The Engineering Executive's Primer

Chapter 20. Hiring

Everyone in an Engineering organization contributes to the hiring process. As an engineer, you may have taken pride in being an effective interviewer. As an Engineering manager, you may have prioritized becoming a strong closer, convincing candidates to join your team. As a more senior manager, you will have likely shifted focus to training others and spending time with candidates for particularly senior roles.

As an Engineering executive, your role in the hiring process will shift once again. You’ll continue to make some key leadership hires yourself, but you’ll spend more and more time designing and debugging your overall interview process.

In this chapter, we’ll cover:

• Establishing your overall hiring process, including job descriptions, rubrics, and hiring loops

• How executives can focus so much on perfect hiring processes that their processes fail

• Your role in monitoring and debugging the hiring process

• Helping close key candidates across your organization

• Options for leveling candidates appropriately

• How managing headcount is a key part of managing hiring

• How to train your hiring managers to avoid challenges like pursuing non-existent unicorn candidates

• Calibrating hiring inside and outside of your network, along with considering internal candidates

• Evaluating building an Engineering brand for your company

• Deciding whether to introduce a hiring committee process

• Remembering that the system serves you, not the opposite

After reading, you’ll have a clear ...