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What Are The Four Reasons You’re Not Able To Hire Great Engineers For Your Startup?
“We’re doing well if we hire 10% of the people that we have face to face interviews with,” I said to my cofounder and VP Engineering, Jeroen.
We had hired our initial team of ten engineers through our network. So the numbers were much better for us. Now our hiring was starting to slow down, and the law of larger numbers was starting to hit us.
We were still using our network as our primary recruiting tool, but we were getting to more second and third order connections. Plus we were picky.
In fact we were arrogantly picky. We had a group of gifted engineers, and we/they didn’t want the talent pool diluted.
Our job interviews were tough. We pushed potential candidates really hard. There was never talk like, “This candidate is good enough so we should hire him (or her).”
One result was a 10% hiring rate. The other result is you build an air of exclusivity around your company.
The best want to work for you when they see the talent level you already have in the company is really high. So let’s assume you want to hire the best. And let’s further assume there is a ready pool of talent in your region.
