97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know

Chapter 24. Like This? Really?

Dave Mangot

I’d been involved in recruiting engineers for much of my career, as a team lead or a senior engineer. But it was not until I became an engineering manager that I truly became horrified by the state of affairs. At many places, when we needed to hire someone, there was a call to the recruiters, who sent tons of cold InMail’s to people who might fit the role. There was a stack of potential candidates (if we were lucky) who were invited to come to the office for hours of whiteboard coding and “culture fit” interviews, until we finally settled on a person we were supposed to work with daily for many years. As an engineer at heart, I would have a difficult time thinking of a more poorly designed system. There has to be a better way.

The Funnel

The places where I’ve worked that recruited well approached the problem from an engineering perspective. What are our inputs and outputs, and how do we use our processing time most efficiently? There can be many criteria for the inputs to our funnel (yes, ultimately recruiting is a sales effort) depending on the engineer we want to attract.

If we want a more diverse pool, we need to make sure our organization is positioned that way by being involved with the appropriate organizations or schools and staffing and supporting our own roles to attract and retain the people we want. If we want people straight ...