Building Great Software Engineering Teams: Recruiting, Hiring, and Managing Your Team from Startup to Success

by Josh Tyler

Start with a tour of your office and the best benefits of working there. Sell them on your company from the very beginning. Candidates know they’re going to get grilled, so taking the time to pitch them up front shows optimism that they’ll do well, which can rub off on them. Give the candidate some goodies to take home, such as a company T-shirt or mug. Again, it’s a sign of faith and confidence in their ability, which creates a positive impression. Bring candidates into team activities. Social events such as team lunches are a great way for a candidate to meet and learn about a lot of people in your company, not just the ones interviewing them. When possible, meetings about engineering design or product development are also highly engaging ways to help a candidate envision life in your company. Select and train interviewers to be engaging and personable. Your interview team is representing your company to the candidate—put your best foot forward. Compose your interviews of interesting and novel questions and challenges. If your interview questions are the same tired ones that candidates have been hearing for years, they won’t think of you as a dynamic engineering team with a forward-thinking culture. Some of the best interview questions are derived from problems your team is actually facing. Such questions also give candidates a better picture of the work they might do at your company.