How do you recruit and hire good engineers?

This question is essentially asking about your recruiting and hiring strategies specifically for engineers. The interviewer wants to understand your ability to identify, attract, and select candidates who possess the right skill set, mindset, and cultural fit for the engineering team. You can effectively answer this question by explaining your sourcing strategy, assessment methods, and how you convince the best candidates to accept your offer. Remember to focus on the unique aspects of hiring engineers such as their technical skills, problem-solving ability, and collaboration with cross-functional teams.

I firmly believe that successful recruitment of engineers starts with a solid understanding of the role, the team goals, and the necessary technical skills required for the job. So, the first step in my recruitment process would be to have in-depth discussions with the project managers or team leads to understand their specific needs.

Once I have a clear job description, I use various sourcing strategies like networking, reaching out on LinkedIn, or using job boards. I would also tap into our existing talented pool of engineers for referrals, often they already know who the best in the industry are.

Regarding the selection process, alongside the necessary educational qualifications and technical skills, I place strong emphasis on real-world problem solving and the ability to work collaboratively with a team. This might involve technical tests, asking candidates to explain complicated concepts in a simplified manner, or behavioral interviews to identify their interpersonal skills.

Finally, to convince the best engineers to join us, I focus on selling our company culture, vision, the opportunities for career growth, and of course, the exciting projects that they would work on.

The key to recruiting and hiring good engineers, in my opinion, is to attract them with compelling projects and a strong team culture, and then identify their technical competencies, passion for the work, and cultural fit through effective evaluation techniques.

I usually start the recruitment process by proactively seeking candidates on platforms used by engineers such as GitHub or Stack Overflow, not just waiting for them to apply via traditional job boards.

In terms of evaluation, I feel that traditional interviews can sometimes be insufficient to assess the technical competency of engineers. So, I use a mix of technical assessment tools, coding tests, and situational judgement tests. These assessments give me a better understanding of a candidate's ability to solve problems, their thought process, and work ethic.

Once I have selected a group of potentially qualified candidates, I involve our current team of engineers in the interviewing process. Not only does this provide buy-in from the team, but it also gives prospective engineers a glimpse into the working style and culture of our team.

Lastly, to secure the best talent, I make sure to highlight the unique opportunities at our company such as continuous learning experiences, challenging projects, and the impact they can make with their work.