Nidhi Kala

The truth is, engineers no more look forward to job positions that offer only a great salary. They are growing increasingly biased towards roles that challenge their expertise and companies that enable positive candidate experience.

The best way to gauge what a role can offer is during the technical interview process. When we asked Piyush Tripathi, the Lead Engineer at Square about the elements he looks for in tech interviews, he shared:

When interviewing with tech companies such as Amazon, Twilio and SendGrid, I focus on several key factors. While compensation is certainly a consideration, it’s not my only focus. A significant factor I evaluate is the alignment of my expertise with the company’s needs. For instance, when interviewing with SendGrid, I was aware that they were working on an email API platform, and as an API expert, I knew it was an excellent fit for my skill set.

Tech interviews have completely changed from what they used to look like earlier. Today’s engineer wants specific roles that match their expertise and values organizations who prioritize candidate experience.

So, for engineers to choose your organization to work at, you need to assess their skills smartly and change your old ways of executing technical online interview. How?

Keep reading to find out.

What to look for when interviewing engineers?

To be able to finalize the right engineering candidates for your organization, you need to be mindful of both the hard and soft skills you should assess. Below, we have shared four skills you should look for. These skills will help you:

• Assess the candidate for the specific technical abilities relevant to their role.
• Assess the personality strengths and weaknesses of the candidate to understand whether they can execute responsibilities in the long run or not.

1. Technical skills

By analyzing technical skills, you’ll be able to understand if the engineering candidate fits the role or not.

For example, a front-end developer should have good knowledge of Python and front-end languages such as HTML/ CSS, Javascript, XML, etc.

Note: The nature of technical skills you’ll look at depends on the kind of engineer the tech organization is hiring.

Also, Read: How To Assess Programming Skills Before Hiring

2. Problem-solving skills

Problem-solving is the ability to solve a problem logically and find a solution based on facts and expertise. By identifying problems-solving skills, you’ll understand the engineer’s capacity to analyze problems by interpreting the data.

To assess problem-solving skills, ask problem-solving interview questions and then look for candidates who approach complex problems with a structured and logical mindset. They should be able to:

• Break down complex problems
• Identify potential solutions
• Evaluate trade-offs

3. Effective communication

An engineer’s job is both technical and complex, but for non-technical people—be it folks from other departments or clients, it’s difficult to understand those technicalities with ease. That’s where we see how important it is for engineers to be able to break down complex conversations into easier ones.

A quote from the Report ‘Communication Skills For the 21st Century Engineer’ sums it up:

There is ample evidence that graduate engineers lack the required standard of communication skills, particularly when compared to the needs of the industry internationally. Communication skills are a regular feature of an engineer’s job in industry; some graduates employed in industry have identified that education in communication skills needs to be improved, given the demands encountered in the industry.

Note: This applies to engineers of all levels.

4. Teamwork and collaboration

Whether the engineer is willing to work with other team members or enjoys working independently gives a fair understanding of the few other skills of the engineer. These skills include his learning capabilities, willingness to bond with teams, and leadership traits.

So, ask the candidate questions that reflect their team playing capabilities.

Historical challenges with technical online interview

Problem with most tech organizations: they’re still using the traditional methods to conduct technical online interview—conducting multiple online interview rounds even for junior-level engineering roles, not giving proper feedback, not engaging with the candidates at each phase, both before and after the interview is conducted, and so on.

It’s time to break the old patterns of tech interviews. Below we have listed the exact challenges developers have been unhappy about and how you can fix them.

Challenge #1: Poor communication

The biggest challenge for engineers is poor communication. Engineers feel stuck and clueless when recruiters and interviewers do not communicate the right way.

Tripathi further pinpoints the same issue:

I believe timely communication could be improved. Sometimes, there is a significant waiting period between the various stages of the process, which can leave candidates feeling uncertain and anxious. Providing clear timeframes and keeping candidates informed can alleviate some of these concerns.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s the pre-interview, during the interview or the post-interview stage, engineers frequently experience disengagement with recruiters.

• Pre-interview: When engineers do not have end-to-end information about the role, the online interview process and the timelines for the interview.
• During the interview: When interviewers do not show interest in the conversation when the candidate is sharing their approach and solutions with the them
• Post-interview: When engineers are left wondering whether or not they’ve been selected as recruiters do not get back to them and update them on the application progress.

💡Solution: For effective communication, you need to be transparent with the candidate about your expectations with the role, the interview rounds, the interview process and the tools that will be made available to the candidate during the interview.

Tripathi continues by sharing his experience with Square and shares how engaged the interviewers were during the process.

It was clear that they had done their research and thoroughly reviewed my resume. Their coding tools were also flexible, which made it easy for me to provide my answers. Additionally, they were very respectful of my time. When we had to reschedule, they apologized and gave me multiple options, which made me feel valued.”

Challenge #2: Unwillingness to give proper feedback

Feedback has always been a challenge, even for non-technical roles. Whenever it’s time to announce results, companies fail to give actionable feedback. The only golden words an engineer would hear:

“Thank you for your time but unfortunately you couldn’t make it through :-(”

This is a sad moment for engineers. They don’t know what went wrong. Did they lack technical knowledge of the coding language they preferred in the interview? Was the code they ran erroneous?

If engineers receive the right feedback, they can understand their performance in the interview, and better themselves for future technical online interview.

💡Solution: Give personalized feedback to each engineer candidate either after the interview or during the interview.

• During the interview feedback: Use tools like HackerEarth’s FaceCode that allow you to give feedback in real-time to candidates for the live code they have run.
• After the interview: Send pre-recorded videos via Loom to these candidates and share with them where they lacked.

Challenge #3: Asking engineers to code on paper

Coding on paper is one of the traditional methods many companies hiring engineers have used in the past.

Irony: Some companies still follow this process.

Imagine the developer writing the code on paper and not being able to run the code and see whether their syntax is error free and actually working!

They won’t be able to do it unless you allow the candidates to write the code first and then run it on the computer. But this approach has drawbacks too, especially for remote interviews.

As a remote interviewer, for sure—you can see the written code by the developer on paper but cannot see the execution part. This makes evaluating the engineer a painful process.

Also, read: 4 Reasons Why Coding Interviews are Broken

💡Solution: For on-site interviews, going with the pen and paper + running the code on desktop is an acceptable approach; but for technical online0 interview, you’ll need live coding tools.

Konstantin Ovchinnikov, the Frontend Developer at Storylane shares his experience of how he felt confused and directionless when he participated in a tech challenge.

I invested several days in a significant coding challenge, only to receive an unclear response that they liked it but did not proceed further due to a business owner’s decision. This left me feeling confused and frustrated, as it seemed like a waste of my time and effort. I hope to encounter a more streamlined and transparent process in the future, perhaps with more emphasis on live coding during the interview itself.

You can use coding softwares like HackerEarth’s FaceCode to conduct live coding interviews. With such coding tools, you’ll be able to see the developer type the code in real-time and evaluate their approach to solving the problem and assess the candidate’s skill of understanding the complex systems. .

How HackerEarth can help engineering managers and recruiters streamline their technical online interview process

Moment of truth: your organization needs to break the odds tech companies have followed for ages. From assessing the developers’ technical skills or conducting live coding interviews to provide them real-time feedback on their written code, HackerEarth can be your knight in shining armor 😎

You ask how? Well, let us give you three answers:

• Identify the engineers’ strengths and weaknesses: HackerEarth’s Assessments let you screen the engineer’s technical knowledge based on the coding questions you ask them. This helps you quickly evaluate the results and tells you the weaknesses and strengths of the candidate and gives them a score on their strengths and weaknesses allowing you to filter out the top-performing engineers.

• Assessing practical skills: Once you have filtered out the top developers, use HackerEarth’s FaceCode to schedule coding interviews—invite the selected engineers and ask them to code in real time. Best part? You get automated interview summaries with AI-based behavioral insights that help the interviewers make smarter hiring decisions.

• Demonstrating real-world problem-solving abilities: If you want to step up your hiring process and don’t want to hire engineers the traditional way, leverage HackerEarth’s Hackathons to organize tech hackathons where you can give a real-world problem statement to engineers to work on and evaluate their skills based on the results.

If you want to break through those old ways of conducting tech interviews and improve the interview experience for your engineering candidates, book a demo with HackerEarth.

Before you invest in hiring an employee, you need to ask yourself this one question: “What is the cost of hiring a new employee?”

The costs involved in every organization are different. For some, the costs are lower and for some, they are higher. If the cost per hire for your new hires is lower, you’re doing it right.

But if it’s the latter, you need to revisit your recruitment costs and optimize them. And how to do it?

Well, this article outlines everything that you need to know:

• What is cost-per-hire?
• What is the cost-per-hire formula?
• How to calculate this metric?
• How to use cost-per-hire data?
• Which factors influence the cost per hire?
• How can you reduce your cost per hire?

Let’s read.

What is cost-per-hire?

Cost-per-hire is a recruiting metric that measures costs associated with hiring employees. These expenses include:

• Sourcing and recruitment advertising costs
• Onboarding
• Referral bonus program costs

Put simply, cost-per-hire is the average amount you spend on a new hire in a given period.

For example, if you plan to hire 100 new employees in the current year with a budget of $2,00,000, the cost-per-hire will be $2,000.

What is the cost-per-hire formula?

The cost-per-hire formula is the sum of internal and external recruiting costs divided by the total number of hires in a given time frame.

Cost-per-hire = (Internal recruiting costs + external recruiting costs) / total number of hires within the timeframe

Internal recruiting costs

Internal recruiting costs refer to the internal staff, capital, and organizational costs of the recruitment function. These costs include:

• In-house talent acquisition team salaries
• Salary costs of hiring managers’ time
• Learning and development costs of your recruiting team

For example, referral bonuses offered to employees and people outside your company are considered internal costs of recruiting.

External recruiting costs

External costs refer to any expense incurred by external vendors or vendors during the recruiting process. These include:

• External agency fees
• Posting on job boards
• Aptitude test providers
• Employer branding activities
• Live video calls
• Relocation expenses
• Applicant tracking system fees

For example, the premium fee paid to job boards like Crunchboard to hire developers is considered the external cost of recruiting.

Also, read: Optimize Your Hiring Process With Recruitment Analytics

How to calculate cost-per-hire?

To calculate the cost-per-hire, you need to follow the following steps:

Step 1: Collect the cost data

First, locate the cost report for a specific period. Divide them into monthly reports to calculate monthly expenses.

If you don’t have the report, ask your finance team to get it for you.

Also, get cost data for your entire recruitment team separately.

For example, HR and talent acquisition cost data should be separate.

Step 2: Record your internal costs

Capture all the costs of your in-house recruitment team. Next, list all the expenses in one column and the associated expenses in the second column. Add up all internal expenses and calculate the total cost.

Internal costsMarch (in USD)Cost of sourcing3000Talent acquisition team cost5000IT equipment and support800Training and development1000Office1300Total cost11,100

While listing down these expenses, be mindful of the total number of people in your department you’re calculating the costs for.

For example, if you can’t find the separate cost data for your recruitment team, and only have the cost data for HR, calculate the total number of people you have in HR including the talent acquisition team.

Here’s the breakdown:

Suppose you have 10 HR team members, 4 of which are from talent acquisition. Now, to calculate costs, divide the number of talent acquisition team members by the HR team members i.e., 4/ 10 = 0.4

If you convert the result to a percentage, it means 4% of the internal costs are related to the talent acquisition team.

Step 3: Add your external costs

Similarly, list down all external expenses in one column and their costs in the second column, and calculate.

External costsMarch (cost in USD)Background checks3000Pre-screening expenses1500Recruitment agency fee2000Marketing costs7000Technology expenses5000Relocation expenses4000Total22,500

Step 4: Add the total number of hires

Finally, add the total number of people you hired in the specific month.

Total number of hires made in March6

Step 5: Complete the calculation

Now, based on the formula, calculate the cost per hire.

Cost-per-hire = ($11,100 + $22,500) / 6 = $5,600

So, your cost-per-hire for each hire you made in March is $5,600

Also, read: 5 Steps To Creating A Recruiting Dashboard (+ Free Template)

How to use the cost-per-hire data?

So now you know how to calculate the cost-per-hire. What next?

Ask yourself these two questions:

• What will you do after getting the cost-per-hire for each hire?
• What will you do with those insights?

Know this: knowing how to calculate cost-per-data is futile for you is you have no idea on how to use it to optimize the hiring process. So, here are a few ways you must know to use cost-per-hire data the right way.

1. Track the cost-per-hire regularly

Keeping track of your cost-per-hire helps you do two things: build your budget for each hire realistically and understand how your business is performing.

As calculated above, the cost-per-hire for each employee you hire is $5,600. However, your budget is only $4,500. Clearly: you’re over budget and spending far beyond your budget on new hires. This can directly impact your business performance too, as the budget allocated for other aspects of your business will get affected.

It’s like tracking your personal expenses. When you don’t track your spending, you don’t know how much you’re spending. But the reality is, you’re overspending. Now you can calculate your tech hiring ROI.

2. Calculate the cost data for each department

Cross-examine the cost-per-hire for each department and position. This helps you identify areas where you may be able to lower costs without damaging current processes or increasing them if necessary.

3. Estimate your cost-per-hire for future spending

When budgeting for personal expenses, you calculate the fixed expenses for the next month beforehand. You already know the salary credited to your account each month. Based on that, you’ll budget for your expenses, investments, and needs.

It’s the same with cost per hire costs. If you know the fixed estimate of the number of candidates you’ll need in each department beforehand, you can calculate the expenditure and budget for it. This will avoid the surprise of unexpected expenses.

Once you’ve calculated the fixed estimate of the number of candidates for each department, identify the average cost-per-hire for each department. Multiply this by estimated hires. This way, you’ll already know how much you’re spending on each hire if you hire a specific number of hires in a specific month.

Also, read: Data-Driven Recruiting: All You Need To Know

4. Evaluate it with other metrics

Measure your cost-per-hire against other metrics like quality of hire, or source of hire such as employee referrals, and optimize your hiring process.

What factors influence your cost-per-hire?

The main factors that influence cost-per-hire include industry, staff size, location, and position level and type.

Industry

If you have shopped at a local store and a premium brand, you know the difference in costs. To some people, apparel purchased from a local shop may seem costly whereas apparel purchased from high-end malls may be cost-effective.

This simply means that what seems costly to one may be cost-effective for another. The same applies to the cost per hire as well.

The cost-per-hire for different industries varies, which means if the cost per hire for one industry seems higher, it could be moderate for another industry.

Staff size

Larger companies, usually 200 and above aim for a lower cost-per-hire than smaller companies. Reason? Small and midcap companies don’t have enough resources to hire on a larger scale which makes each hire costly.

However, larger companies have the resources and budgets to hire. With a lower cost per hire, their hiring processes are more efficient with a lower time to fill—leading to a lower cost per hire.

Location

Bigger cities equal larger talent pools. When candidates live in such a large city, it is easier to access and hire them. But when you hire candidates remotely, or from another city, you must bear relocation and additional travel expenses. This simply adds up the recruitment costs making the cost per hire costly.

In such cases, two options work better: hiring employees from the same locations as yours where the company operates or working remotely. So, all you have to do is bear the charges for the laptop and accessories, and the software.

Position level and type

Which position the candidate is hired for matters.

Here’s the thing. The cost-per-hire for an entry-level or junior role will be lower than for an executive or leadership role. It simply boils down to the responsibilities they take on and the years of experience they have.

Evidently, that’s a huge difference, right? It simply boils down to the position, responsibilities, and years of experience that affect the cost-per-hire.

How can you reduce your cost-per-hire?

At this point, you know everything about the cost-per-hire to the formula and how to calculate it. But, that’s only half-baked information. So, what more?

Well, you need to know how to reduce the increasing recruiting costs for your company? Here are 5 ways you can do it:

Envision your ideal candidate

First, define your ideal candidate by developing a candidate profile. Here are the following steps you need to take:

• Define the job role and responsibilities—What responsibilities will the candidate handle? List them down in detail
• Consider company culture and values—Do your company values and the ideal candidate’s values align? Include the values your company abides by and those the candidate should share as well.
• Define hard and soft skills—What technical and soft skills do you look for in this ideal candidate’s profile?

Take a look at how HackerEarth has outlined the key role and responsibilities of the next engineering manager they are hiring.

Image Source

The company has used keywords like ‘responsible for’ to highlight the key responsibilities of the job profile.

They emphasize technical skills like Java and Python, and soft skills like building relationships and collaborating with others.

Screen candidates with skill assessments

Companies that use manual screening methods invest enormous time and effort increasing the cost-per-hire.

But by replacing manual screening with skill assessments, you automate the hiring process, further reducing the cost-per-hire.

And so, you need to start integrating technology in your screening process. One way to do it is by leveraging skill assessments to evaluate and screen candidates based on their skills instead of scanning through their resumes.

Zalora found it time-consuming to evaluate developers’ coding skills without skills-based assessment tools.

With their traditional recruitment method, technical recruiters had to go through each developer profile manually, and then interview the candidate, making the entire process cumbersome.

When developers attend interviews, we dedicate a lot of time. For instance, for each role, we get at least ten candidate applications. Normally, for each candidate, we would end up investing an hour in interviewing. Imagine doing that for ten people. Also, in the end, only 20% of candidates are selected, which means a lot of time is wasted.

– Phuong Huynh, Technical Recruiter, ZALORA

Due to this manual recruitment process, it used to take a month to close the offer. This made scaling the recruitment process and interview-to-hire ratio harder for Zalora.

👀Result: The quality of candidates and the interview process at Zalora was streamlined which improved the company’s interview-to-hire ratio and overall recruitment productivity.

Also, read: How ZALORA reduced shortened its recruitment cycle by 50%

Build a strong employer brand

When you build a solid employer brand, your social media channels highlight the company’s values and culture, current employees and projects, and the company’s overall progress.

By learning about the company’s vision and how they value their employees, a candidate is attracted to the company and applies.

Take a look at Evernote’s LinkedIn page where they have a section called Life where they showcase their company culture.

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Under the section Life, they have subsections: Life at Evernote and Engineering at Evernote.

• Life at Evernote—Under this subsection, you’ll see Evernote’s culture, values, company photos, and employee testimonials.
• Engineering at Evernote—Under this subsection, you’ll see what Evernote engineers do, their engineering leaders, and testimonials from employees.

This section on Evernote’s company’s page gives a glimpse of their work environment and how they operate. Plus, testimonials by employees are an effective way to strengthen a candidate’s trust in the company bringing in inbound candidates.

Image Source

Also, read: How Tech Recruiters Can Build Better Employer Branding with Marketing?

Automate your recruitment processes

With automated recruitment, recruiters can enhance their productivity in several ways such as:

• Speed up the time-to-hire
• Increase the number of resources available for candidate engagement efforts
• Improve process visibility across hiring teams
• Reduce unconscious bias in hiring decisions

When you automate your recruitment process, you can streamline several low-value and high-value tasks that would have taken you hours and hours. By automating these tasks, you can focus on more critical tasks that need your attention.

For example, Moengage relied heavily on manual screening and interviews. It was time-consuming especially when recruiters and hiring teams wanted to reach their hiring targets. That’s when they decided to take the automation route and opted for HackerEarth Assessments.

They could invite more candidates to take the tests and filter out the top performers. Finally, the company had to interview only 5-6 candidates instead of 15 candidates. It could complete the entire recruitment process from sourcing to onboarding in just 10-12 days.

Also, read: How HackerEarth Helped MoEngage Drive a 50% Improvement in the Quality of Candidates Interviewed

Leverage social media recruiting

Just like online shopping via social media, social recruitment has spread its wings across major social media channels like LinkedIn and Twitter.

According to CareerArc’s 2021 Future of Recruiting Study, 86% of job seekers use social media in their job search for relevant jobs. They apply for jobs directly on social sites and engage with job-related content.

Clearly: recruiters who are active on social media have a big advantage. Because they are active on social media, they can share job posts on their social media handles and reach candidates who’re already following them.

When more employees from their company share the hiring post on their social media channel, the reach increases, giving the job-related post more visibility.

Here’s how Emil Hajric, CEO at Helpjuice shared a hiring post on his LinkedIn profile.

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When a prospective candidate uses the keyword ‘hiring a developer’ or follows Emil, they’ll see this post shared by him and apply for the job.

Furthermore, if recruiters have a strong hand in social recruiting, they won’t have to spend money on job boards to publish job posts and attract candidates. How much does it cost to hire a new candidate?

Optimize your recruitment costs

It’s easy to get lost and overspend on your recruitment costs unless you’re aware of your internal and external costs. So, the best way is to take note of these recruitment costs, analyze your recruitment budget and optimize these costs (internal and external) based on your budget.

At the time of writing this, we’re all in the middle of a meltdown in the tech industry. Companies like Meta have had to lay off up to 13% of their workforce, and Amazon had to trim the salaries of 50% of its employees this year to manage budgets.

If you’re one of these companies that had to lay off members of your tech team or are finding it hard to hire due to fiscal constraints, then you’re undoubtedly facing a talent crunch.

Now, you have two choices:

Choice 1. Hire employees on a tight budget

Choice 2: Ask existing employees to take on the responsibilities handled by the employees who had to be laid off

The problem? Your existing employees don’t have the skills to take on those extra responsibilities. This results in halting the organization’s overall progress.

Upskilling and reskilling can be your weapons in such struggling situations. They put you at the forefront in helping your employees adapt to the new changes in the recession.

In this article, we’ll uncover:

• The difference between upskilling and reskilling
• Benefits of upskilling and reskilling
• Examples of companies leveraging upskilling and reskilling programs
• An important drawback of most learning platforms that employers need to be aware of

What is upskilling and reskilling?

Upskilling and reskilling sound very similar, but they both have different business goals. Your company needs processes for both in order to bridge the skill gap and boost growth.Let’s understand them in detail.

Upskilling

Upskilling refers to the process of acquiring new or advanced skills that are relevant to one’s current or future job, profession, or industry. It involves learning new techniques, technologies, or approaches to work that can help individuals increase their productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness in their roles.

Upskilling can be done through a variety of methods, including formal training programs, online courses, on-the-job training, mentorship, and self-directed learning. It is often pursued by individuals who want to stay competitive in their careers, keep up with industry trends, or advance their professional goals.

For example, a backend developer can join a full-stack development program that teaches them about React and Node JS in order to transition to a full-stack role.

The three key reasons why an engineering leader might want their team to go through an upskilling program are:

• Helping employees perform better in their current job
• Helping the workforce adapt to new and future changes in the industry
• Helping the workforce stay confident in their skills and adapt to new industry changes

Also, read: How to Assess Programming Skills Before Hiring

Upskilling is no longer a luxury—it’s a survival skill,” says Riccardo Ocleppo, founder and director of the EU-accredited Open Institute of Technology (OPIT). “Our flexible online MScs in Computer Science and Data Science let professionals earn a recognised degree without pausing their careers.”

Reskilling

Reskilling refers to the process of learning new skills that are different from one’s current job or profession, with the aim of switching to a new career or industry. It involves acquiring a completely new set of skills that are relevant to a different job or profession. However, the skills employees learn may or may not overlap with their current role.

Reskilling may involve pursuing formal training programs, apprenticeships, internships, or other learning opportunities to gain the necessary skills and knowledge required for a new profession. It may also require significant investment in time, effort, and resources, as individuals may need to start from scratch in a new field.

One example of reskilling in the tech world is when a software developer decides to transition to a career in cybersecurity. This would involve acquiring a completely new set of skills and knowledge, such as understanding different types of cyber threats, security protocols and measures, and the tools and technologies used to mitigate these risks.

Scenarios in which engineering leaders might ask their team members to reskill include:

• Transitioning to new projects or initiatives that require skills that are different from the current expertise.
• Adapting to new technology such as when rewriting their code base or changing their underlying infrastructure.
• Retaining high-performing existing employees whose roles have become redundant
• Filling vacant roles in the organization through lateral hiring.

How are upskilling and reskilling different?

Now you know what exactly upskilling and reskilling mean. So let’s weigh in the differences both the terms have for better clarification:

UpskillingReskillingIt helps employees learn additional skills to perform better in their current job.It helps employees to learn new skills to perform a different job.The skills they learn are relevant to their current job.The skills they learn are not related to their current job.It involves employees polishing their current skill sets.It usually involves a change in career.More employee-focused. Upskilled employees can get new opportunities and develop talent for personal growth.More employer-focused. It helps organizations retain their best talent by providing them with growth paths

Why are upskilling and reskilling important?

According to the book Organizational Learning and Development During Recession by Marianne Reyes, Martin Clarke, Director of General Management Programmes at Cranfield School of Management, stresses:

It is vital to give your top people the support they need, especially during economic downturns” because a “well-trained and skilled workforce will be instrumental in supporting organizations during the downturn as well as after economic recovery and growth resumes.

The author talks about a survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group and the European Association of People Management that found cutting down the training and development costs during the recession can have a serious impact on the organization in the longer run.

Clearly: upskilling and reskilling of employees is crucial for the individual’s growth as well as the organization’s growth, and it becomes even more important during a recession. According to The Future of Jobs Report 2020, companies say that about 40% of workers will require six months of reskilling, and 94% will have to learn new skills on the fly. Why? Because tech leaders anticipate the in-demand skills to change in a few years, and the current hiring freeze has left them without the option of onboarding specialized talent.

This is not to say that skill improvement has benefits only during an economic downturn. The pandemic taught us that technology and business needs can change on a dime, and tech teams need to be prepared for more such “out of the left field” moments. However, it is true that learning and development programs have significant value in keeping the product pipeline churning during a hiring freeze.

With that said, let’s look at some of the ways in which timely learning programs can help your tech teams during crunch situations (with real-life examples):

#1— It can reduce skill gaps (the IBM example)

In 2009, the global recession significantly impacted IBM’s revenue and growth. To overcome this challenge, IBM decided to launch a program called the Skills Initiative that aimed to train and retrain IBM employees in high-demand skills, such as cloud computing, data analytics, and cybersecurity.

As part of the program, IBM offered employees a range of learning opportunities, including online courses, virtual classrooms, and hands-on training. The company also provided financial incentives for employees who completed training programs and achieved new certifications.

The Skills Initiativehelped IBM to retain its workforce during the recession and equipped its employees with the skills and knowledge needed to meet the changing demands of the market. By upskilling and reskilling its tech team, IBM was able to remain competitive and even expand its business into new areas, such as cloud computing and data analytics.

#2— It can boost productivity and retention (the AT&T example)

During the 2008-2009 recession, AT&T faced a decline in its revenue and was forced to lay off a significant number of employees. To reduce costs and remain competitive, the company decided to upskill its remaining workforce to improve productivity and retain employees.

AT&T implemented a comprehensive training and development program called Workforce 2020, which aimed to upskill its employees in emerging technologies, such as cloud computing, big data analytics, and machine learning. The company invested heavily in online training programs, workshops, and mentoring to help employees learn new skills and apply them to their jobs.

The upskilling program had several benefits for AT&T, including heightened productivity, reduced errors and defects, and improved customer satisfaction. Additionally, the program helped AT&T retain its employees during the recession by offering them new opportunities to grow and develop their careers within the company.

#3— It definitely can save your budget! (the Microsoft example)

Imagine hiring a new employee during a recession. The process of starting from scratch is time-consuming. Instead, it is always easier to bridge the skill gap through learning programs than conducting the hiring process from scratch and bringing in the new hire.

In 2018, Microsoft announced a new initiative called Microsoft Leap, which aimed to reskill and retrain thousands of its existing employees who were at risk of being displaced by automation and artificial intelligence. The program included a four-month training course that covered both technical and soft skills and provided hands-on experience with emerging technologies such as machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence.

Through the Microsoft Leap program, the company was able to reskill more than 10,000 of its employees and retain them in new, high-demand roles within the company. According to an article in Forbes, Microsoft was able to save approximately $30 million in recruitment fees alone by reskilling its existing employees instead of hiring new ones. The company also reported that the reskilling program led to a 38% increase in employee satisfaction.

Also, read: Internal Hackathons: Drive Innovation and Increase Engagement in Tech Teams

The drawback of most upskilling and reskilling programs

While the upskilling and reskilling programs are commendable initiatives taken by organizations, they come with a drawback: no measurable ROI, which means there is no clear way to see real skill development.

To understand this further, I sat down with our Founder, Sachin Gupta to understand skill benchmarking and why it is critical in today’s world. Here’s what he said:

• The technology landscape is changing so rapidly that organizations have to continuously adapt to the cumulative skills of their employees—to keep them in line with the tech innovation curve.
• Large organizations find it challenging to have an accurate picture of the skill map of their teams and data in HCM tools.
• While many organizations have learning programs, they struggle to measure the ROI from such programs.
• While employees intend to upskill, they may not always have a sense of their skill baseline as they may not know how they are progressing in their skill development journeys.

How to develop an upskilling and reskilling strategy for your employees?

According to LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report, 89% of L&D pros agree that proactively building employee skills for today and tomorrow will help navigate the evolving future of work. That’s the reason organizations need to double down on their efforts to upskill and reskill their employees. But how?

Here’s a 5-step process you can use to develop an upskilling and reskilling strategy.

Step #1—Conduct a skill gap analysis

A skill gap analysis is an assessment conducted by HR teams to identify whether or not the current skill sets of employees can meet the overall needs of the company.

For example, the organization conducts a survey where they ask questions to their employees about the current skills they possess and how they have upskilled themselves. Employees fill out the survey, and the HR team analyzes submitted data.

To conduct a skill gap analysis:

Plan

Perform skill gap analysis at two levels—individual and team.

• For individuals, identify the skills a job needs and compare them to the employee’s actual skills.
• For teams, determine whether employees have relevant skills to work on a new project or will the company need to hire externally.

Identify key skills

What skills do we value as a company? What skills do employees need to do their work well and will need in the future? Answering these two questions will help you understand the skills you require.

Measure your current skills

Create a skills spreadsheet for each position, and list the skills employees in these positions have.

Step #2—Integrate upskilling and reskilling into your employee development plans

Emphasize the importance of learning and reskilling for employees. There may be times when employees cannot upskill themselves due to their key responsibilities. That’s where you as an organization need to integrate learning and development programs into employees’ annual goals and objectives.

For example, offering eLearning assets to employees every quarter, such as an eBook relevant to their expertise.

These employee learning programs can fuel knowledge and skills in employees, and help them stay prepared for the future.

So, make sure the goals are:

• Specific
• Obtainable
• Time-bound

For example, developers on the engineering team need to learn at least two skills within the period of 6 months.

Step #3—Choose your training methods

There are several training methods to choose from:

• eLearning
• On-the-job training
• Instructor-led training
• Role-playing
• Coaching
• Simulation training
• Group activities
• Video training
• Cross-training
• Job shadowing
• Case studies

But before choosing a specific training method, make sure the learning and development team understands employees’ learning styles and uses the right format for them.

For example, the L&D team uses group activity learning format for employees who prefer learning one-to-one.

Step #4—Leverage technology

To streamline the development of your employee development program, you need to amplify technology. Here are two primary technologies you’ll need when you plan to create your own learning and development programs.

1. Learning management system

A learning management system handles all aspects of employee training—from creating to delivering and tracking training material. It helps both the organization and employees by:

• Tracking employee’s progress toward meeting their learning goals
• Collecting data for improving the learning process.

For example, Paycore, a corporate LMS helps administrators organize learning programs for individuals, teams, or departments. With this software, administrators can create interactive online course content with surveys, quizzes, and assessments.

2. Digital adoption platform

A digital adoption platform integrates with the company’s training program applications. It helps employees navigate the platform by offering step-by-step instructions to complete a specific task.

For example, Whatafix is a digital adoption platform that helps L&D teams create in-app content such as step-by-step guidance, walkthroughs, task lists, and smart tips to guide employees through complex digital processes.

Step #5—Follow up and track progress

The ultimate goal of the upskilling and reskilling program is not just to get your employees to upskill but to check if they have learned new skills. That’s where you need to measure the training program’s effectiveness and monitor KPIs. Some of the KPIs include:

• Course completion rate
• Training progression rate
• Assessment score
• Lowering skill gap analysis
• Improving proficiency.

So, use the following metrics to measure the effectiveness of the learning and development program:

Employee feedback

Once the training program is complete, ask employees about their experience with the training program. What have they learned from the program? Was the program in-depth or did they need more resources to strengthen their skill development? How are they planning to use these skills in their job?

Skill assessments

A skill assessment platform helps L&D teams see whether or not employees have learned the subject and topic well from the training program.

For example, HackerEarth’s learning and development program offers an assessment platform.

This is where L&D teams can create their assessment platform for their employees to take assessments after completing the training program. Further, the platform also provides employees’ progress reports to their managers.

Post-training job efficiency

Observe your employees and see how they have executed the newly learned skills on the job. But the problem with tracking the employee’s progress?

Even after observing their work, there is no documented data of how much of the newly learned skills they implemented and whether or not they are ready to take up the additional role or move to an entirely different role.

That’s where HackerEarth’s learning and development program helps organizations.It does not only provide you with a skill assessment platform but, as Sachin says:

• The product introduces a layer of objectivity to their upskilling program
• It creates a guided learning path where they can see their progress firsthand

According to Sachin, there are 4 things users can expect from this L&D product:

• Employees will get real-time and objective feedback on their skill development. Starting with baseline evaluations, through continuous evaluations, and ultimately a summative assessment. Over time, we will be able to recommend to learners what specific areas of skill development they should focus on.
• Employers will be able to measure ROI on their upskilling programs.
• Employers will be able to create a skill map for their organization. They can understand the current skill set in their team and plan for skill development over time.
• Accurate skill data can help employees and employers match people to opportunities they are most suited to.

All these things lead to greater output but also more engaged and retained teams.

You see? The goal here is for both employees and organizations to get a clear view. For organizations, it’s about whether or not employees have developed their skills, and if so, are they ready to take on more specialized roles?

For employees, it’s about seeing whether they have a clear career path to move forward on.

Use learning and development tools to upskill your tech teams

To sum up, learning and development programs should be an important facet of every tech team’s culture on any given day. However, during troubling times such as a recession, it can become a crucial weapon in fighting the wolves at the door.Upskilling and reskilling programs can help you:

• Retain your high-performing engineers
• Provide them paths to grow their skill sets and their career prospects
• Help your tech team stay ahead of time.

And so, choose the right learning platform to empower your employees in keeping up with changing technologies and on-demand skills. See their progress in real-time with HackerEarth’s learning and development platform that offers curated assessments and learning paths to your internal employees, and helps you quantify the benefits of every certification.

What happens when you have been consistently ordering a Margherita pizza and a Choco lava cake every time you visit Domino’s Pizza? Well, you know the exact order you want to place. You know the crust and toppings you want over your pizza. You don’t waste much time thinking about what to order. Isn’t it? That’s what happens with lateral hiring too. Lateral hiring is nothing but hiring specialists in your organization for a particular job role instead of investing time in training entry-level employees—you know the skills and experience level you need in a candidate to fill this job role. In other words, you know your order! Many organizations believe it’s good to have a few specialist employees who know every next step they take at their job. And that’s why the majority of recruiters are switching to lateral hiring. In this article, we share everything about what lateral hiring is and the 8-step process we follow at HackerEarth to conduct lateral hiring.

What is lateral hiring?

Lateral hiring is a method of finding an employee who can do a similar job to the vacant one—with a comparable experience and background. Simply put, lateral hiring is the process of sourcing passive candidates to fill niche, specialized or executive positions. However, you may not find these people in your talent pool or on job boards. They are neither active in the job market nor actively seeking opportunities. Earlier, such hiring used to happen in specific industries like law, medicine, big businesses, and the government sector. But, with the pandemic, many tech companies have adopted the unconventional method of lateral hiring to fill vacant positions. Adrienne Couch, Human Resources Analyst, LLC Services emphasizes the same.

“Lateral hiring is becoming more and more popular. In fact, I’ve seen studies that say it’s set to overgrow by over 20% in the next five years. Lateral hiring is also a great way for companies to tap into the passive candidate market. These are people who may not be looking for a new job but could be open to new opportunities. By reaching out to them, companies can snag top talent they may have missed out on otherwise.”

How does lateral hiring work?

Assess your workforce and conduct a skills gap analysis:

• what skills do they currently have?
• what skills are they currently missing (but crucial for the company’s growth)?

Once you have studied the skills, define the skills you need from your lateral hire. For example, after studying the skills of web developers in your company, you realize they are well-versed in four languages: JavaScript, C, C++, and SQL. But, you need to upgrade the product, which requires a PHP developer. Now you have two options to do this: train your existing employees, invest financial resources, time, and effort in them to learn it, or onboard a new hire with these skills. Next, define what the role of this lateral hire would look like:

• what are the tasks and responsibilities they carry out?
• what would their OKRs look like?
• how would this role benefit the organization?

Why use lateral hiring to hire top tech talent?

In a study by University of Bristol – School of Economics, Finance and Management, it was found that lateral hiring helps employers acquire, develop and retain human capital—to help improve the competitiveness and reduce the effects of outward staff mobility. Therefore it should be included as a part of recruitment marketing strategy. Let’s understand in detail how lateral hiring can elevate the growth of employers and organizations:

Reduces training costs

There are two ways you can fill in the requirement for new skills in your organization:

1. train your current employees
2. recruit new employees

Training your employees requires a lot of heavy lifting. You need funds, time, and effort to prepare them and develop these skills. Still, there is no guarantee that your employees will master them correctly. They’ll take time to learn and implement the skills. This is exactly what Cynthia Davies, CEO and Founder of Cindy’s New Mexico LLC points out.

“Lateral hiring can be beneficial for a company as it reduces training costs. Employees who are already familiar with the company and its culture, as well as the industry in general, require less training. They can hit the ground running in their new roles. Lateral hires can be more efficient and productive in their new roles quicker than external hires because they already know the company’s processes and systems.”

Reduces the risk of hiring the wrong person

Picture this: you want to hire a web developer with PHP expertise the traditional way. You post on job boards, publish the job ad and receive several applications. You scan the applications and shortlist a few developers. They have *only* basic knowledge of the subject and aren’t up-to-date with industry trends. Upon onboarding them, you realize that you still need to train them. Why? Because they have a strong theoretical understanding of PHP but need training on a few practical aspects of the job. That’s when you realize you have hired the wrong person. You needed an experienced employee who knows the ins and outs of what works and what does not and is not restricted to entry-level PHP expertise. With lateral hiring, you can scan the candidate’s profile, and check if their experience fits your requirements. Only then proceed with the next steps in your hiring process.

Also, read: 10 Tech Recruiting Strategies to Find the Best Tech Talent

The 8-step process for lateral hiring at HackerEarth looks like

Preethi Saakre, the Talent Acquisition Manager at HackerEarth shares an extensive 8-step approach for lateral hiring that we use in our organization.

Step 1: Get approval for the role

As a first step, the hiring manager identifies and approves the job role and the skills needed for a lateral hire—which is shared with the talent acquisition team. The talent acquisition (TA) team then works with the hiring manager to confirm the job description (JD). If it’s an existing role, they check with the hiring manager if any changes need to be made to the existing JD. If it’s a brand-new role, the hiring manager will share the roles and responsibilities, and the TA will add these roles and responsibilities to the set template. Next, the talent acquisition team creates the position on Trakstar and sends it for the CEO’s approval.

Step 2: Collect important details

Once the lateral hire’s position is approved, the talent acquisition team conducts an intake call with the hiring manager to understand the need for the role. To collect details about the job role, the TA team fills out a Requirement Gathering Form. They enter all the necessary details and share them with the hiring manager. Next, the hiring manager identifies panel members to be involved in the hiring process. They make sure that each member is aware of the expectations of the candidates and will be interviewing the candidates based on these expectations. They also identify who will handle the competency evaluation process at different levels of interviews.

Step 3: Share data about the talent pool

The talent acquisition team shares data on the overall talent pool available for the role with hiring managers. The TA team then creates a sample screened profile for the lateral candidate along with the hiring manager. This ensures that the sourced and inbound applications they share with the hiring manager are in line with their expectations.

Also, read: Optimize your Hiring Process with Recruitment Analytics

Step 4: Publish the approved position

The talent acquisition team publishes the approved position on job boards—LinkedIn, Glassdoor, IIM Jobs, and Instahyre. On the same day, the talent acquisition team shares the lateral hiring strategy and plan with timelines. They send an email to the hiring manager with the finalized timelines and the other details discussed over the call.

Step 5: Screen the candidates

The talent acquisition team conducts a candidate screening check. During the process, they make sure to follow all the set guidelines:

• checking the communication skills
• asking the role screening questions
• communicating the CTC and notice period expectations
• evaluating for culture fit
• understanding the reason for leaving

Once they have screened the candidates, they’ll forward the candidate’s application to the hiring manager for review. Sidenote: If the candidate’s salary expectation is more than the budget for the specialized role, TA needs to communicate it with the hiring manager before proceeding with the conversation.

Also, read: 4 Different Ways to Create Coding Tests on HackerEarth (+Free Template)

Step 6: Use the STAR technique for interviews

Our recruiters and hiring managers at HackerEarth use the STAR technique to answer behavioral questions. When hiring managers ask behavioral questions to candidates, candidates have to give them examples of how they handled past situations or challenges. Put simply, behavioral questions help candidates share stories. Interviewers use these stories to identify the evaluate the candidate beyond their skills.

For example, the HackerEarth interviewer asks the candidate: “Can you tell me about a time when you went above and beyond to deliver an excellent customer experience?” Situation: “When I was working at company X, we were preparing for a video interview for a client when I learned that someone on their team was deaf. The presentation was due the next day in the morning and I was the only one left in the office after 5 PM.” Task: “I realized there was only one solution and that was for me to stay behind in the evening and add captions myself.” Action: “It took me a few hours, and around 8 PM, I was done. Then, I let our team know about the update.” Results: “In the end, the client enjoyed the presentation. They were very impressed (and surprised) by our attention to detail, and we ended up closing them soon after.” With this story the candidate shared with the interviewer, the interviewer learns about the candidate’s willingness to deal with challenging situations and their passion for work. Once the interviewers complete the interviews, they share detailed feedback and ratings on the same day. Sidenote: The interviewers record feedback on Trackstar.

Also, read: Essential Questions To Ask When Recruiting Developers Part 1 and Part 2

Step 7: Conduct reference checks

Reference checks ensure that the lateral hire the company has recruited is the right decision. For this, recruiters reach out to the hire’s colleagues and ask them about the following:

• their experience working with the person
• the candidate’s performance while working with the organization

Answering these two questions give ample information about whether or not the right decision has been made.

Step 8: Send the offer letter

First, we make a verbal offer to the candidate, followed by an offer letter via Adobe. The candidate reviews the offer letter, signs it and it automatically gets recorded in the company’s records and the candidate receives a copy of the signed offer letter. Here’s how our talent acquisition team sent the offer letter to the new hire via Adobe.

It’s not discreet. It’s not different

If you have ever been told to carry out the lateral hiring process discreetly, it’s time to change that. Lateral hiring is just like the traditional hiring process you carry out in your company. The only difference: you hire specialists. So, whether you’re hiring internal or external candidates as lateral hires, the process remains the same except for a few tweaks in some hiring phases and policies.

You are likely to fall back on your recruitment process if you don’t use candidate relationship management software.

When you have the software integrated into your recruitment process, you can:

• send them company updates and messages to keep them engaged
• follow up with them when a hiring opportunity comes up, using tools like an Auto Dialer to automate timely call reminders and outreach.

In this article, we’ll share how candidate relationship management software can help you improve in these areas and strengthen your recruitment processes.

Let’s read.

What is candidate relationship management?

Candidate relationship management is the structured process of maintaining a healthy, positive relationship with active, passive, and former candidates that may not have worked out in the past but can be a suitable match in the future.

By keeping these candidates engaged, you can:

• educate them about your company
• get them interested in working with you

Let’s say, a candidate has been interviewed for the role of a web developer. The recruiter ensures to keep them updated. But, they fail to do so. The candidate is likely to assume they have been ghosted. Errr.

In such a scenario, send the candidate an apology/rejection message and feedback on why they were not hired. This helps them understand the key areas they need improvement in and creates a positive candidate experience.

For example, Airbnb rejects candidates via email and invites them to a feedback call. Candidates who pass certain stages before being rejected even get coupons to acknowledge their effort.

Importance of candidate relationship management

Candidate relationship management software fills jobs faster by connecting with current and future candidates through email marketing campaigns, recruiting event functionality, and job recommendation portals. Here are 3 ways why candidate relationship management is important:

Keeps the candidates engaged

When you have shortlisted the candidates to move to the next stage of the selection process, keep the candidates engaged with continuous communication.

Create a wider talent pool

With the recruitment CRM, you can collect the candidate’s information—their name, email address, CV, and other information. You can reach out to these candidates later when a new job role in the company opens up.

Track your talent pipeline

Do you have high-quality talent in your pipeline?As the talent market evolves, the need for skills evolves too. That’s when you need to keep track of your talent pipeline. With candidate relationship management software in place, you can check whether you have candidates in your talent pipeline or have exhausted the best talent.

4 ways candidate relationship management software can solidify recruitment process

Let’s understand how candidate relationship management software helps in improving talent sourcing in 5 different ways:

#1—Keep talent engaged throughout the recruitment lifecycle

A disengaged candidate experience leads to uninterested candidates.Candidates want to know whether their application is progressing or not. Here are some best practices to ensure timely candidate updates:

Respond faster

It is common for candidates to not receive replies to their messages, which triggers their actions. If you don’t respond to candidates’ messages or follow-up emails, they are likely to assume the job application isn’t progressing. Result? They’ll move on to apply to other companies.

The solution? Reply to their messages and emails within 48 hours.

Send updates

Let candidates know the status of their application.

• Is the application reviewed?
• Is it rejected?
• Is it moving forward?

Whatever the status of the application is, create a system that lets the candidates know about it.

For example,

Workello, a candidate relationship management tool, sent an automated email to the candidate telling them about the application’s status.

The email is short, and concise and directs the candidate to take the next steps. When the candidate applies for a job at Workello, the recruiter receives the notifications. On reviewing the application, the recruiter can either reject or approve the application.

Based on whether the recruiter approved or rejected the application, the candidate will receive an email (on behalf of the organization for which they applied).

Upon approval, they will receive an email with instructions for the next steps-for example, an invitation for a video interview or assessment.

Give specific instructions

When candidates get specific instructions from the candidate, they have better clarity on how to move forward with the application.

For example, when you post a job ad on job portals, don’t ask the candidate to attach their resume and cover letter. Ask them specific questions they can answer in their cover letter.

Several companies ask candidates to submit a video resume highlighting the specific questions the candidate needs to answer.

Also read: How to Keep Your Application Process Mobile Friendly?

Give them a hiring timeline

Candidates become disengaged during the recruitment process because of the time-consuming hiring process. By adding a hiring timeline, candidates have clear expectations of how long they need to wait before applying for another job role.

To create a hiring timeline:

• Determine an end date—Review the time taken to onboard past hires. Based on this, decide the timeline.
• Decide when to stop searching—Set a limit on how long you’ll accept new candidates.
• Schedule interviews—Set an ideal date range depending on how many candidates you want to interview.

Also read: How Your Tech Stack Can Help You Hire Top Talent

#2—Focus on active and passive candidates

A recruiting CRM stores information about active and passive candidates—their names, email addresses, the social channels they are active on, and notes of conversations you have had with them in the past.

By leveraging this information, you can reconnect with candidates and keep them engaged.

Active candidates

To maintain candidate relationship management with active candidates:

• Answer their queries. Clarify if they have any doubts about the job role or recruitment process, or while filling out the job application.
• Make it easily accessible for the candidates to reach out to you—via text messaging, calls, emails, or social platforms.
• Update them about their application’s progress at each step.
• Give them feedback after the interview is over. Either send it over email or invite the candidate for personalized video feedback.
• Stay in touch with them via email and social media, and let them know about new job opportunities.

Also read: Improving Candidate Experience During Remote Tech Hiring Interviews with FaceCode

Passive candidates

To keep passive candidates engaged:

• Connect with them on their social channels like LinkedIn and Twitter and interact with them. Engage with their content and start a conversation in the DMs.
• Encourage passive candidates to follow the company’s social channels—to get them to stay updated about the company’s events and know about the work the company is doing.
• Invite them to online webinars—to humanize your interaction with them and provide them with learning resources.

Doing this you can familiarize the candidate with your organization. Once done, communicate with them via email.

When a job role opens up in your organization, send them personalized emails:

• to let the candidate know about it
• to see if they are a good fit for the job

Here’s how Manan Shah, Co-founder of Recruiterflow reached out to a passive candidate with a personalized email sharing about the content writing role in their organization.

What worked: In the email, words like content writer and marketer, LinkedIn, and Contensify help the passive candidate understand the extensive research the person has done before reaching out to them.

They introduced their company and gave reasons why the candidate should work with them—an opportunity to learn and grow quickly. They closed the email with a question to make sure the candidate responded to the email.

How to implement: Before writing a personalized email to a passive candidate, do extensive research on the candidate and their expertise. Go to social channels they are active on, and read the work they do and have done in the past. Take notes and use these pointers while crafting your email.

Highlight:

• What does your company do?
• Why should the candidate accept your offer?
• Why should they work with your organization?

Weave in at least one factor into your email and end the email with a question.

To improve your relationship with passive candidates, stay in touch with them even if you haven’t hired them.

#3—Set up drip campaigns

The recruitment CRM helps you streamline the communication with the candidates with a series of automated recruitment emails.

A drip campaign is a series of touch-point emails delivered automatically to highly targeted prospects at predefined intervals. When you send these email campaigns to ideal candidates to keep them engaged with your organization, it is termed a recruitment drip campaign.

Here’s a recruitment drip campaign template provided by Dmytro Kondratiev, CEO and Legal Advisor at LLC Services.

Email 1: Introduction and Interest Check

Subject: Opportunities at Acme Corp

Hi [Candidate],

I hope this email finds you well. I came across your profile on LinkedIn. I’m impressed by your experience and skills in the [industry] field. I’m reaching out to see if you would be interested in exploring career opportunities at Acme Corp.

At Acme Corp, we are a leading [industry] company that is constantly innovating and looking for top talent to join our team. We offer a dynamic work environment, competitive salaries, and opportunities for growth and development.

Would you be open to discussing potential job opportunities at Acme Corp? I would love to learn more about your career goals and see if there might be a fit for you at our company.

Best regards, [Your Name]

Email 2: Follow-Up and Value Proposition

Subject: Acme Corp – A Great Place to Work

Hi [Candidate],

I wanted to follow up on the email I sent last week regarding potential job opportunities at Acme Corp. I hope you had a chance to review some of the information I shared about our company.

At Acme Corp, we pride ourselves on creating a positive and supportive work culture where our employees can thrive. In addition to competitive salaries and benefits, we offer a range of perks and benefits, including:

• Flexible work schedules
• Professional development opportunities
• Employee wellness programs
• Social and team-building events

We believe that our people are our most valuable asset, and we are committed to creating an environment where they can grow and succeed.

If you are still interested in exploring opportunities at Acme Corp, I would be happy to schedule a call to discuss this further. Let me know if this works for you, and we can set a date and time that is convenient for you.

Best regards, [Your Name]

Email 3: Final Follow-Up and Next Steps

Subject: Acme Corp – Let’s Talk

Hi [Candidate],

I’m reaching out one final time to see if you might be interested in discussing career opportunities at Acme Corp. We are always on the lookout for talented professionals like yourself, and I believe you would be a great fit for our team.

If you are still interested in learning more, I would be happy to schedule a call to discuss potential job openings and how your skills and experience might align with our company.

Please let me know if you are available to chat, and we can set a date and time that works for you. I look forward to connecting with you and discussing how Acme Corp can support your career goals.

#4—Integrate with social media

Your candidate relationship management software should integrate with multiple social media channels. When a potential candidate provides their email address, the CRM should be able to find social accounts created using the same email address. By looking at the candidate’s social media profile, recruiters can learn more about the candidate’s background, personality, and additional details making the hiring process simpler.

Take a look at this LinkedIn About section. When the recruiter scanned the candidate’s LinkedIn profile and read the About section, they found out about candidate’s career transition they made.

The profile highlights:

• industry—B2B SaaS
• work experience—writing social media copy, newsletters, e-books, and how-to guides

By studying these highlights, the recruiter understands whether the candidate is the right fit for the role or not.

Also download: The Social Recruiting Cheatsheet

The connecting dots

To make sure you yield the best results for your recruitment needs:

• Send drip campaigns to candidates.
• Integrate the candidate’s social media profile for social screening.
• Update the candidate on each stage of the recruitment process.
• Save additional conversation notes along with each candidate’s details to refer back to later.

Are you ready to streamline your recruitment process with candidate relationship management software? The time is now!

When a company allows writers to contribute guest blog posts, their goal is not just to get an in-depth researched article for free on their blog. They focus on:

• Getting backlinks
• Encouraging writers to share their work

Result? To increase their website’s traffic, be seen by their target audience, and increase brand awareness. The same is true for companies that organize hackathons.

However, many companies still don’t understand how online hackathons can help improve a product’s development.

Let’s break the ice and understand:

• How participating in hackathons can improve automation by re-using code.

• The common mistakes companies make while hosting, which you can avoid.

What is a hackathon?

According to Techopedia, a hackathon is a gathering where programmers collaboratively code in an extreme manner over a short period. In simple words, a hackathon organized by companies brings experts together from different domains to drive innovations.

Modern-day hackathons include:

• Sponsors
• Partners
• Recruiters

They engage with participants through interactive workshops and presentations.

For example, HackerEarth organized a global hackathon called Web3athon. It was a 2-month long event sponsored by 16 crypto and web3 brands with different themes and multiple prizes for the winners.

There are two types of hackathons that you can host:

• Internal hackathons: They give companies’ employees a chance to experiment with upcoming technology and stay up-to-date with technology.

• External hackathons: They are organized by the company where they engage with people outside the company to change company culture, improve customer experience, and find new talent and revenue opportunities.

How can participating in an online hackathon improve the development of new solutions?

Participants in hackathons develop code based on the problem statement provided by the company.

Hackathon prototypes and coding solutions can be used by the company hosting the event to create a new solution in the future-either partially or fully functional. Ensure to have a clause in the terms mentioning that the IP belongs to the company, which means it owns all the code created at that event. You can then store all these coded solutions in a common repository and later re-use them to automate any existing or new processes. This way automation becomes easy and you do not have to build a product from scratch, making the code more efficient.

For example, a 36-hour hackathon was conducted to address 6 IoT-based challenges. For this, each team was provided with an educational IoT kit that consisted of cloud computing services and IoT templates that the participants could access and represent the specific architecture for digital solutions. When the results of the event rolled out, one of the sponsoring companies decided to use the digital solution to upgrade their legacy refrigerators making hackathons a cost-effective and innovative asset

Another option to use online hackathons to your advantage would be to organize internal hackathons within your company. This would foster creativity, produce new solutions that are stored for future use, and when needed, tap into your common repository of code to further create a different solution.

However, you need to be mindful of what code you are planning to re-use as directly copying code snippets from public forums like GitHub or StackOverflow is considered unethical.

Common mistakes to avoid when hosting coding hackathons

While conducting hackathons is the gateway to developing the prototype of your product, hosting the event requires a lot more effort—which sometimes leads to certain mistakes.

Here are 5 mistakes you should be aware of and prepare yourself for before hosting a hackathon.

Mistake #1: Not setting hackathon goals

Without a goal in place, you cannot expect your online hackathon to be successful. Before you host the hackathon, it’s critical to be clear on your goals and your expectations of the event.

• To build brand awareness

• To keep your developer community engaged

• To help developers keep their skills polished

• Is it to hire candidates?

Decide what you want to achieve with this hackathon. Then, outline every detail of the hackathon: time frame of the event, sponsors, guests, type of event (internal or open; virtual or physical), and specialty of the project.

Mistake #2: Lack of extended support for participants

Because participants are working on comprehensive projects that require brainstorming, ideation, and execution, you need to provide developers with well-aligned team support.

This could be as simple as conducting a workshop or a virtual webinar before the hackathon. This will give them an overview of the rules and the relevant resources that you can offer them.

For example, for the Web3athon hosted by HackerEarth, participants were provided a Web3athon toolkit inside which a detailed set of guidelines was shared with them on how to register for the hackathon, how to form a team, and how to submit their idea. Images and videos were used to help participants understand each step.

Mistake #3: Using multiple tools for online hackathon management

Imagine using 5 different tools for managing a hackathon. One for chatting with developers, another for managing teams, and the other for rules and instructions and presenting the pitch. Developers working on product development may have to jump from one tool to another. This may leave them confused and frustrated. If you don’t want that to happen, choose a single tool where you can organize every task—a win-win for both you and the developers participating in the hackathon.

We at HackerEarth have conducted countless hackathons in the past decade. And can confidently say, we offer an advanced platform for organizing hackathons. From end-to-end management of the event to getting your company in front of 7M+ qualified developers, we enable you to increase engagement and foster innovation through these events. Go on, try it out for yourself here!

Mistake #4: Set the hackathon time frame based on your expectations

Your expectations of the hackathon are directly proportional to the event’s time frame. If you expect to get a full-fledged product from the hackathon, know this: you can see such results in hackathons with a longer time frame i.e.,1-3 months.

Take a look at this timeline map by IBM which showcases the exact time frame (and dates) based on the stages of the event—gives participants ample time to understand each phase in advance and prepare accordingly.

Mistake #5: Not choosing a realistic online hackathon theme and problem-solving statement

If you want your hackathons to lead in a specific direction and aim for projects that bring you results, you need to decide on two things:

• The theme of the hackathon

• A problem-solving statement you want a solution for

Theme: Select a broad theme since a narrow theme requires much digging and restricts the participants.

Problem-solving statement: To find a real problem-solving statement, ask the organizer to understand the business’ daily struggles and pain points, and come up with a real-time problem-solving statement.

For example, Connecting the Arctic Hackathon by Cassini had the theme “Sustainability” with three different challenges (problem-solving statement).

How do online hackathons benefit developers and help them stay creative?

Helps validate their product

Hackathons help developers gain confidence by giving them a platform to test their product. In an article by YourStory, Ramesh Logathanan, Professor of Practice in Co-innovations at IIT Hyderabad says,

A hackathon gives participants a very good chance to validate their ideas, give it some initial shape, and get some mentor eyeballs on the idea.

Helps them upskill

For most developers, a hackathon is an opportunity to learn and upskill themselves by both trying out new code solutions and interacting with like-minded teams. Since the companies invite experts and conduct workshops and webinars, developers get a chance to learn about various topics—which is an add-on to their learning experience.

Helps connect like-minded people

Hackathons allow developers with diverse backgrounds to share and exchange ideas, which shape their thinking and lead to innovative solutions. In the same article by YourStory, Kolla Krishna Madhavi, Head of Alliances and Strategic Partnerships, School of Accelerated Learning adds,

Hackathons help diverse individuals with varying skills come together as teams to interact, ideate, and collaborate while coming up with disruptive solutions.

Ready to enhance your product development with hackathons?

No doubt why hackathons can feel so much like a battle. From coming up with a theme, to defining the problem-solving statement, to inviting partners and sponsors, everything feels like a daunting task.

But, once you organize each phase, the expectations for the hackathon will make sense. Decide on the themes and problem-solving statements and have the participants build prototypes of the software.