Identifying the right engineer

Question

I've spent quite a lot of time searching for the "right" engineer for a testing/development position. It's a very high-stress, high-visibility environment with changing priorities and tight deadlines. The associated responsibilities have been somewhat neglected for several years and upper management doesn't understand the process and perils of developing complex systems, so the position requires a significant amount of back-filling without letting current tasks slide. The bottom line is that choosing the "wrong" candidate will be worse--much worse--than simply leaving the position open.

Have you ever been in this sort of hiring position, and if so, was there a candidate who was clearly the "right" person? Can you identify specifically how you knew? Thanks for your insights.

Answer 1

I sometimes have this problem with my company and I have never found the perfect person for everything. Sometimes jobs are created based upon the person that had once filled the position. Once that person leaves, the job should be rethought.

If the problem is that you need a miracle worker that can do the catch up work and still make progress, maybe you really have more than one position to fill.

My suggestion is to do one of the following:

1. Look at all your open positions and see how you can restructure the duties so that you spread the weight around so that it doesn't take such an extraordinary person to fill one particular job. Note that even if you did find that one extraordinary person, you would be in this same hole again if they left - unless you restructured and minimized your risk.

2. Do something similar to #1 above, but include your existing employees. If you only had one open position, try splitting that work amongst your best performers and bump them up a bit, and then take that open rec and make it more of an entry-level or ordinary-level position. Now, with your new hire, you can get the not-so-perfect person that you can mold and/or take a smaller risk with.

It took me a while to actually realize that this is what I needed to do after a couple of failed hires... but once I realized this plan, it certainly has helped me.

Good luck.

Answer 2

The associated responsibilities have been somewhat neglected for several years, so the position requires a significant amount of back-filling without letting current tasks slide.

The problem here is that you are asking for one candidate to do the job of two. Find a junior "whatever" or contractor to backfill, and let a senior candidate take on the job of current deadlines. If you don't, then this would raise a red flag to me -- it says immediate overtime on day one, and I work for people who can't make up their mind.

Answer 3

I let a person's resume be the initial impression I form of the person's ability.

• Make sure you get the person's resume and not the version a recruiting firm gave you. They sometimes make edits that make the candidate out to have different abilities than they might have.
• Test if the person is "exaggerating" on the resume. If they say they know technology X then find out enough about it to ask good questions about the technology.
• If you find anything that makes you suspect that the resume is not entirely truthful then end the interview. Integrity comes first.

Be honest with them and tell them what a tough job this one is going to be. Pay attention to their body language when you tell them this and listen to their response. If they sound too eager it is probably not genuine. If they are negative about it then it's better you find out now.

Ask them a series of technology questions that start extremely simple and get as hard as you can make them. Pay attention to their answers. They should explain the easy ones in a way someone in marketing could understand, and be willing to say I don't know on ones they don't know.

Ask them how they find the answer to a question they don't know. An adequate answer here will tell you if they give up or seek answers out.

Finally I suggest letting the other engineers do an interview with the candidate. The more people that can meet the them and get a feel for their personality will help insure you get someone that will fit in, and be able to handle the workload.