DEI Hiring

Through The Looking Glass: Hiring For ‘Cultural Fit’ In A Remote World

Two of the most famous characters from Lewis Carol’s Through the Looking Glass are the twins, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. When Alice encounters them, they ridiculously mirror each other’s actions and words. Each brother frequently says “contrariwise” as if he’s about to disagree with his counterpart, only to invertedly say the same thing. Unfortunately, far too many companies end up with teams that look and act in much the same way.

Every organization would say they want to hire according to merit. The problem is that many people unconsciously evaluate merit in a self-validating way. The most successful candidate will often mirror the traits and experiences of the hiring manager. This is what Kellogg School of Management professor Lauren Rivera calls the 'Looking Glass Merit.'When companies hire for ‘cultural fit,’ they’re doing the same thing on an organizational level. This doesn’t mean companies should abandon hiring people that embody a set of core values or soft skills. However, in 2020, we shouldn’t be hiring people who look and act identically. Here’s why:

1. Monolithic Company Culture is Less Important During WFH

As many organizations grapple with staying remote at least through Q3 2021, the future of building a company culture is in flux. This Fast Company article argues that work culture is now driven at an individual level rather than from the top-down. The new reality for organizations is that remote work culture, like everything online, is moving towards personalization and specialization.

Generally speaking, this means that online communities trend towards fragmentation and align around increasingly specific interests. Think of the hyper-specialized communities on Reddit such as this subreddit where people only post pictures of birds with photoshopped human arms.

In the context of remote work, this means that community building will naturally align around smaller, less generalized interests. As Britany Stewart, COO of BURST Oral Care explained in a webinar with Volition Capital, Slack channels work best if they are focused on highly specific themes. BURST has a channel dedicated to parents working from home that has fostered a small, but highly engaged subcommunity. As organizations think about hiring for cultural fit in this context, employees no longer need to fit into a monolithic organizational culture. In fact, their diversity rather than their similarities could actually make the organization more culturally dynamic.

2. Diversity of Thought Reflects Success

A full range of diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives should be at the heart of any hiring strategy. Cisco Systems has adopted what they call a ‘full spectrum’ diversity approach, where, in addition to racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, they also target a diversity of thought and background.

Deloitte explains that “a complex problem typically requires input from six different mental frameworks,” and no one is good at all six. Teams full of different cognitive styles and personalities will not only view problems from every angle, they’ll also solve them faster according to research in HBR. If you have a team of only analytical thinkers, a creative thinker might be the best possible addition.Sometimes, this can cause conflict; unlike Tweedledum and Tweedledee who could never actually come to blows. The crux is to build an environment where reasonable conflict is used to pressure test ideas. The goal shouldn’t be to hire someone who will get along with your team; the goal should be to hire someone who will push your team to look at more problems in more ways.

3. Skill-based Hiring is on the Rise

If you want a more equitable and productive hiring process, you need to focus on skills — especially in tech roles. This is something that’s even starting to happen at the highest level of government.

A recent executive order from the White House resoundingly endorsed skill-based hiring. It reduced minimum education requirements for federal jobs, stating: “degree-based hiring is especially likely to exclude qualified candidates for jobs related to emerging technologies and those with weak connections between educational attainment and the skills or competencies required to perform them.”

Malcolm Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath, calls overestimating the value of an Ivy League degree “Elite Institutional Cognitive Disorder” (EICD). Gladwell blames this disorder on many poor hiring decisions. He instead advocates for hiring on the basis of skill, arguing that performance relative to one’s peers is the best predictor of success.

Grades are one method. Increasingly, online assessments that can evaluate the most relevant skills for any given position have gained traction. In fact, our recent Developer Survey found that 70% of student developers make use of online competitive coding platforms to upskill themselves for the job market.

Through the Looking Glass

Regardless of your company culture before COVID-19, that culture is probably very different today. This doesn’t mean that organizations shouldn’t continue promoting community-building activities and certain values that are unique to them. It does mean that the value of finding a Tweedledum or Tweedledee employee who simply fits in has never been less important.Instead of trying to find someone who reflects everything you like about yourself or your company, step back through the looking glass and find someone who pushes your remote work culture to be different and better.

DEI Hiring

This Is Recruiting: What Makes A Good Coding Assessment?

There may be very few old-timers left in the tech world today who would swear by the benefits of a whiteboard. However, even the new league of extraordinary recruiters find it hard at times to deal with this beast called ‘assessments’.

Does a perfect assessment really exist? And if so, then is there a one-size-fits-all recipe that every company can use to craft their assessments? We have been hankering for the answer to these questions even as we continue to upgrade and better our own Coding Assessments platform. Thankfully, we found a kindred spirit in Martin Kelly, Principal Recruiter Engineering at HubSpot, who helped us find the answers we were looking for.

Here are some excerpts from the conversation between Martin, and HackerEarth’s VP of Marketing, Alfred Alexander.

How to target passive candidates and build talent pools proactively

Alfred: To begin, let me ask you about how HubSpot uses coding assessments at the moment?

Martin: Before I jump into the coding assessments, I would like to talk about the changes we made to our face-to-face interview process, and how that has inspired the coding assessments in its current form. A little while back, we reviewed how we were doing interviews at our office and we really wanted to move away from those Google-type interviews which were all about whiteboards and had a lot of focus on whether a candidate knows how to solve a particular algorithm or not. We wanted to make it more realistic to how an engineer works day-to-day when they’re at the office. As a result of that, we moved away from whiteboard coding as much as possible, in favor of having the interviewee bring their own laptop to the interview, use their own IDE which they are familiar with, use their own documentation, and really have an environment as close as possible to how it would be if they were at work. As we made those improvements, we then moved on to making changes in our coding assessments. When I first started at HubSpot we were using a third-party provider for coding assessments, which was good but we needed something different. Engineers are in so much demand that it can be hard to get them to commit to doing a coding assessment before they come into the hiring process.

We really felt we needed to invest in getting the assessment experience right so we could get these people to move through the process with us. At the heart of it was the idea that we should give engineers a problem to solve at home, in an environment that is as close to their normal working environment as possible.

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Alfred: I think what you’re also trying to say is that it’s important to give a candidate an improved experience while passing through the entire hiring process. More often than not, I see interviewing and hiring processes that are so disconnected from what one would be doing once you get hired and onboarded.

Martin: Exactly! Companies put so much effort into finding great candidates, and if you think about it us recruiters spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and while interviewing. It’s that middle stage - the coding assessment - which can sometimes feel like the unloved middle child who is forgotten about a little bit, and who is always competing with their siblings on either side. If you look at the tie-to-hire, it’s really the middle stage - the coding assessment - which is sort of the make or break in getting people to move through the process.

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Alfred: And I think this also gives the candidates an experience of HubSpot and what they will be working on, the tools they will be building once they get onboarded.

Martin: Yes, this is a two-way evaluation process, right? You’re judging the engineer, but they are also judging your process for the first time. And when it comes to the later stages of the hiring funnel - once they interview and you are ready to make them a final offer - hopefully it will be this experience of going through the assessment process, and understanding what your company has to offer which they will remember vividly. So, there is an opportunity to use the coding assessment to get you and your company some competitive advantage when it comes to the closing stages.

********

Well, that was just a sneak peek of everything that Alfred and Martin talked about. We have the full podcast for you here if you’d like to know more about HubSpot’s hiring secrets and Martin’s own recipe for concocting the perfect assessment.

DEI Hiring

A Note On Our New Leave Policies

Equality

Noun

Dictionary Meaning: the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, or opportunities.

Equity

Noun

Dictionary Meaning: the quality of being fair and impartial.

At first glance, they both seem the same. Words that define the quality of being just, and providing uniform opportunities to everyone. There is a stark difference though.

Equality achieves fairness by treating everyone the same regardless of need. Equity does so by putting said need at the forefront of everything.

You’ll know in a bit why these words are important. Grammar session done; now let me dive into the facts of the matter. Some time ago, we asked the company if we should introduce period leave, and relook at our paternity leave —two policies intricately linked with gender. We knew these were thorny issues, and hearing everyone’s opinion was important to us. Zomato famously irked India when it introduced period leave earlier in 2020. But it wasn’t the first. In fact, the Bihar government has provided two extra days of casual leave for women employees since 1992. In 1947, Japan became the first country in the world to grant women the right to menstrual leave. So, were we doing something new? Absolutely not. Why did it take us time to implement this policy then? Because, bias. In the course of thinking about whether or not to include period leave into our system, I have become acutely aware of my personal biases in this regard. I am not someone who has horrible periods. I don’t have debilitating pain, and I’m good at hiding my mood swings. At times, I've had extreme reactions to situations — the curse of the 1st day — for which I've gone back and apologized. I do have colleagues, friends, and family who have acute pain and discomfort during this time. One of the critiques of period leave is that it bundles all women up in a category labeled ‘On Period, Must Rest.’ By not giving them this leave, however, aren’t we just putting them in another category labeled ‘Can Handle Period, Is Forever Fine’? I can handle my periods; what about those who can’t? What about the women who are forced to come to work because they would rather save their medical and sick leave for something more important than a mere period? Asked to evaluate this objectively on behalf of the company, I have had to acknowledge, accept, and embrace both the differences and similarities associated with 'gender'. We are biologically different as women, and we need to appreciate this and provide a space for inclusion. Placing women in either category as above doesn’t solve the issue. Asking them to camouflage a biological necessity as ‘sickness’ and take a medical leave instead isn’t helpful, either.

Giving them the option to choose whether they want to avail a ‘period leave’ depending on how they feel, is. Hence, we added 12 period leave days per year to our policy.

Figuring out paternity leave was even harder.

So far, we’ve had a 5-day leave policy as per traditional practices. We knew, however, that this isn’t enough. Women are given 6 months postpartum, and again this is ruled by biology. It, however, rules out any window for new dads to bond with their children, or to be part of their newborn’s growth process. It rules out any window for them to be there for their spouses, or be the fathers they imagine themselves being. We didn’t want anyone apologizing for not being available for work because of their parental duties — we wanted to enable them to proudly hold the bastion at home, without feeling guilty for slacking off work.

But how much leave time was enough?

In the US, the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act says that organizations with more than 50 workers should provide 12 weeks of unpaid paternity leave. In reality, only a few (about 14%) offer paternity leave by choice. In Sweden, new dads get about 90 days paternity leave with 80% pay of their normal salary, with both parents getting a total of 480 days off. Since there is no set rule here, we held an internal discussion to understand what the dads-to-be in the company would like, and how they thought this would affect them. An inherited, unconscious bias is at play here as well. That ancient belief that men are made to hunt beasts and slay demons, and women are supposed to take care of home and hearth has led to many men neglecting their responsibilities towards their family. Research says that paternity leave has direct benefits in that it stops women from dropping out of the workforce, and fosters closer bonds between men and their children. And if you know anything about us, you know that we are all for science! Extending our paternity leave policy from the usual 5 days to a month is our way of ensuring that our Hacksters and their families can experience the joys of parenthood without any glitches.

It doesn’t stop with policies though.

I have always said that companies need to put people first and the policies will follow. Japan might have introduced period leave seven decades ago, but a Guardian Report says that women in the country loathe taking this time off, worrying it might antagonize male colleagues, or create a sense of weakness. Similarly with the paternity leave — in countries where these leaves are unpaid, we can imagine just how many men would want to ask for them. When the new leave policy was formally announced on our internal company channels, our team flooded us with messages to tell us how excited they were. They said we had done the right thing. And that’s all the validation that matters. I’m glad our women don’t have to worry about speaking the dreaded ‘P’ word in office anymore, or our men don’t have to take last-minute work calls when on a diaper-shopping spree. Policies don’t create equality, or an equitable workplace (remember the words I used before?). Creating an atmosphere where differences are respected — even biological ones — and common ground is a safe space for both genders is what an equal, and equitable, workplace is all about. I’m proud of the work that HackerEarth has done so far to create that safe space for our employees. I also know that our efforts to create bias-free, people-centric workplaces will never stop. Period.

DEI Hiring

This is Recruiting: How to Develop a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiative

“When we listen and celebrate what is both common and different, we become wiser, more inclusive, and better as an organization.” — Pat Wadors

At Hackerearth we believe that skills do not discriminate. We want to help brands create effective workforces, and that cannot be done if companies do not evolve to hire based on talent rather than focussing on gender and racial stereotypes. We take pains to ensure our products are bias-free as well.It is this quest of empowering bias-free tech recruitment that led our CEO, Sachin Gupta, to connect with Troy McIntosh - Senior Director, Diversity and Inclusion at U.S. Cellular. Troy’s team of five works on leading tactics in the areas of inclusion, ensuring equal talent representation, supplier diversity and more. As he elaborates during the conversation, the strategies used by U.S. Cellular to maintain equitable hiring practices is among the best in the country; one of the reasons why Diversity Best Practices (DBP), a division of Working Mother Media, named U.S. Cellular among the 98 American organizations that earned a score of at least 60 percent and a place on their 2020 Inclusion Index.

Below are some excerpts from the conversation:

Sachin: Talking of diversity and inclusion from a talent perspective (and I’m sure this is a dilemma that a lot of recruiters face), sometimes when you are evaluating candidates you get a diverse candidate who’s really good, but there might also be a non-diverse candidate who’s even better. And we also have to keep in mind that interviews can be a bit subjective sometimes. How do you make a decision in such scenarios?

Troy: Well, my team is not currently involved with requisition. We focus mainly on ensuring that diverse candidates are in the pipeline, that they are in the interview process, and that the interview process is free of bias. So, we would be more involved with training leaders on reflecting on their own biases, involved with ensuring that the pipeline at the interview slate is diverse. At U.S. Cellular, things might be a little bit different than most companies - I don’t know. I talked to a lot of my colleagues about this; we don’t see much disparity between our applicant pool diversity and our higher diversity. We’ve spent a lot of time with leaders encouraging them to build a talented, diverse team. A couple of years ago, we brought in some thinkers, including Scott Paige, to talk about diversity and team composition and we’ve taken the stance that diverse teams will outperform less diverse teams, so rather than hire five people who are similar we focus on ensuring the focus of the company is on hiring diverse teams which can outshine. This strategy has really worked for us, and i wouldn’t say we have this concern (of choosing between a diverse and a non-diverse candidate) that often. Typically, we have a very robust talent pipeline and we’ve found - cross my fingers - that our leaders tend to hire in a pretty equitable way when they have diversity in the interview slate. Now I would say that’s not the case with all companies - I’ve worked with companies where they have seen a decrease of success, but at U.S. Cellular we don’t have that problem.

Sachin: That’s interesting! Now you’ve touched upon a couple of things like ensuring the pipeline is diverse and that there is no bias in the hiring process. Could you talk about some of the key metrics you measure at your level to ensure that your D&I program is working as expected?

Troy: We’ve actually built some targets and those targets are based on equity. So, the way I would explain it is that I like to tell my daughter that she has an equal chance of becoming CEO at the company than I would have had. What we want to see is internal equity. As an example, if 50% of our internal contributors in sales are women, we’d like to see 50% of managers, 50% of directors being women too. And if that’s not the case, then we spend time trying to find out why. So, we do want to meet our targets but a better way of explaining it is to say that the targets inform our choices. If we see for example that fewer women are being promoted, we want to know why. And then we talk to leaders to understand the root cause. Are they not interviewing enough women? Is it that women have less confidence? Is it that men don’t view them as talented? Whatever the reason is, my team gets involved with trying to understand the issue and remedy the situation.

Learn about the D&I lessons from top global organizations.

For more on Troy’s learnings and insights into creating a fabulous workplace, do watch the video. See you next time!

DEI Hiring

The Unvarnished Truth of being a Woman in Tech

In our fifth episode of Breaking404, we caught up with Monica Bajaj, Senior Director of Engineering, Workday to hear out the different biases that exist in tech roles across organizations and how difficult it can get for a woman to reach a senior position, especially in tech. We also talked about the best recruiting practices that Engineering Leaders should follow in order to hire the best tech talent without any biases.

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Arbaz: Hello everyone and welcome to the 5th episode of Breaking 404 by HackerEarth, a podcast for all engineering enthusiasts, professionals, and leaders to learn from top influencers in the engineering and technology industry. This is your host Arbaz and today I have with me Monica Bajaj, the Senior Director of Engineering at Workday, an American on‑demand financial management and human capital management software vendor. She is also a Board Member of Women in Localization, a leading professional organization with a mission to create a strong place for women to develop their careers in localization and provide mentorship. Welcome, Monica! We are delighted to have you as a guest for our podcast. For our audience to know you better, let’s start off with a quick introduction about yourself and how your professional journey has been?

Monica: Definitely. I am originally from India from a city called Indore (central part of India). I did my high school and under-graduation from Indore. I came to the US almost 20 years back for work and settled here. My professional journey has been very interesting. Right after my undergrad in CS, I started my career as an Assistant professor teaching Computer science Teaching has always been close to my heart since it creates a platform of learning without any expectations. Later I did my Masters in CS at IIT Mumbai which was indeed a turning point in my career. I decided to join the tech industry in India, joined Wipro, and came to the US on an assignment. I was one of the early on developers at WellsFargo when they were going through the transformation of being an Online banking application. I started my career as a full stack developer and stayed as a developer for almost 10 plus years. In 2005 I got an opportunity at a Startup to transition my career into management. I had no idea about people management but decided to take this challenge. As I embarked on this new challenge, I realized that people management and building teams are something that I truly enjoy. I never looked back. I have been fortunate that as I moved from one industry to another, I was able to develop my engineering management experiences and align with the business needs. I have had great opportunities working for startups, mid-size, and giant tech companies such as Cisco, NetApp, Perforce, Ultimate software mostly in the enterprise space. I recently joined Workday as a Senior Director of Engineering, building their Community Platform.

Arbaz: What was the first programming language you started to code in and was the code to print “Hello World”?

Monica: My first programming language was BASIC. I never had exposure to computers until I went to college and started my undergrad in CS. We worked on BBC Microcomputers saving our programs on Floppy disks. Resources were limited in India and yes it sounds pretty old but it definitely shows the journey of innovation that has happened in just last 20 years

Arbaz: While we were looking out for guests for this podcast, out of the more than 100 potential engineering leaders that we found, just 5-10% were females. Do you think that there still exists an inequality/bias in terms of gender especially in tech roles? Also, have you ever experienced this yourself and how difficult/challenging is it to reach a senior position for women in tech?

Monica: Definitely Gender bias in the tech industry is very prevalent. If we just look at the tech industry in the mid-1980s, 37% of CS majors were women. You would think that things must have gotten better as we advanced in this century. In fact,it has dipped to 18%. Today women make up only 20% of engineering graduates. Only 26% of computing jobs are held by women and have been steadily declining. The turnover rate is more than twice as high for women than it is for men in the tech industry 41% vs 17%. 56% of women are leaving their employers mid-career ( 22% get self-employed, 20% leave the workforce, and 10% work with some startups). Only 5% of leadership positions in the tech sector are held by women; they make up only 9% of partners at the top 100 venture capital firms. On top of this, if you are a woman of color, the challenges get even harder when it comes to growth negotiations. These challenges increase as you embark into key Senior leadership roles: Principal Engineers, Architect, Directors, and Senior Directors, VPs, and above. Yes, I have personally experienced this in my career a few times. Once I was being told by my senior leader that Indian women are not meant for leadership due to cultural bias. It was heartbreaking and at the same time, it made me very angry. I did not hold back and did state that things have changed so much. This did cost me my job and I was asked to move to another group. Another story I have is where I had to deal with Cultural Bias and lack of understanding of being a mom. I was being told by my boss,” why do you need to drop kids to school and be late to work. I have pets and I leave them and they figure it out. “ I was shocked. Rather than going to HR, I resigned and moved on since I knew no action would be taken. Sometimes such experiences can lead to folks leaving industry/companies. There is a bias and women many times downplay their technical credentials. On the other hand, men do the reverse. Studies have proven that when it comes to applying for a job men apply when they meet 60% of the qualifications and women continue to have second thought even when they are meeting 100% of the qualifications.

Arbaz: These are really motivational stories and shocking at the same time. It’s really great to hear how you fought all of them. These numbers are really horrifying numbers. We often discuss how women empowerment has been a movement off late. Just a follow-up to that, have you seen any particular changes that companies are taking to bring these differences down?

Arbaz: You’ve worked with top companies including Cisco, NetApp, Perforce, Ultimate Software and now you are with Workday. What is the biggest technical or product challenge you have experienced? How did you overcome it?

Monica: The biggest technical challenge any organization faces today is bringing in Digital transformation. Digital transformation is imperative for all businesses and lets us not delude ourselves that the tech industry does not need it., It applies from the small to medium to enterprise and definition changes similar to the definition of the following Agile development process. Digital transformation is hard but if you have the right strategy and clear vision it can do miracles. The key focus has to be Customer experience, Operational Agility, Culture and Leadership, Workforce Enablement, and Digital Technology Integration. As an engineering leader, I had an opportunity to be a part of this journey in my recent role. One of the goals while building a product was to move from an application-centric view to a services-based view. While building this new product on a Microservices based architecture, it was also important to convert a monolith module to a microservice and integrate with other Microservices in the new architecture. It has a significant benefit because the services are autonomous, specialized, can be updated, deployed, and scaled to meet the demand for specific functions of an application. It definitely required organizational transformation around convincing, and prioritization clashes with other initiatives. On the technology and process side, we uncovered a few challenges around integration, deployment, and migration of these services to Kubernetes. Automation was a must requirement to go with. I had the state of art DevOps team who was an integral part of the development process right from the design phase. This really helped us in making sure that we have the strategy around deploying, monitoring, and alerting of these services.

In the current situation at Workday, I have an opportunity to stand a new platform for an existing product called Workday Community. Choices are Buy Vs Build, keeping an equal focus on the existing product and the future development, Defining the game changers and enriched user experience for our customers and most important keeping in mind the sentiments of the current team to come along in this journey of transformation.

Arbaz: Two things that we most often see engineering leaders focused on are: Technical Debt and High Quality of Code. Keeping this in mind, how do you maintain a balance of technical stability (minimize technical debt) while still delivering quality code at a high velocity?

Monica: As smart financial debt can help us reach our life goals faster, not all technical debt is bad. The key thing is managing it well while delivering at a high pace to meet the customer needs and balancing with emerging opportunities. There are three kinds of Tech debt:

Deliberate Tech debt ( where we incur tech debt to reduce time to market)

Accidental Tech debt: More of a design tech debt. It is important to thoroughly consider nuances around design else it can lead to rework. Refactoring of the system can help

Bit rot: This is where the functionality just ages over years due to incremental changes, workarounds. Most of the organizations face this kind of tech debt.

In my mind, the evaluation of tech debt and its consequences is more of an art than a science.

In order to maintain the overall stability, I make sure that I address 20% of my stories focused on Tech debt in every sprint planning. This again entails negotiations, prioritization against new feature development. If we start seeing that the team is losing velocity it is a good indicator that tech debt may exist. Test coverage, code smells, code coverage helps in uncovering the gaps around design, and functionality. Developer productivity is important to keep in mind which includes best engineering practices, managing tech debt well, creating reusable components, and building an architecture that allows for decoupling if needed.

Arbaz: That’s really a great approach. At the end of the day, it’s important to keep the balance correct. Just deviating a little bit from our technical talks and getting to know Monica, the person, a little more. What is your favorite leisure-time activity and how do you make sure that you keep that hobby in-tact and not let it die under your workload?

Monica: Gardening and Outdoor activity such as hiking and road trips. I believe that if you prioritize it and if it means something for you, it will happen irrespective of your workload. In fact more than a hobby, I continue to learn leadership lessons from my garden. Organizations are like gardens and they need a lot of love and care similar to growing plants in your garden.

Arbaz: Recruiting and engineering, while we are partners, we operate differently. How do you work together? How do you align recruiters and hiring managers to achieve the overall objective of hiring a talented developer? From your perspective when you’re on that table with your recruiter, are you seeing alignment, or are you seeing discordance and how are you handling that?

Monica: Hiring the right people should be the highest priority for any business. I have a great partnership with our recruiting teams. I strongly believe that the onus is on the hiring manager since he/she knows the best what they need from the candidate. In order to make sure that the recruiter has a good understanding of what to look for I work with our recruiting team to define the traits, technical skills, and the overall recruiting process.( Phone screen, technical challenge, panel interviews). It is very important that the messaging around the role, team and company culture is consistent during all the conversations that recruiter and the hiring manager have with the candidate.

Arbaz: There is a lot of debate on the coding interviews right now having algorithm problem-solving skills, and you don’t necessarily use data structures in your real-world coding. But companies globally do emphasize on having questions around Data structures and Algo in the assessment. Do you think it’s a good approach? How do you reconcile the two and do you think the problem-solving questions give you a good idea of their future performance?

Monica: I think Data structures and Algorithms are fundamentals or core plumbing. While interviewing, I want the candidate ( for a developer or QA role) to go through a problem and see if they can apply the core principles of software engineering such as algorithms, testing, debugging logging, scale, performance. As a hiring manager, I like to see how an individual is able to think out of the box and be creative. It also helps individuals agility around picking new technologies and come up with the best approach to solve the problem. In fact, the candidate should be able to speak to their resume, hence better storytelling. Having the candidate go through live examples in their resume speaks for collaboration, cultural fit, observance, team building.

Arbaz: What is the most challenging part of any technical assessment and interview? If there is anything that you would like to change in the assessment and interview process, what would it be?

Monica: The most challenging part of technical assessment is to ensure that the entire panel is of the same understanding around the expectations and level of any given role. As a hiring manager, it is our job to ensure that. In terms of bringing a change in this interview process: I am not a big fan of the process where rather than focusing on the job role and the candidate’s experience, the companies start asking these random questions such as “ How will you deploy software on Mars or how will you move Mount Fuji ?” Companies do not realize that the candidate is also interviewing them so it is fair game on both sides. You always want to hire smarter people than you so that you can bring in new talent and ideas rather than converting them or making them fit in your model of thinking. I consider this as “ hurting their creativity and hence diminishing the impact they can make if they get hired”. If you approach a candidate, you need to value and embrace their experience and see how it aligns to fit your business and organizational needs.

I want to bring in a diversity of thought and creativity. I do not want candidates to be pre-programmed to speak the buzzwords that the company is looking for or the structure that they publish.

Arbaz: It’s wonderful how you shed light on how important it is to foster learning and growth for talent and the candidate is also assessing the company. Now as the Senior Director of Engineering at Workday, do you still code, and if not do you sort of miss coding? We would love to know how the role changes because a lot of times developers have this thing of – Do I need to go in the path of a developer, a senior developer, a principal engineer instead of like a chief architect, or do you want to go down the developer, engineering manager, director, and CTO journey. And sometimes you can end up being a CTO or VP of engineering from multiple paths. So how did you choose to go which path you wanted to take?

Monica: No, I do not code and neither do I miss it. ( Most of the companies offer two tracks in any given role. If you love to be close to only technical aspects ( coding, architecture, design ) you can grow as an Individual contributor such as architect, principal engineer, and be on a technical track. However, if you are more inclined towards people management, mentor, and be able to invest in people, hire the best talent, you can be on the management track. Many of us get lost when we have to make a call at this turning point of being a manager and not doing hands-on every day. It is hard to let go of things that you are comfortable with. I was a developer by career for more than a decade and then I got my first break into management ( due to my dev and tech skills). Soon I realized that I enjoyed people management and never looked back. One important thing I would like to share is keeping a fine balance between being hands-on and being a manager. Managing an organization cannot be a part-time job. You can easily fall into the trap of being hands-on since you are comfortable with it. You may think that you are contributing but in fact, you might be hurting them by taking their space and creativity and also ignoring your first priority of investing in your people.

Arbaz: Which software framework/tool do you admire the most and consider as a gift from God?

Monica: IaaS: Infrastructure as a code. Modern Marvel of Cloud engineering where you don’t have to worry about maintaining the infrastructure, worry about the scale and other services such as monitoring, security, logging, disaster recovery, load balancing, backup, etc. It allows a greater level of automation and orchestration also speeds up the overall delivery process.

Arbaz: Considering the current scenario around the COVID-19 outbreak where companies have asked their employees to work remotely, what do you think is the biggest problem/challenge with managing remote engineering teams? What do you think is the best way to keep a team of engineers motivated?

Monica: With COVID, the boundary between homework and work from home has been blurred. The working hours have become much longer due to flexibility and hence the balance between family and work does get impacted. More importantly, since everyone is at home, it can get harder for folks to focus on their work more so if they have space limitations or little kids. Communication with the entire team has also become all virtual. I joined Workday 5 weeks back and I was virtually onboarded and now I am learning and building relationships with my team via a virtual platform. I agree that nothing beats in-person engagements. If you look at the pros, it has given an opportunity for people to save their commute from 2-3 hours everyday to none which is indeed priceless. For many people, it has improved the overall quality of life but given us a pace where we can stop, admire, and focus things around us. It has allowed people to rejuvenate themselves rather than chasing the rat race of life.

When it comes to your teams, stay in touch, be transparent, Value them, and continue to express gratitude.

Arbaz: If not engineering, what alternate profession would you have seen yourself excel in?

Monica: I would be a Master Gardener. My parents are avid gardeners so I would say that I inherited some of those traits from them. I love outdoors, I need quiet time where I can just sync in my Garden. I feel it is a way for me to communicate with Mother Nature. You are constantly growing and learning about these plants. I feel the same way in my career where I continue to learn and grow every day.

Arbaz: What would be your 1 tip for all Engineering Managers, VPs, and Directors for being the best at what they do?

Monica: Try to hire people who are not clones of yourself.

Arbaz: It was a pleasure having you today as part of this episode, I really appreciate you taking your time. It was informative and insightful, and I definitely enjoyed listening. I hope our listeners also have a great time listening to you. Thank you. So, this brings us to the end of today’s episode of Breaking 404. Stay tuned for more such awesome enlightening episodes. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel ‘Breaking 404 by HackerEarth’ on Itunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud and TuneIn. This is Arbaz, your host signing off until next time. Thank you so much, everyone!

About Monica Bajaj

Monica Bajaj is an engineering leader with a wide variety of experience around building high performing globally distributed Engineering teams aligning with product delivery and customer satisfaction. Her prime focus has always been around developer productivity and enriched experience for customers. Monica is currently Senior Director of Engineering at Workday where she is responsible to build a Community 2.0 platform along with other partner teams. Prior to Workday, she worked at various Tech giants such as Cisco, NetApp, and Ultimate Software. She also serves as a Board member at WomenInLocalization, a global organization focused on Women mentorship and localization activities. She is a featured mentor on Plato and Everwise mentorship platforms.

Monica holds a CS undergrad from Indore and grad from IIT Mumbai in India.

Finding outdoor activities keeps her refreshed. When she is not working, she is either gardening, hiking, or mentoring. She can be reached on:

Twitter: @mbajaj9

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mobajaj/

DEI Hiring

Tips on running a bias-free, early-talent hiring process

The generation of early-talent is comprised mostly of Gen Z (those born after 1996). This group comprises students who are recent graduates or about to graduate. They are known to be entrepreneurial, tech-savvy, and are true digital natives.

With the unemployment rate hitting the lowest of lows and several Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) entering retirement, the need to hire early-talent is more significant than ever. The early-talent you recruit will help define your company culture for years to come. Therefore, it is important to prioritize a diverse pool of candidates with the right skill sets throughout your hiring process. To effectively engage with this sought-after group of job-seekers and run a bias-free hiring process, organizations need to evolve their recruitment methods to be more authentic, digital, and proactive.

What bias means in recruitment

As humans, we are bound to make quick decisions. Every day we make a multitude of choices: your most recent one was whether to read this article or not. Similarly, in the hiring process, bias happens when you prefer one candidate over another based solely on first impressions. Or, be inclined toward a candidate who seems similar to you. Sometimes, a candidate’s name, pictures on their resume, or hometown could influence your opinion more than you think. In short, bias (conscious or unconscious) affects your decision—whether positively or negatively, using criteria irrelevant to the job.

How to avoid bias in early-talent hiring?

Does your company have a program for hiring early-talent as interns, co-ops, and for entry-level roles? If yes, great! However, it may be wise to revisit your hiring strategy. That’s because Gen Z represents the first generation of true digital natives. This generation is equipped with the most in-demand skills, such as leadership, communication, problem-solving, data analysis, and tech. Hence, it would be best if you had a solid understanding of the profile of this generation and how to recruit them while cutting from the entire process.

Read more on the 7 Types of hiring bias and how to avoid them.

Here are 3 proven ways to avoid bias in early-talent recruitment.

Use a pre-employment assessment tool

Gen Z were the first to be born into a completely digital world. They are extremely tech-savvy because they grew up immersed in a digital culture.

Hence, you must speak their language and digitize your hiring process, leaving no room for bias. Consider using coding assessment tools or recruitment software solutions. These tools have many benefits that can help you eliminate bias from the interview process:

First of all, these tools will allow you to conduct structured interviews. You will also be able to use evaluation parameters or scorecards to test candidates on the go. Conducting structured interviews and having pre-defined evaluation parameters are excellent ways to interview candidates in an unbiased and standardized manner. Asking a set of questions in a structured interview format helps the hiring team collect useful information from each interviewee that they can use to make informed hiring decisions and compare with other candidates in the funnel.
These tools foster collaboration between two or more recruiters and hiring managers. Hence, every hiring decision is a team effort, which helps you avoid recruitment bias.
These tools hide all personally identifiable information of candidates such as gender, name, email address, etc. Hence, the chances of unconscious bias are reduced drastically.

Rework your job descriptions

It’s no surprise that Gen Z uses mobile phones with lightning dexterity—as if the features of their phones and their minds were one and the same. But that also means that this generation is quick to swipe left at lackluster or poor job descriptions. Hence, employers and recruiters need to be on their toes.

Gen Z doesn’t want to be gender-stereotyped and is acutely aware of bias. According to a New York Times poll, this generation believes that they can change their sexual preferences and gender identities more than any other generation.

In early-talent hiring job descriptions play an important role as they provide the first impression of a company's culture. Look at the language in your tech job descriptions. Chances are, the wording is more biased toward one gender than you realize. Always avoid pronouns and potentially gender-charged terms in your job-descriptions. The idea is to make them gender-fluid.

Furthermore, you can emphasize both in your job descriptions and in your company brand that your company is committed to inclusion and diversity. This results in a richer, expanded candidate pool of Gen Z.

Shift your focus from pedigree to potential

Every student dreams of getting into one of the Ivy League universities around the world. However, the competition for getting into elite colleges seems to be getting more and more intense. According to research, elite colleges and universities enroll fewer than 6 percent of U.S. college students.

This brings us to a fundamental question: what should be more critical to an organization when hiring early-talent – the educational pedigree or potential of candidates? When organizations begin searching for early-talent, elite universities are likely to be the first to attract their attention. However, by doing so, they are limiting their candidate pool.

Google helped start this trend when they spoke of hiring for “Intellectual Humanity” and a push toward a focus on skills more than credentials. We are not saying that you should ditch the Ivy League cohort altogether. But it is important to remember that students from the lesser privileged section of the society can have the required skills that you’re looking for even without going to an Ivy League school. By shifting your focus from pedigree to potential, you will have a clear insight into a candidates’ performance and problem-solving skills in a real-world scenario. This method has proven to be accurate, delivering actionable results, and leaving no room for bias whatsoever.

Assess a candidate's potential with accurate coding assessments

Gen Z are on their way and it’s time to get ready for them…

Gen Z are hot on their heels in the job market today, and now is the time to get ready for them. This generation is known for being open-minded and deeply invested in diversity and inclusivity. A study found that 70% of this generation strongly believes that public spaces should provide gender-neutral bathrooms, compared to 57% of Millennials.

What does this mean for you? You must shine a spotlight on your diversity and inclusion efforts by eliminating bias from the recruitment process!

Authors

Meet our Authors

Get to know the experts behind our content. From industry leaders to tech enthusiasts, our authors share valuable insights, trends, and expertise to keep you informed and inspired.

Ruehie Jaiya Karri

Kumari Trishya

Hiring Strategies

Forecasting Tech Hiring Trends For 2023 With 6 Experts

2023 is here, and it is time to look ahead. Start planning your tech hiring needs as per your business requirements, revamp your recruiting processes, and come up with creative ways to land that perfect “unicorn candidate”!

Right? Well, jumping in blindly without heeding what this year holds for you can be a mistake. So before you put together your plans, ask yourselves this—What are the most important 2023 recruiting trends in tech hiring that you should be prepared for? What are the predictions that will shape this year?

We went around and posed three important questions to industry experts that were on our minds. And what they had to say certainly gave us some food for thought!

Before we dive in, allow me to introduce you to our expert panel of six, who had so much to say from personal experience!

Meet the Expert Panel

Radoslav Stankov has more than 20 years of experience working in tech. He is currently Head of Engineering at Product Hunt. Enjoys blogging, conference speaking, and solving problems.

Mike “Batman” Cohen is the Founder of Wayne Technologies, a Sourcing-as-a-Service company providing recruitment data and candidate outreach services to enhance the talent acquisition journey.

Pamela Ilieva is the Director of International Recruitment at Shortlister, a platform that connects employers to wellness, benefits, and HR tech vendors.

Brian H. Hough is a Web2 and Web3 software engineer, AWS Community Builder, host of the Tech Stack Playbook™ YouTube channel/podcast, 5-time global hackathon winner, and tech content creator with 10k+ followers.

Steve O'Brien is Senior Vice President, Talent Acquisition at Syneos Health, leading a global team of top recruiters across 30+ countries in 24+ languages, with nearly 20 years of diverse recruitment experience.

Patricia (Sonja Sky) Gatlin is a New York Times featured activist, DEI Specialist, EdTechie, and Founder of Newbies in Tech. With 10+ years in Higher Education and 3+ in Tech, she now works part-time as a Diversity Lead recruiting STEM professionals to teach gifted students.

Overview of the upcoming tech industry landscape in 2024

Continued emphasis on remote work and flexibility: As we move into 2024, the tech industry is expected to continue embracing remote work and flexible schedules. This trend, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has proven to be more than a temporary shift. Companies are finding that remote work can lead to increased productivity, a broader talent pool, and better work-life balance for employees. As a result, recruiting strategies will likely focus on leveraging remote work capabilities to attract top talent globally.

Rising demand for AI and Machine Learning Skills: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) continue to be at the forefront of technological advancement. In 2024, these technologies are expected to become even more integrated into various business processes, driving demand for professionals skilled in AI and ML. Companies will likely prioritize candidates with expertise in these areas, and there may be an increased emphasis on upskilling existing employees to meet this demand.

Increased focus on cybersecurity: With the digital transformation of businesses, cybersecurity remains a critical concern. The tech industry in 2024 is anticipated to see a surge in the need for cybersecurity professionals. Companies will be on the lookout for talent capable of protecting against evolving cyber threats and ensuring data privacy.

Growth in cloud computing and edge computing: Cloud computing continues to grow, but there is also an increasing shift towards edge computing – processing data closer to where it is generated. This shift will likely create new job opportunities and skill requirements, influencing recruiting trends in the tech industry.

Sustainable technology and green computing: The global emphasis on sustainability is pushing the tech industry towards green computing and environmentally friendly technologies. In 2024, companies may seek professionals who can contribute to sustainable technology initiatives, adding a new dimension to tech recruiting.

Emphasis on soft skills: While technical skills remain paramount, soft skills like adaptability, communication, and problem-solving are becoming increasingly important. Companies are recognizing the value of these skills in fostering innovation and teamwork, especially in a remote or hybrid work environment.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI): There is an ongoing push towards more diverse and inclusive workplaces. In 2024, tech companies will likely continue to strengthen their DEI initiatives, affecting how they recruit and retain talent.

6 industry experts predict the 2023 recruiting trends

#1 We've seen many important moments in the tech industry this year...

Rado: In my opinion, a lot of those will carry over. I felt this was a preparation year for what was to come...

Mike: I wish I had the crystal ball for this, but I hope that when the market starts picking up again...

Pamela: Quiet quitting has been here way before 2022, and it is here to stay if organizations and companies...

Pamela Ilieva, Director of International Recruitment, Shortlister

Also, read: What Tech Companies Need To Know About Quiet Quitting

Brian: Yes, absolutely. In the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer report...

Steve: Quiet quitting in the tech space will naturally face pressure as there is a redistribution of tech talent...

Patricia: Quiet quitting has been around for generations—people doing the bare minimum because they are no longer incentivized...

Patricia Gatlin, DEI Specialist and Curator, #blacklinkedin

#2 What is your pro tip for HR professionals/engineering managers...

Rado: Engineering managers should be able to do "more-with-less" in the coming year.

Radoslav Stankov, Head of Engineering, Product Hunt

Mike: Well first, (shameless plug), be in touch with me/Wayne Technologies as a stop-gap for when the time comes.

Mike “Batman” Cohen, Founder of Wayne Technologies

It's in the decrease and increase where companies find the hardest challenges...

Pamela: Remain calm – no need to “add fuel to the fire”!...

Brian: We have to build during the bear markets to thrive in the bull markets.

Companies can create internal hackathons to exercise creativity...

Also, read: Internal Hackathons - Drive Innovation And Increase Engagement In Tech Teams

Steve: HR professionals facing a hiring freeze will do well to “upgrade” processes, talent, and technology aggressively during downtime...

Steve O'Brien, Senior Vice President, Talent Acquisition at Syneos Health

Patricia: Talk to hiring managers in all your departments. Ask, what are the top 3-5 roles they are hiring for in the new year?...

Also, watch: 5 Recruiting Tips To Navigate The Hiring Freeze With Shalini Chandra, Senior TA, HackerEarth

#3 What top 3 skills would you like HR professionals/engineering managers to add to their repertoire in 2023 to deal with upcoming challenges?

6 industry experts predict the 2023 recruiting trends

Rado: Prioritization, team time, and environment management.

I think "prioritization" and "team time" management are obvious. But what do I mean by "environment management"?

A productive environment is one of the key ingredients for a productive team. Look at where your team wastes most time, which can be automated. For example, end-to-end writing tests take time because our tools are cumbersome and undocumented. So let's improve this.

Mike: Setting better metrics/KPIs, moving away from LinkedIn, and sharing more knowledge.

Metrics/KPIs: Become better at setting measurable KPIs and accountable metrics. They are not the same thing—it's like the Square and Rectangle. One fits into the other but they're not the same. Hold people accountable to metrics, not KPIs. Make sure your metrics are aligned with company goals and values, and that they push employees toward excellence, not mediocrity.
Freedom from LinkedIn: This is every year, and will probably continue to be. LinkedIn is a great database, but it is NOT the only way to find candidates, and oftentimes, not even the most effective/efficient. Explore other tools and methodologies!
Join the conversation: I'd love to see new names of people presenting at conferences and webinars. And also, see new authors on the popular TA content websites. Everyone has things they can share—be a part of the community, not just a user of. Join FB groups, write and post articles, and comment on other people's posts with more than 'Great article'. It's a great community, but it's only great because of the people who contribute to it—be one of those people.

Pamela: Resilience, leveraging data, and self-awareness.

Resilience: A “must-have” skill for the 21st century due to constant changes in the tech industry. Face and adapt to challenges. Overcome them and handle disappointments. Never give up. This will keep HR people alive in 2023.
Data skills: Get some data analyst skills. The capacity to transfer numbers into data can help you be a better HR professional, prepared to improve the employee experience and show your leadership team how HR is leveraging data to drive business results.
Self-awareness: Allows you to react better to upsetting situations and workplace challenges. It is a healthy skill to cultivate – especially as an HR professional.

Also, read: Diving Deep Into The World Of Data Science With Ashutosh Kumar

Brian: Agility, resourcefulness, and empathy.

Agility: Allows professionals to move with market conditions. Always be as prepared as possible for any situation to come. Be flexible based on what does or does not happen.
Resourcefulness: Allows professionals to do more with less. It also helps them focus on how to amplify, lift, and empower the current teams to be the best they can be.
Empathy: Allows professionals to take a more proactive approach to listening and understanding where all workers are coming from. Amid stressful situations, companies need empathetic team members and leaders alike who can meet each other wherever they are and be a support.

Steve: Negotiation, data management, and talent development.

Negotiation: Wage transparency laws will fundamentally change the compensation conversation. We must ensure we are still discussing compensation early in the process. And not just “assume” everyone’s on the same page because “the range is published”.
Data management and predictive analytics: Looking at your organization's talent needs as a casserole of indistinguishable components and demands will not be good enough. We must upgrade the accuracy and consistency of our data and the predictions we can make from it.

Also, read: The Role of Talent Intelligence in Optimizing Recruitment

Talent development: We’ve been exploring the interplay between TA and TM for years. Now is the time to integrate your internal and external talent marketplaces. To provide career experiences to people within your organization and not just those joining your organization.

Patricia: Technology, research, and relationship building.

Technology: Get better at understanding the technology that’s out there. To help you speed up the process, track candidate experience, but also eliminate bias. Metrics are becoming big in HR.
Research: Honestly, read more books. Many great thought leaders put out content about the “future of work”, understanding “Gen Z”, or “quiet quitting.” Dedicate work hours to understanding your ever-changing field.
Relationship Building: Especially in your immediate communities. Most people don’t know who you are or what exactly it is that you do. Build your personal brand and what you are doing at your company to impact those closest to you. Create a referral funnel to get a pipeline going. When people want a job you and your company ought to be top of mind. Also, tell the stories of the people that work there.

Hiring Strategies

7 Tech Recruiting Trends To Watch Out For In 2024

The last couple of years transformed how the world works and the tech industry is no exception. Remote work, a candidate-driven market, and automation are some of the tech recruiting trends born out of the pandemic.

While accepting the new reality and adapting to it is the first step, keeping up with continuously changing hiring trends in technology is the bigger challenge right now.

What does 2024 hold for recruiters across the globe? What hiring practices would work best in this post-pandemic world? How do you stay on top of the changes in this industry?

The answers to these questions will paint a clearer picture of how to set up for success while recruiting tech talent this year.

7 tech recruiting trends for 2024

6 Tech Recruiting Trends To Watch Out For In 2022

Recruiters, we’ve got you covered. Here are the tech recruiting trends that will change the way you build tech teams in 2024.

Trend #1—Leverage data-driven recruiting

Data-driven recruiting strategies are the answer to effective talent sourcing and a streamlined hiring process.

Talent acquisition leaders need to use real-time analytics like pipeline growth metrics, offer acceptance rates, quality and cost of new hires, and candidate feedback scores to reduce manual work, improve processes, and hire the best talent.

The key to capitalizing on talent market trends in 2024 is data. It enables you to analyze what’s working and what needs refinement, leaving room for experimentation.

Trend #2—Have impactful employer branding

98% of recruiters believe promoting company culture helps sourcing efforts as seen in our 2021 State Of Developer Recruitment report.

Having a strong employer brand that supports a clear Employer Value Proposition (EVP) is crucial to influencing a candidate’s decision to work with your company. Perks like upskilling opportunities, remote work, and flexible hours are top EVPs that attract qualified candidates.

A clear EVP builds a culture of balance, mental health awareness, and flexibility—strengthening your employer brand with candidate-first policies.

Trend #3—Focus on candidate-driven market

The pandemic drastically increased the skills gap, making tech recruitment more challenging. With the severe shortage of tech talent, candidates now hold more power and can afford to be selective.

Competitive pay is no longer enough. Use data to understand what candidates want—work-life balance, remote options, learning opportunities—and adapt accordingly.

Recruiters need to think creatively to attract and retain top talent.

Recommended read: What NOT To Do When Recruiting Fresh Talent

Trend #4—Have a diversity and inclusion oriented company culture

Diversity and inclusion have become central to modern recruitment. While urgent hiring can delay D&I efforts, long-term success depends on inclusive teams. Our survey shows that 25.6% of HR professionals believe a diverse leadership team helps build stronger pipelines and reduces bias.

McKinsey’s Diversity Wins report confirms this: top-quartile gender-diverse companies see 25% higher profitability, and ethnically diverse teams show 36% higher returns.

It's refreshing to see the importance of an inclusive culture increasing across all job-seeking communities, especially in tech. This reiterates that D&I is a must-have, not just a good-to-have.

—Swetha Harikrishnan, Sr. HR Director, HackerEarth

Trend #5—Embed automation and AI into your recruitment systems

With the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, automation is being adopted across every business function—including recruiting.

Manual communication with large candidate pools is inefficient. In 2024, recruitment automation and AI-powered platforms will automate candidate nurturing and communication, providing a more personalized experience while saving time.

Trend #6—Conduct remote interviews

With 32.5% of companies planning to stay remote, remote interviewing is here to stay.

Remote interviews expand access to global talent, reduce overhead costs, and increase flexibility—making the hiring process more efficient for both recruiters and candidates.

Trend #7—Be proactive in candidate engagement

Delayed responses or lack of updates can frustrate candidates and impact your brand. Proactive communication and engagement with both active and passive candidates are key to successful recruiting.

As recruitment evolves, proactive candidate engagement will become central to attracting and retaining talent. In 2023 and beyond, companies must engage both active and passive candidates through innovative strategies and technologies like chatbots and AI-powered systems. Building pipelines and nurturing relationships will enhance employer branding and ensure long-term hiring success.

—Narayani Gurunathan, CEO, PlaceNet Consultants

Recruiting Tech Talent Just Got Easier With HackerEarth

Recruiting qualified tech talent is tough—but we’re here to help. HackerEarth for Enterprises offers an all-in-one suite that simplifies sourcing, assessing, and interviewing developers.

Our tech recruiting platform enables you to:

Tap into a 6 million-strong developer community
Host custom hackathons to engage talent and boost your employer brand
Create online assessments to evaluate 80+ tech skills
Use dev-friendly IDEs and proctoring for reliable evaluations
Benchmark candidates against a global community
Conduct live coding interviews with FaceCode, our collaborative coding interview tool
Guide upskilling journeys via our Learning and Development platform
Integrate seamlessly with all leading ATS systems
Access 24/7 support with a 95% satisfaction score

Recommended read: The A-Zs Of Tech Recruiting - A Guide

Staying ahead of tech recruiting trends, improving hiring processes, and adapting to change is the way forward in 2024. Take note of the tips in this article and use them to build a future-ready hiring strategy.

Ready to streamline your tech recruiting? Try HackerEarth for Enterprises today.

Developer Insights

Code In Progress - The Life And Times Of Developers In 2021

Developers. Are they as mysterious as everyone makes them out to be? Is coding the only thing they do all day? Good coders work around the clock, right?

While developers are some of the most coveted talent out there, they also have the most myths being circulated. Most of us forget that developers too are just like us. And no, they do not code all day long.

We wanted to bust a lot of these myths and shed light on how the programming world looks through a developer’s lens in 2021—especially in the wake of a global pandemic. This year’s edition of the annual HackerEarth Developer Survey is packed with developers’ wants and needs when choosing jobs, major gripes with the WFH scenario, and the latest market trends to watch out for, among others.

Our 2021 report is bigger and better, with responses from 25,431 developers across 171 countries. Let’s find out what makes a developer tick, shall we?

Developer Survey

“Good coders work around the clock.” No, they don’t.

Busting the myth that developers spend the better part of their day coding, 52% of student developers said that they prefer to code for a maximum of 3 hours per day.

When not coding, devs swear by their walks as a way to unwind. When we asked devs the same question last year, they said they liked to indulge in indoor games like foosball. In 2021, going for walks has become the most popular method of de-stressing. We’re chalking it up to working from home and not having a chance to stretch their legs.

Staying ahead of the skills game

Following the same trend as last year, students (39%) and working professionals (44%) voted for Go as one of the most popular programming languages that they want to learn. The other programming languages that devs are interested in learning are Rust, Kotlin, and Erlang.

Programming languages that students are most skilled at are HTML/CSS, C++, and Python. Senior developers are more comfortable working with HTML/CSS, SQL, and Java.

How happy are developers

Employees from middle market organizations had the highest 'happiness index' of 7.2. Experienced developers who work at enterprises are marginally less happy in comparison to people who work at smaller companies.

However, happiness is not a binding factor for where developers work. Despite scoring the least on the happiness scale, working professionals would still like to work at enterprise companies and growth-stage startups.

What works when looking for work

Student devs (63%), who are just starting in the tech world, said a good career growth curve is a must-have. Working professionals can be wooed by offers of a good career path (69%) and compensation (68%).

One trend that has changed since last year is that at least 50% of students and working professionals alike care a lot more about ESOPs and positive Glassdoor reviews now than they did in 2020.

To know more about what developers want, download your copy of the report now!

We went a step further and organized an event with our CEO, Sachin Gupta, Radoslav Stankov, Head of Engineering at Product Hunt, and Steve O’Brien, President of Talent Solutions at Job.com to further dissect the findings of our survey.

Tips straight from the horse’s mouth

Steve highlighted how the information collated from the developer survey affects the recruiting community and how they can leverage this data to hire better and faster.

The insight where developer happiness is correlated to work hours didn’t find a significant difference between the cohorts. Devs working for less than 40 hours seemed marginally happier than those that clocked in more than 60 hours a week.

“This is an interesting data point, which shows that devs are passionate about what they do. You can increase their workload by 50% and still not affect their happiness. From a work perspective, as a recruiter, you have to get your hiring manager to understand that while devs never say no to more work, HMs shouldn’t overload the devs. Devs are difficult to source and burnout only leads to killing your talent pool, which is something that you do not want,” says Steve.

Roughly 45% of both student and professional developers learned how to code in college was another insight that was open to interpretation.

“Let’s look at it differently. Less than half of the surveyed developers learned how to code in college. There’s a major segment of the market today that is not necessarily following the ‘college degree to getting a job’ path. Developers are beginning to look at their skillsets differently and using various platforms to upskill themselves. Development is not about pedigree, it’s more about the potential to demonstrate skills. This is an interesting shift in the way we approach testing and evaluating devs in 2021.”

Rado contextualized the data from the survey to see what it means for the developer community and what trends to watch out for in 2021.

Node.js and AngularJS are the most popular frameworks among students and professionals.

“I was surprised by how many young students wanted to learn AngularJS, given that it’s more of an enterprise framework. Another thing that stood out to me was that the younger generation wants to learn technologies that are not necessarily cool like ExtJS (35%). This is good because people are picking technologies that they enjoy working with instead of just going along with what everyone else is doing. This also builds a more diverse technology pool.” — Rado

22% of devs say ‘Zoom Fatigue’ is real and directly affects productivity.

“Especially for younger people who still haven’t figured out a routine to develop their skills, there is something I’d like you to try out. Start using noise-canceling headphones. They help keep distractions to a minimum. I find clutter-free working spaces to be an interesting concept as well.”

The last year and a half have been a doozy for developers everywhere, with a lot of things changing, and some things staying the same. With our developer survey, we wanted to shine the spotlight on skill-based hiring and market trends in 2021—plus highlight the fact that developers too have their gripes and happy hours.

Uncover many more developer trends for 2021 with Steve and Rado below:

View all

Hiring Strategies

Best Pre-Employment Assessments: Optimizing Your Hiring Process for 2024

In today's competitive talent market, attracting and retaining top performers is crucial for any organization's success. However, traditional hiring methods like relying solely on resumes and interviews may not always provide a comprehensive picture of a candidate's skills and potential. This is where pre-employment assessments come into play.

What is Pre-Employement Assessment?

Pre-employment assessments are standardized tests and evaluations administered to candidates before they are hired. These assessments can help you objectively measure a candidate's knowledge, skills, abilities, and personality traits, allowing you to make data-driven hiring decisions.

By exploring and evaluating the best pre-employment assessment tools and tests available, you can:

Improve the accuracy and efficiency of your hiring process.
Identify top talent with the right skills and cultural fit.
Reduce the risk of bad hires.
Enhance the candidate experience by providing a clear and objective evaluation process.

This guide will provide you with valuable insights into the different types of pre-employment assessments available and highlight some of the best tools, to help you optimize your hiring process for 2024.

Why pre-employment assessments are key in hiring

While resumes and interviews offer valuable insights, they can be subjective and susceptible to bias. Pre-employment assessments provide a standardized and objective way to evaluate candidates, offering several key benefits:

Improved decision-making:

By measuring specific skills and knowledge, assessments help you identify candidates who possess the qualifications necessary for the job.
Reduced bias:

Standardized assessments mitigate the risks of unconscious bias that can creep into traditional interview processes.
Increased efficiency:

Assessments can streamline the initial screening process, allowing you to focus on the most promising candidates.
Enhanced candidate experience:

When used effectively, assessments can provide candidates with a clear understanding of the required skills and a fair chance to showcase their abilities.

Types of pre-employment assessments

There are various types of pre-employment assessments available, each catering to different needs and objectives. Here's an overview of some common types:

1. Skill Assessments:

Technical Skills: These assessments evaluate specific technical skills and knowledge relevant to the job role, such as programming languages, software proficiency, or industry-specific expertise. HackerEarth offers a wide range of validated technical skill assessments covering various programming languages, frameworks, and technologies.
Soft Skills: These employment assessments measure non-technical skills like communication, problem-solving, teamwork, and critical thinking, crucial for success in any role.

2. Personality Assessments:

These employment assessments can provide insights into a candidate's personality traits, work style, and cultural fit within your organization.

3. Cognitive Ability Tests:

These tests measure a candidate's general mental abilities, such as reasoning, problem-solving, and learning potential.

4. Integrity Assessments:

These employment assessments aim to identify potential risks associated with a candidate's honesty, work ethic, and compliance with company policies.

By understanding the different types of assessments and their applications, you can choose the ones that best align with your specific hiring needs and ensure you hire the most qualified and suitable candidates for your organization.

Leading employment assessment tools and tests in 2024

Choosing the right pre-employment assessment tool depends on your specific needs and budget. Here's a curated list of some of the top pre-employment assessment tools and tests available in 2024, with brief overviews:

HackerEarth:

A comprehensive platform offering a wide range of validated skill assessments in various programming languages, frameworks, and technologies. It also allows for the creation of custom assessments and integrates seamlessly with various recruitment platforms.
SHL:

Provides a broad selection of assessments, including skill tests, personality assessments, and cognitive ability tests. They offer customizable solutions and cater to various industries.
Pymetrics:

Utilizes gamified assessments to evaluate cognitive skills, personality traits, and cultural fit. They offer a data-driven approach and emphasize candidate experience.
Wonderlic:

Offers a variety of assessments, including the Wonderlic Personnel Test, which measures general cognitive ability. They also provide aptitude and personality assessments.
Harver:

An assessment platform focusing on candidate experience with video interviews, gamified assessments, and skills tests. They offer pre-built assessments and customization options.

Remember: This list is not exhaustive, and further research is crucial to identify the tool that aligns best with your specific needs and budget. Consider factors like the types of assessments offered, pricing models, integrations with your existing HR systems, and user experience when making your decision.

Choosing the right pre-employment assessment tool

Instead of full individual tool reviews, consider focusing on 2–3 key platforms. For each platform, explore:

Target audience: Who are their assessments best suited for (e.g., technical roles, specific industries)?
Types of assessments offered: Briefly list the available assessment categories (e.g., technical skills, soft skills, personality).
Key features: Highlight unique functionalities like gamification, custom assessment creation, or seamless integrations.
Effectiveness: Briefly mention the platform's approach to assessment validation and reliability.
User experience: Consider including user reviews or ratings where available.

Comparative analysis of assessment options

Instead of a comprehensive comparison, consider focusing on specific use cases:

Technical skills assessment:

Compare HackerEarth and Wonderlic based on their technical skill assessment options, focusing on the variety of languages/technologies covered and assessment formats.
Soft skills and personality assessment:

Compare SHL and Pymetrics based on their approaches to evaluating soft skills and personality traits, highlighting any unique features like gamification or data-driven insights.
Candidate experience:

Compare Harver and Wonderlic based on their focus on candidate experience, mentioning features like video interviews or gamified assessments.

Additional tips:

Encourage readers to visit the platforms' official websites for detailed features and pricing information.
Include links to reputable third-party review sites where users share their experiences with various tools.

Best practices for using pre-employment assessment tools

Integrating pre-employment assessments effectively requires careful planning and execution. Here are some best practices to follow:

Define your assessment goals:

Clearly identify what you aim to achieve with assessments. Are you targeting specific skills, personality traits, or cultural fit?
Choose the right assessments:

Select tools that align with your defined goals and the specific requirements of the open position.
Set clear expectations:

Communicate the purpose and format of the assessments to candidates in advance, ensuring transparency and building trust.
Integrate seamlessly:

Ensure your chosen assessment tool integrates smoothly with your existing HR systems and recruitment workflow.
Train your team:

Equip your hiring managers and HR team with the knowledge and skills to interpret assessment results effectively.

Interpreting assessment results accurately

Assessment results offer valuable data points, but interpreting them accurately is crucial for making informed hiring decisions. Here are some key considerations:

Use results as one data point:

Consider assessment results alongside other information, such as resumes, interviews, and references, for a holistic view of the candidate.
Understand score limitations:

Don't solely rely on raw scores. Understand the assessment's validity and reliability and the potential for cultural bias or individual test anxiety.
Look for patterns and trends:

Analyze results across different assessments and identify consistent patterns that align with your desired candidate profile.
Focus on potential, not guarantees:

Assessments indicate potential, not guarantees of success. Use them alongside other evaluation methods to make well-rounded hiring decisions.

Choosing the right pre-employment assessment tools

Selecting the most suitable pre-employment assessment tool requires careful consideration of your organization's specific needs. Here are some key factors to guide your decision:

Industry and role requirements:

Different industries and roles demand varying skill sets and qualities. Choose assessments that target the specific skills and knowledge relevant to your open positions.
Company culture and values:

Align your assessments with your company culture and values. For example, if collaboration is crucial, look for assessments that evaluate teamwork and communication skills.
Candidate experience:

Prioritize tools that provide a positive and smooth experience for candidates. This can enhance your employer brand and attract top talent.

Budget and accessibility considerations

Budget and accessibility are essential factors when choosing pre-employment assessments:

Budget:

Assessment tools come with varying pricing models (subscriptions, pay-per-use, etc.). Choose a tool that aligns with your budget and offers the functionalities you need.
Accessibility:

Ensure the chosen assessment is accessible to all candidates, considering factors like language options, disability accommodations, and internet access requirements.

Additional Tips:

Free trials and demos: Utilize free trials or demos offered by assessment platforms to experience their functionalities firsthand.
Consult with HR professionals: Seek guidance from HR professionals or recruitment specialists with expertise in pre-employment assessments.
Read user reviews and comparisons: Gain insights from other employers who use various assessment tools.

By carefully considering these factors, you can select the pre-employment assessment tool that best aligns with your organizational needs, budget, and commitment to an inclusive hiring process.

Remember, pre-employment assessments are valuable tools, but they should not be the sole factor in your hiring decisions. Use them alongside other evaluation methods and prioritize building a fair and inclusive hiring process that attracts and retains top talent.

Future trends in pre-employment assessments

The pre-employment assessment landscape is constantly evolving, with innovative technologies and practices emerging. Here are some potential future trends to watch:

Artificial intelligence (AI):

AI-powered assessments can analyze candidate responses, written work, and even resumes, using natural language processing to extract relevant insights and identify potential candidates.
Adaptive testing:

These assessments adjust the difficulty level of questions based on the candidate's performance, providing a more efficient and personalized evaluation.
Micro-assessments:

Short, focused assessments delivered through mobile devices can assess specific skills or knowledge on-the-go, streamlining the screening process.
Gamification:

Engaging and interactive game-based elements can make the assessment experience more engaging and assess skills in a realistic and dynamic way.

Conclusion

Pre-employment assessments, when used thoughtfully and ethically, can be a powerful tool to optimize your hiring process, identify top talent, and build a successful workforce for your organization. By understanding the different types of assessments available, exploring top-rated tools like HackerEarth, and staying informed about emerging trends, you can make informed decisions that enhance your ability to attract, evaluate, and hire the best candidates for the future.

Hiring Strategies

Tech Layoffs: What To Expect In 2024

Layoffs in the IT industry are becoming more widespread as companies fight to remain competitive in a fast-changing market; many turn to layoffs as a cost-cutting measure. Last year, 1,000 companies including big tech giants and startups, laid off over two lakhs of employees. But first, what are layoffs in the tech business, and how do they impact the industry?

Tech layoffs are the termination of employment for some employees by a technology company. It might happen for various reasons, including financial challenges, market conditions, firm reorganization, or the after-effects of a pandemic. While layoffs are not unique to the IT industry, they are becoming more common as companies look for methods to cut costs while remaining competitive.

The consequences of layoffs in technology may be catastrophic for employees who lose their jobs and the firms forced to make these difficult decisions. Layoffs can result in the loss of skill and expertise and a drop in employee morale and productivity. However, they may be required for businesses to stay afloat in a fast-changing market.

This article will examine the reasons for layoffs in the technology industry, their influence on the industry, and what may be done to reduce their negative impacts. We will also look at the various methods for tracking tech layoffs.

What are tech layoffs?

The term "tech layoff" describes the termination of employees by an organization in the technology industry. A company might do this as part of a restructuring during hard economic times.

In recent times, the tech industry has witnessed a wave of significant layoffs, affecting some of the world’s leading technology companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, Meta (formerly Facebook), Apple, Cisco, SAP, and Sony. These layoffs are a reflection of the broader economic challenges and market adjustments facing the sector, including factors like slowing revenue growth, global economic uncertainties, and the need to streamline operations for efficiency.

Each of these tech giants has announced job cuts for various reasons, though common themes include restructuring efforts to stay competitive and agile, responding to over-hiring during the pandemic when demand for tech services surged, and preparing for a potentially tough economic climate ahead. Despite their dominant positions in the market, these companies are not immune to the economic cycles and technological shifts that influence operational and strategic decisions, including workforce adjustments.

This trend of layoffs in the tech industry underscores the volatile nature of the tech sector, which is often at the mercy of rapid changes in technology, consumer preferences, and the global economy. It also highlights the importance of adaptability and resilience for companies and employees alike in navigating the uncertainties of the tech landscape.

Causes for layoffs in the tech industry

Why are tech employees suffering so much?

Yes, the market is always uncertain, but why resort to tech layoffs?

Various factors cause tech layoffs, including company strategy changes, market shifts, or financial difficulties. Companies may lay off employees if they need help to generate revenue, shift their focus to new products or services, or automate certain jobs.

In addition, some common reasons could be:

Financial struggles

Currently, the state of the global market is uncertain due to economic recession, ongoing war, and other related phenomena. If a company is experiencing financial difficulties, only sticking to pay cuts may not be helpful—it may need to reduce its workforce to cut costs.

Also, read: 6 Steps To Create A Detailed Recruiting Budget (Template Included)

Changes in demand

The tech industry is constantly evolving, and companies would have to adjust their workforce to meet changing market conditions. For instance, companies are adopting remote work culture, which surely affects on-premises activity, and companies could do away with some number of tech employees at the backend.

Restructuring

Companies may also lay off employees as part of a greater restructuring effort, such as spinning off a division or consolidating operations.

Automation

With the advancement in technology and automation, some jobs previously done by human labor may be replaced by machines, resulting in layoffs.

Mergers and acquisitions

When two companies merge, there is often overlap in their operations, leading to layoffs as the new company looks to streamline its workforce.

But it's worth noting that layoffs are not exclusive to the tech industry and can happen in any industry due to uncertainty in the market.

Will layoffs increase in 2024?

It is challenging to estimate the rise or fall of layoffs. The overall state of the economy, the health of certain industries, and the performance of individual companies will play a role in deciding the degree of layoffs in any given year.

But it is also seen that, in the first 15 days of this year, 91 organizations laid off over 24,000 tech workers, and over 1,000 corporations cut down more than 150,000 workers in 2022, according to an Economic Times article.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a huge economic slowdown and forced several businesses to downsize their employees. However, some businesses rehired or expanded their personnel when the world began to recover.

So, given the current level of economic uncertainty, predicting how the situation will unfold is difficult.

Also, read: 4 Images That Show What Developers Think Of Layoffs In Tech

What types of companies are prone to tech layoffs?

Tech layoffs can occur in organizations of all sizes and various areas.

Following are some examples of companies that have experienced tech layoffs in the past:

Large tech firms

Companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Twitter, Better.com, Alibaba, and HP have all experienced layoffs in recent years as part of restructuring initiatives or cost-cutting measures.

Market scenarios are still being determined after Elon Musk's decision to lay off employees. Along with tech giants, some smaller companies and startups have also been affected by layoffs.

Startups

Because they frequently work with limited resources, startups may be forced to lay off staff if they cannot get further funding or need to pivot due to market downfall.

Small and medium-sized businesses

Small and medium-sized businesses face layoffs due to high competition or if the products/services they offer are no longer in demand.

Companies in certain industries

Some sectors of the technological industry, such as the semiconductor industry or automotive industry, may be more prone to layoffs than others.

Companies that lean on government funding

Companies that rely significantly on government contracts may face layoffs if the government cuts technology spending or contracts are not renewed.

How to track tech layoffs?

You can’t stop tech company layoffs, but you should be keeping track of them. We, HR professionals and recruiters, can also lend a helping hand in these tough times by circulating “layoff lists” across social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter to help people land jobs quicker. Firefish Software put together a master list of sources to find fresh talent during the layoff period.

Because not all layoffs are publicly disclosed, tracking tech industry layoffs can be challenging, and some may go undetected. There are several ways to keep track of tech industry layoffs:

Use tech layoffs tracker

Layoff trackers like thelayoff.com and layoffs.fyi provide up-to-date information on layoffs.

In addition, they aid in identifying trends in layoffs within the tech industry. It can reveal which industries are seeing the most layoffs and which companies are the most affected.

Companies can use layoff trackers as an early warning system and compare their performance to that of other companies in their field.

News articles

Because many news sites cover tech layoffs as they happen, keeping a watch on technology sector stories can provide insight into which organizations are laying off employees and how many individuals have been affected.

Social media

Organizations and employees frequently publish information about layoffs in tech on social media platforms; thus, monitoring companies' social media accounts or following key hashtags can provide real-time updates regarding layoffs.

Online forums and communities

There are online forums and communities dedicated to discussing tech industry news, and they can be an excellent source of layoff information.

Government reports

Government agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publish data on layoffs and unemployment, which can provide a more comprehensive picture of the technology industry's status.

How do companies reduce tech layoffs?

Layoffs in tech are hard – for the employee who is losing their job, the recruiter or HR professional who is tasked with informing them, and the company itself. So, how can we aim to avoid layoffs? Here are some ways to minimize resorting to letting people go:

Salary reductions

Instead of laying off employees, businesses can lower the salaries or wages of all employees. It can be accomplished by instituting compensation cuts or salary freezes.

Implementing a hiring freeze

Businesses can halt employing new personnel to cut costs. It can be a short-term solution until the company's financial situation improves.

Also, read: What Recruiters Can Focus On During A Tech Hiring Freeze

Non-essential expense reduction

Businesses might search for ways to cut or remove non-essential expenses such as travel, training, and office expenses.

Reducing working hours

Companies can reduce employee working hours to save money, such as implementing a four-day workweek or a shorter workday.

These options may not always be viable and may have their problems, but before laying off, a company owes it to its people to consider every other alternative, and formulate the best solution.

Tech layoffs to bleed into this year

While we do not know whether this trend will continue or subside during 2023, we do know one thing. We have to be prepared for a wave of layoffs that is still yet to hit. As of last month, Layoffs.fyi had already tracked 170+ companies conducting 55,970 layoffs in 2023.

So recruiters, let’s join arms, distribute those layoff lists like there’s no tomorrow, and help all those in need of a job! :)

Hiring Tools

What is Headhunting In Recruitment?: Types & How Does It Work?

In today’s fast-paced world, recruiting talent has become increasingly complicated. Technological advancements, high workforce expectations and a highly competitive market have pushed recruitment agencies to adopt innovative strategies for recruiting various types of talent. This article aims to explore one such recruitment strategy – headhunting.

What is Headhunting in recruitment?

In headhunting, companies or recruitment agencies identify, engage and hire highly skilled professionals to fill top positions in the respective companies. It is different from the traditional process in which candidates looking for job opportunities approach companies or recruitment agencies. In headhunting, executive headhunters, as recruiters are referred to, approach prospective candidates with the hiring company’s requirements and wait for them to respond. Executive headhunters generally look for passive candidates, those who work at crucial positions and are not on the lookout for new work opportunities. Besides, executive headhunters focus on filling critical, senior-level positions indispensable to companies. Depending on the nature of the operation, headhunting has three types. They are described later in this article. Before we move on to understand the types of headhunting, here is how the traditional recruitment process and headhunting are different.

How do headhunting and traditional recruitment differ from each other?

Headhunting is a type of recruitment process in which top-level managers and executives in similar positions are hired. Since these professionals are not on the lookout for jobs, headhunters have to thoroughly understand the hiring companies’ requirements and study the work profiles of potential candidates before creating a list.

In the traditional approach, there is a long list of candidates applying for jobs online and offline. Candidates approach recruiters for jobs. Apart from this primary difference, there are other factors that define the difference between these two schools of recruitment.

AspectHeadhuntingTraditional RecruitmentCandidate TypePrimarily passive candidateActive job seekersApproachFocused on specific high-level rolesBroader; includes various levelsScopeproactive outreachReactive: candidates applyCostGenerally more expensive due to expertise requiredTypically lower costsControlManaged by headhuntersManaged internally by HR teams

All the above parameters will help you to understand how headhunting differs from traditional recruitment methods, better.

Types of headhunting in recruitment

Direct headhunting: In direct recruitment, hiring teams reach out to potential candidates through personal communication. Companies conduct direct headhunting in-house, without outsourcing the process to hiring recruitment agencies. Very few businesses conduct this type of recruitment for top jobs as it involves extensive screening across networks outside the company’s expanse.

Indirect headhunting: This method involves recruiters getting in touch with their prospective candidates through indirect modes of communication such as email and phone calls. Indirect headhunting is less intrusive and allows candidates to respond at their convenience.Third-party recruitment: Companies approach external recruitment agencies or executive headhunters to recruit highly skilled professionals for top positions. This method often leverages the company’s extensive contact network and expertise in niche industries.

How does headhunting work?

Finding highly skilled professionals to fill critical positions can be tricky if there is no system for it. Expert executive headhunters employ recruitment software to conduct headhunting efficiently as it facilitates a seamless recruitment process for executive headhunters. Most software is AI-powered and expedites processes like candidate sourcing, interactions with prospective professionals and upkeep of communication history. This makes the process of executive search in recruitment a little bit easier. Apart from using software to recruit executives, here are the various stages of finding high-calibre executives through headhunting.

Identifying the role

Once there is a vacancy for a top job, one of the top executives like a CEO, director or the head of the company, reach out to the concerned personnel with their requirements. Depending on how large a company is, they may choose to headhunt with the help of an external recruiting agency or conduct it in-house. Generally, the task is assigned to external recruitment agencies specializing in headhunting. Executive headhunters possess a database of highly qualified professionals who work in crucial positions in some of the best companies. This makes them the top choice of conglomerates looking to hire some of the best talents in the industry.

Defining the job

Once an executive headhunter or a recruiting agency is finalized, companies conduct meetings to discuss the nature of the role, how the company works, the management hierarchy among other important aspects of the job. Headhunters are expected to understand these points thoroughly and establish a clear understanding of their expectations and goals.

Candidate identification and sourcing

Headhunters analyse and understand the requirements of their clients and begin creating a pool of suitable candidates from their database. The professionals are shortlisted after conducting extensive research of job profiles, number of years of industry experience, professional networks and online platforms.

Approaching candidates

Once the potential candidates have been identified and shortlisted, headhunters move on to get in touch with them discreetly through various communication channels. As such candidates are already working at top level positions at other companies, executive headhunters have to be low-key while doing so.

Assessment and Evaluation

In this next step, extensive screening and evaluation of candidates is conducted to determine their suitability for the advertised position.

Interviews and negotiations

Compensation is a major topic of discussion among recruiters and prospective candidates. A lot of deliberation and negotiation goes on between the hiring organization and the selected executives which is facilitated by the headhunters.

Finalizing the hire

Things come to a close once the suitable candidates accept the job offer. On accepting the offer letter, headhunters help finalize the hiring process to ensure a smooth transition.

The steps listed above form the blueprint for a typical headhunting process. Headhunting has been crucial in helping companies hire the right people for crucial positions that come with great responsibility. However, all systems have a set of challenges no matter how perfect their working algorithm is. Here are a few challenges that talent acquisition agencies face while headhunting.

Common challenges in headhunting

Despite its advantages, headhunting also presents certain challenges:

Cost Implications: Engaging headhunters can be more expensive than traditional recruitment methods due to their specialized skills and services.

Time-Consuming Process: While headhunting can be efficient, finding the right candidate for senior positions may still take time due to thorough evaluation processes.

Market Competition: The competition for top talent is fierce; organizations must present compelling offers to attract passive candidates away from their current roles.

Although the above mentioned factors can pose challenges in the headhunting process, there are more upsides than there are downsides to it. Here is how headhunting has helped revolutionize the recruitment of high-profile candidates.

Advantages of Headhunting

Headhunting offers several advantages over traditional recruitment methods:

Access to Passive Candidates: By targeting individuals who are not actively seeking new employment, organisations can access a broader pool of highly skilled professionals.

Confidentiality: The discreet nature of headhunting protects both candidates’ current employment situations and the hiring organisation’s strategic interests.

Customized Search: Headhunters tailor their search based on the specific needs of the organization, ensuring a better fit between candidates and company culture.

Industry Expertise: Many headhunters specialise in particular sectors, providing valuable insights into market dynamics and candidate qualifications.

Conclusion

Although headhunting can be costly and time-consuming, it is one of the most effective ways of finding good candidates for top jobs. Executive headhunters face several challenges maintaining the g discreetness while getting in touch with prospective clients. As organizations navigate increasingly competitive markets, understanding the nuances of headhunting becomes vital for effective recruitment strategies. To keep up with the technological advancements, it is better to optimise your hiring process by employing online recruitment software like HackerEarth, which enables companies to conduct multiple interviews and evaluation tests online, thus improving candidate experience. By collaborating with skilled headhunters who possess industry expertise and insights into market trends, companies can enhance their chances of securing high-caliber professionals who drive success in their respective fields.

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DEI Hiring

Through The Looking Glass: Hiring For ‘Cultural Fit’ In A Remote World

1. Monolithic Company Culture is Less Important During WFH

2. Diversity of Thought Reflects Success

3. Skill-based Hiring is on the Rise

Through the Looking Glass

This Is Recruiting: What Makes A Good Coding Assessment?

****

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Use a pre-employment assessment tool

Rework your job descriptions

Shift your focus from pedigree to potential

Gen Z are on their way and it’s time to get ready for them…

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Forecasting Tech Hiring Trends For 2023 With 6 Experts

Meet the Expert Panel

Overview of the upcoming tech industry landscape in 2024

6 industry experts predict the 2023 recruiting trends

#1 We've seen many important moments in the tech industry this year...

#2 What is your pro tip for HR professionals/engineering managers...

#3 What top 3 skills would you like HR professionals/engineering managers to add to their repertoire in 2023 to deal with upcoming challenges?

7 Tech Recruiting Trends To Watch Out For In 2024

7 tech recruiting trends for 2024

Trend #1—Leverage data-driven recruiting

Trend #2—Have impactful employer branding

Trend #3—Focus on candidate-driven market

Trend #4—Have a diversity and inclusion oriented company culture

Trend #5—Embed automation and AI into your recruitment systems

Trend #6—Conduct remote interviews

Trend #7—Be proactive in candidate engagement

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Best Pre-Employment Assessments: Optimizing Your Hiring Process for 2024

What is Pre-Employement Assessment?

Why pre-employment assessments are key in hiring

Improved decision-making:

Reduced bias:

Increased efficiency:

Enhanced candidate experience:

Types of pre-employment assessments

1. Skill Assessments:

2. Personality Assessments:

3. Cognitive Ability Tests:

4. Integrity Assessments:

Leading employment assessment tools and tests in 2024

HackerEarth:

SHL:

Pymetrics:

Wonderlic:

Harver:

Choosing the right pre-employment assessment tool

Comparative analysis of assessment options

Technical skills assessment:

Soft skills and personality assessment:

Candidate experience:

Best practices for using pre-employment assessment tools

Define your assessment goals:

Choose the right assessments:

Set clear expectations:

Integrate seamlessly:

Train your team:

Interpreting assessment results accurately

Use results as one data point:

Understand score limitations:

Look for patterns and trends:

********

What is Headhunting In Recruitment?: Types & How Does It Work?