Hiring developers

How to get tech hiring right

Hew Ingram

Engineering lead, Applied

hew@beapplied.com www.beapplied.com

What we’ll cover

- Brief introduction to Applied

- What makes developer hiring special?

- Optimising your developer hiring process

- Q&A

Help you find the best person for every job, regardless of their background

Use Behavioural & Data Science to remove unconscious bias from the hiring process by design

What's your role in dev hiring?

What makes dev hiring different?

What's so special about devs??

Hiring and hireable in 2013 - Agile developers

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics

4.59 Jobs per

candidate

👩‍💻

20%

Annual growth

📈

44%

No related academic experience

🎓

What's so special about devs??

More complex jobs means longer time to hire

Hiring and hireable in 2013 - Agile developers

> 35days

🗓

> $150k

💸

The real cost of hiring a bad developer - DevSkiller

What is most important to you in hiring?

So lets design a better system...

Quality of hire

🥇

Timely (not fast!)

⏲

Fair (resulting in a diverse team)

⚖️

Rejected candidates become ambassadors

😻

Sourcing

15%

Actively looking

🔭

Stack Overflow developer survey 2019

Tech Nation - D&I in UK tech

19%

Women tech workers

👩‍💻

49s

reading a job ad

⏱

Sourcing - Job ad

Evidence that gendered wording in job advertisements exists and sustains gender inequality - D. Gaucher, J. Friesen, A.C. Kay

Sourcing - Job ad

Sourcing - Most important job factors

Stack Overflow developer survey 2020

Sourcing - LinkedIn

🎉 Bonus - employer brand building

Sponsor meetups and conferences

🍕

Produce interesting (and useful) content

✍️

Contribute to open source

🌎

Assesment

What skills do developers need?

What do developers actually do?

Assesment

How many hours a day do you spend coding?

sweetcode.io

Electric Cloud

Assesment

73%

< 3 hours coding

😩

"... the ratio of time spent reading vs writing code is well over 10 to 1"

Robert C. Martin

Assesment

Debugging

Programming
Problem solving

Organisation + time management

Communication + teamwork

Self development

Assesment

The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology...

Schmidt, F. L. & Hunter, J. E

Assesment - CV sift

Discrimination against Female Migrants wearing headscarves - Weichseldbaumer, D.

Assesment - phone screen

🤷‍♀️ quick(ish)

❌ filled with bias

❌ not predictive

Assesment

The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology...

Schmidt, F. L. & Hunter, J. E

Assesment - take home test

actually testing (a) skill!

🎉

could be fair/predictive

😬

super time consuming

⏰

often bias against women and parents

😩

Assesment - take home test

Short and well defined

🔥

Use a mark scheme

🔥

Deal with existing code

🔥

Try not to be super prescriptive in language/framework

🔥

Give them a code review as feedback

🔥

Assesment - why mark schemes rock

Constructed critera: Redefining Merit to Justif Discrimination
Eric Luis Uhlmann and Geoffrey L. Cohen

Assesment - work sample questions

5 short questions

🔥

Only 1 coding question

🔥

Tests wider set of skills

🔥

Less time

🔥

Mark schemes + multiple, anonymous reviews

🔥

Assesment - interview

28%

written code test

✍️

Stack Overflow developer survey 2019

Assesment - interview

Stack Overflow developer survey 2019

15%

solved FizzBuzz

🥤

39%

wrote any code

⌨️

42%

stressful coding exams

🤯

Assesment - interview

for (var i=1; i < 101; i++){
    if (i % 15 == 0) console.log("FizzBuzz");
    else if (i % 3 == 0) console.log("Fizz");
    else if (i % 5 == 0) console.log("Buzz");
    else console.log(i);
}

Assesment - interview | pair programming

Take turns

🔥

Work on real code

🔥

Same task for all

🔥

Scoring rubric

🔥

Encourage Googling + asking questions

🔥

Assesment - interview | pair programming

Assesment - interview

"... It is not your job to catch people out or trick them!!!!"

Hew D. Ingram

Assesment - interview | behavioural

What programming languages have you used in the past?

Subjective

❌

Super broad

❌

Not predictive

❌

Assesment - interview | behavioural

How is the QA process handled at your company?

If their current company doesn't care about QA does that mean they're a bad developer?

❌

May well be completely beyond their control

❌

Assesment - interview | behavioural

Our QA process is X, what problems do you see, what would you change

Well scoped

✅

Can have clear marking critereia

✅

Accessible to all candidates

✅

Assesment - interview | behavioural

Tell me about a tough software problem and how you solved it

Tightly linked to opportunity

❌

Subjective

❌

Super broad

❌

Assesment - interview | behavioural

Do an actual tech design interview

Structured interviews

🔥

Score independently

🔥

Avoid "tell me about a time when..."

🔥

Keep questions relevant!

🔥

Focus on the skills needed

🔥

Assesment - interview | behavioural

But surely candidates hate doing all this...

"I really enjoyed filling in this application"

"This feels like a great way to get someones skill without looking at how 'experienced' they are"

But surely candidates hate doing all this...

"This was one of my favourite interview rounds ever"

"The question format is far more engaging and helps me get an idea of the role"

Top take home tips...

Check your job description

🔎

Ditch the CV

📜

Use scoring criteria as much as possible

📋

Optimise your take home test

✍️

Structured interviews only

🕴

Hiring developers

How to get tech hiring right

Hew Ingram

Engineering lead, Applied

hew@beapplied.com www.beapplied.com

Questions

Hew Ingram

Engineering lead, Applied

hew@beapplied.com www.beapplied.com