiring process for your future developers?

Recruiting is a double sale: the talent "buys" your challenge as much as you "buy" their skills. If that second part is obvious to you, don't forget that you also have to put forward your adventure and the reasons that make it easy to get up every morning to come to the office.

The conversation in a tech interview today is a level playing field. You need mutual seduction to land a hire. Your goal is both to verify a candidate's skills and their desire to join the team, while inspiring their buy-in to your company's values. In the world of programming, the technical challenge plays a big part in your job's appeal. Here's our advice for running an effective hiring process and avoiding contributing to the decline in tech recruiting quality in recent years.

1) Verify technical skills

First step, technical validation. A great candidate is only hireable if they first meet the company's needs — that's obvious. And it's just as obvious that only a technical profile can judge a candidate's culture and technical potential.

To verify a candidate's technical level, here are a few tips:

• Code review on a piece of your codebase
• Mini project on your stack
• Algorithm exercise with code review
• Pair programming with the candidate

Some questions:

• What makes you think you have the skills for the job?
• If you started tomorrow, what would your approach be?
• Which skills do you have the most experience with?

Tip #1: If you set up a test on a computer, warn your candidate ahead of time and offer to let them bring their own equipment, or do it as homework.

Tip #2: Avoid tests that are too long — they can sabotage your process and lower your conversion.

Tip #3: Nothing beats a developer for hiring another developer.

2) Verify their motivation, their potential commitment

Once the technical background is validated, it's the human fit's turn to be tested. Beyond meeting needs through code, a candidate has to explain their choices, give their opinion, exchange with the team. That's why their vision and values are decisive for a successful hire.

You want to change the world with this project? Agility is one of your values? Then share your product vision with your candidate and explain how their work will contribute to reaching the goals. That helps them project themselves into the team and lets you test their motivation for the project.

To get a sense of a candidate's motivation, here are some open-ended questions:

• Why did you apply to this role?
• Beyond this role, what's your ideal job?
• Why are you heading toward a job of this type?
• Where are you in your job search?

Tip #4: For a phone interview, introduce yourself and explain the reason and estimated duration of the call.

If the candidate comes from a recruiter, they should already have been briefed on you and the opportunity you're proposing. Ask your recruiter for a write-up on the developer, explaining:

• The reasons they're presenting this candidate to you
• Their start-date availability
• Their salary expectations
• Their availability for a phone/Skype call or in-person interview

3) Set up a conversation with the team

Still in the search for team dynamics, this exchange ensures the candidate can integrate. Put everyone at ease, take time for introductions, and don't impose a topic on the conversation.

Don't hesitate to ask your team to tell the candidate what they love about their work and why they like working at this company.

Tip #5: Involve your team in hiring.

4) Process duration

In the context of tension and shortage we're living through, a good developer finds a job in less than 2 weeks. To attract the best, your process needs to be faster than that. Don't include checkpoints or stakeholders that can become blockers — adapt your process to your availability (of time, but also of people) — or do interviews over Skype if you have to.

#Process example: Junior candidate

• Application received
• Call (pitch and technical exchange)
• Homework test (less than 2 hours)
• In-person meeting: code review of the homework
• Meeting with the founder(s)
• Team meeting or trial day
• Offer

#Process example: Top-gun candidate

• Application received
• Call (pitch and technical exchange)
• Meeting with the founder (pitch and technical exchange)
• Team meeting or trial day
• Offer
• Call or not call?

By feel. For example:

Generally OK to… ensure human fit on the technical skills, or pitch the project to a top-gun candidate.

Less OK if… the candidate applied or comes from a matching platform — they haven't necessarily looked at your offer in detail, so you'll have to do the first qualification yourself.

Tip #5: Communicate by email to avoid misunderstandings at the start of a process.

Tip #6: A quick first call beats wasting time with a useless interview.

5) Final step: make an offer aligned with the market

There are several elements to take into account when estimating the size of your offer.

The offer has to be coherent with the rest of the team. If you're stuck, play with the variable component or propose a signing bonus.

The offer has to be coherent with the market. How much are your competitors willing to put forward for this profile? Ask the recruiter to give you that visibility if they can.

The offer is a sensitive subject — ask the recruiter to test your offer with the candidate before you announce it officially.