Interviewing Engineering Graduates

Connor S Riley

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783000111
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Information Technology
• Index: Computer Science

Whether you are building a small or a large engineering team, and whether you're a technical manager looking to strengthen your team or an HR manager who wants to learn what makes a good technical employee, this book is for you.

Interviewing Engineering Graduates

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Interviewing Engineering Graduates

Copyright © 2014 Impackt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Impackt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Impackt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Impackt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: October 2014

Production reference: 1101014

Published by Impackt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-78300-010-4

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Credits

Author

Connor Skye Riley

Reviewer

Nataliya Zub

Commissioning Editor

Danielle Rosen

Copy Editors

Simran Bhogal

Ameesha Green

Faisal Siddiqui

Project Coordinators

Anurag Banerjee

Venitha Cutinho

Proofreaders

Maria Gould

Ameesha Green

Paul Hindle

Production Coordinator

Melwyn D'sa

Cover Work

Simon Cardew

About the Author

Connor Skye Riley is a software engineer specializing in user experience design and frontend web development. She has experience both in conducting technical interviews and in working closely with technical recruiters to develop software products.

In teaching web development courses, she has counseled students on what to expect from their first technical interviews. With nearly a decade of professional experience at companies ranging from some of the largest in the world to scrappy startups, she has spent considerable time thinking about how and why we recruit engineers the way we do.

About the Reviewer

Nataliya Zub has been part of the IT industry since 2003. Currently, she serves as the head of HR and recruitment for an American business technology outsourcing company called Innovecs, with responsibility for leading the strategy of the department, ensuring follow-through HR best practices, and accelerating global growth initiatives.

Innovecs was built from the ground up on a highly competitive market. For 2 years, Innovecs managed to start more than 15 cutting-edge projects requiring nonstandard engineering solutions, and hired more than 200 top-level engineers.

Prior to joining Innovecs, Nataliya had served as a Human Resources Consultant for a number of international outsourcing companies, IT start-up projects, and new market entries looking to set up business in Ukraine.

She brings hands-on experience in building and developing successful engineering teams for new market entries and start-up projects within fast-growing, high-tech organizations.

Nataliya earned her Master's degree in Computer Science from the National University of Ukraine, Kiev Polytechnic Institute, and Bachelor's degree in Psychology from the National Pedagogical University.

Preface

The hiring market for engineers is rapidly expanding. Technologists and engineers are increasingly in demand to fill jobs as companies try to automate their processes and do business in an increasingly technology-driven world. In a market where demand for talent is high, recruiters and managers are under a lot of pressure to hire new team members in a quick and efficient way.

However, the process of hiring an employee who commands an engineer's high salary is very complex. Scarcity of talent means that regular methods of advertising open jobs don't get you as many good candidates. Often, hiring managers lament that candidates who are brought in for interviews lack basic technical skills. The process of interviewing a new engineer gets more and more complicated and expensive as business needs grow more complex.

Engineering candidates looking for a new job face concerns as well. There may be dozens of fitting job descriptions available, but most read like uninspiring laundry lists of skills the candidate must have. Companies expect candidates to go through days of interviews without ever meeting their prospective teammates or learning what problems they'll be working on. Even after spending days on interviews, some companies simply never contact the candidate again, leaving them with a fairly low opinion of that company.

This book presents a simple step-by-step guide you help you avoid these pitfalls and successfully navigate the complex process of hiring engineers. With actionable advice, tips, and examples, you will have more engineering candidates to choose from and be more confident that those you hire are the best of the best.

The goal of this book is to help you consider each step in your existing hiring process from the specific perspective of hiring an engineer. Rather than a comprehensive guide to hiring in general, this book presents examples, outlines, and guides to the parts of the process you can specifically tailor to attract new technical talent. Filling a job is a marketing opportunity, and engineering candidates are your customers.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, The Job Description, covers the best way to market your company to engineering applicants. This includes how to communicate the responsibilities of the position to best appeal to a technical applicant, how to encourage applicants who fit your company's culture, and how to ensure that the technical requirements of the job are clear and precise.

Chapter 2, Recruiting Engineers, provides novel ideas for networking with engineers and building your corporate brand within the engineering community.

Chapter 3, The Phone Screening, includes a guide for HR representatives to evaluate the most important nontechnical qualities of an engineer, including sample questions.

Chapter 4, Code Tests, discusses what kinds of tests are most effective, how to write them, and how to evaluate candidates' work.

Chapter 5, In-person Interviews, provides checklists and guides to ensure that every person involved in the interview is prepared to best represent the company and evaluate the interviewee.

Chapter 6, Follow-up, Negotiation, and Closing a Hire, outlines a process for managing post-interview communication between all the parties involved; this is especially important in interviewing technical talent because of the expense and manpower necessary to evaluate candidates.

Who this book is for

This book is for you if you have ever:

• Struggled to write an engineering job description
• Been disappointed in the quality of applicants you get from online job advertisements
• Felt that your screening process was not getting you very good interview candidates
• Felt disorganized or unprepared when interviewing an engineering candidate
• Saw that good candidates slipped through the cracks during any phase of the hiring process

For HR representatives who are active in the hiring process but are not engineers, this book will give you an insight into how to make your company's jobs stand out and get engineers excited about working for you. For technical managers, this book will help you streamline your hiring processes so that you select better candidates earlier in the process and spend less time and money interviewing candidates who are a poor fit.

No matter what your role is, this book will provide you with easy-to-follow steps to the process of finding, interviewing, and hiring engineers. Using these guides and examples, you and your company will be able to build a stronger and more cohesive technical team.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

New terms and important words...

Table of contents

• Interviewing Engineering Graduates