As a software engineer who really loves his job, I puzzled over the question “what would it really take to get me to do an interview?” The answer is probably not going to be well received by most recruiters, but here’s the truth.
I receive a large volume of recruitment messages via LinkedIn and email. Very few of them are good, most leave me shaking my head, and some are very annoying and frustrating. Based on my observations and what I know about myself, here are the things I think most recruiters could do better, in order from easiest to hardest to implement.
1. Understand what you’re asking of me
For this one, you don’t have to do anything. I just want you to have some empathy here. Please understand that technical interviews really suck.
The experience is rarely good. You get grilled on all kinds of trivia, you have to craft something and solve problems under a time limit with multiple people judging. Then, if you fail, you rarely get feedback or direction to succeed in the future.
Interviews take up a lot of time. In addition to the lengthy in-person portion, and any take-home component, we also have to spend hours studying and preparing. We get quizzed on all kinds of stuff that doesn’t come up day-to-day, so we have to be prepared for a spectrum of computer science trivia. It’s basically the equivalent of college exams.
Interviewing can put my job in jeopardy. It’s generally not in one’s best interests to be perfectly honest about taking time off to interview, so we have to be secretive about it. That means by asking me to interview, you’re asking me in some level to betray my employer.
I know that recruiting is often no picnic, so please don’t take this as a pity-party for software engineers. But I do want to make it clear that for us, this part of the process is horrendous, and you’re asking quite a bit of us to go through with an interview.
2. Keep it brief
I’m 100% going to ignore a paragraph of text about your company. I don’t care how much they’ve raised in the last year. I don’t care how “exciting” the position is according to you. Just tell me a couple of things that set you apart. Does the business have a crazy idea that no one has ever heard of? Are they offering a crazy salary range that could change my life? Is there some other awesome detail that is going to get me to take time from the job I love? What is the real value in the position that sets it apart and is enough to get me to go through the horrendous interview process and consider leaving the team I love? You can see how it’s a big ask.
3. Make it personal
Every one of the recruiters I’ve responded to in the last few years has made a silly, cute, or personal introduction. I would never expect this to work, but it does for me. I think I really just want to be interacted with like a human. When it’s obvious that you are copy/pasting or advertising the same exact message to me and a bunch of other candidates, I won’t consider it at all. My brain just says “skiiiiip” and I delete the message. The best way to get me to respond is by trying to start a real conversation. I suggest you try writing a unique message for each candidate or at least make your template seem like its a unique message you actually wrote for me.
3. Actually vet my skills
Another red flag that will cause an immediate eye-roll and “no thanks” from me is mentioning skills I don’t have. This is from a LinkedIn message I received recently:
As an engineer with extensive full stack experience, particularly with Javascript, Angular, Nodejs, and Graphql, you would be a great addition to our team.
I have never worked with Angular. This is a message I will just ignore, it’s just spam at this point. I feel like if you can’t be bothered to check my skills on my LinkedIn profile before messaging me, you didn’t actually consider me for the position.
This kind of lazy demographic marketing is why I think the next item is the only way to recruit happily employed software engineers.
4. Offer an incentive to do the interview
This one is hard, I know, but so is everything you’re asking a happily-employed engineer.
Because interviews suck so much, I think you should to offer some kind of incentive to interview. It would still be a pretty hard sell, but I think if a company were to offer some compensation for my time, I would be more likely to take a call with them. Here are some of the incentives you could consider offering:
- A donation to a charity of the candidate’s choice
- Some kind of gift
- Invitation to some kind of event
- Enter a drawing
- Make it a paid consultation
Disclaimer: I don’t know anything about recruiting
I’m telling you this based on my opinion and experience as a software engineer. I really don’t know what the day-to-day challenges for a recruiter look like. My ideas haven’t been tested for response rates and I’m not citing any data. Regardless, I hope you understand that this information is intended to help and give you some insight into the developer thought process. I’m happy to hear your thoughts in the comments.