Tech Hiring - Be Quick, Decisive...and Patient

Currently the power is with the candidates, not the companies, when it comes to hiring in the Denver and Boulder area tech scene. There are more job openings for web developers, designers and most technology related positions than there are people to fill those positions. Gone are the days of opening a position and getting dozens of qualified applications who are interested in the position and fine waiting weeks to hear back. The entire hiring process needs to be tightened up in order to hire the people needed for the company to successfully grow.

Since the market is heavily weighed towards few candidates for many open positions, hiring managers need to be responsive to new candidates. Even reviewing candidates on a weekly basis may not be often enough. Once a candidate has interviews lined up at 3+ companies they may want to focus on those rather than accept your interview request, so make sure you are quick to respond to qualified candidates and make the first wave of companies she talks with.

The interview process itself also should be efficient to maximize hiring success. This doesn’t mean sacrificing on the quality of vetting, but the time in between interview steps should be minimized. The whole interview process should be able to happen in under two weeks, and it should be streamlined into as few steps as possible. The typical interview process for tech companies seems to be a phone interview, one in-person interview, and perhaps a coding challenge if desired. Rather than have a series of multiple phone interviews and multiple in-person interviews, candidates prefer to have one very in depth technical, in-person interview even if it takes most of a morning or afternoon. The other companies each candidate is speaking with will likely be in the 1-2 week timeline for the interview process, so the closer you can line that up the better.

Finally, be patient once an offer is made. Good candidates will likely receive multiple job offers, so I wouldn’t advise forcing them to accept a job interview before they wrap up all of their interviews. It’s seen as a red flag if a candidate feels pressured to respond to a job offer before they are ready. Make them the best offer you can based on their value to the company, and let them see other positions through. It is fine to ask for a timeline of when they will be finished with other interviews, but forcing an immediate decision will more likely than not end up in a rejected offer.