Interviewing Software Engineers: How to Speed up Your Hiring Process

Nowadays, businesses are digitizing, and everyone is looking for high-quality software development services to move their businesses online. Therefore, talent for the tech industry is in great demand worldwide. That is why finding, interviewing, and hiring software engineers is a complex and time-consuming process. In addition, there is often an urgent need to hire software engineers. In such a situation, there is no time to wait. However, hiring a developer without vetting their competence is a bad idea.

If you want to know how to speed up your hiring process, we have collected some essential information to help you.

Why is the fast hiring process so important?

As we mentioned earlier, the demand for developers from various countries is huge. So, of course, it affects the recruiting process.

It currently takes, on average, about two months to hire a developer. It should be clear that this is a long and tedious process. Therefore, recruiters are always asking themselves, “How can I speed up the hiring process?”

Previously, companies had the luxury of choosing from a huge number of developers. Nowadays, with the demand for programmers higher, engineers don’t feel forced to accept the first job offer that comes across but carefully decide which company they want to work for. Therefore, companies try to entice potential employees with signing bonuses, interesting projects, and comfortable working conditions to attract quality talent.

However, employers should also try to accelerate the hiring process as not to miss out on top-notch developers, as engineers often receive multiple offers and can just as easily accept a position with one of your competitors. The longer you weigh your options, the greater the chance that a developer will choose another employer—it happens quite often now. Recruiters, tech leads, and business owners can spend a lot of time scheduling meetings and conducting interviews. However, drawing out the may affect the desire of the developer to work with a company that overly complicates the hiring process. As a result, they may continue interviewing and accept another position without waiting for your hiring decision. Then, you will have to start the whole process from scratch in search of a new hire.

Essential interviewing tips to speed up your hiring process

When organizing the interview process for programmers, recruiters and employers should work efficiently and quickly but without sacrificing quality. Therefore, we have some problem-solving tips for you.

Consolidate the process when interviewing software engineers

It is important to optimize the recruiting process when searching for software engineering candidates. An interview often consists of several stages. However, it is vital to streamline the process when possible, focusing only on the most essential parts and combining stages if practical.

So, for example, you can avoid contacting HR multiple times, scheduling meetings with their manager, and setting interviews with the CTO if the time could be better spent. The best option is to ask the potential hire for a detailed CV. That way, you will spend less time vetting the candidate while still learning if their skills as a developer suit your company’s needs. Then, you can get acquainted with the candidate on a video call and evaluate their soft and technical skills. Finally, the last step would be to have them take a coding test, which can be done live, or as a “homework assignment, which you can then discuss during a follow-up video call. After going through these steps, you’ll have a much better idea of whether the software engineer is right for you.

Gather all needed people simultaneously

Hiring managers often schedule separate meetings with HR, the CTO, or tech lead— and even sometimes with the CEO. It is clear that it is a long process. Therefore, it is often better to meet everyone at the same time. It can be difficult to find a suitable time for everyone, however, it is important to put in the effort. One option is to stagger interviewers throughout the interview. For example, HR can open the interview with the candidate, later a CTO can join the call, then a tech lead can continue interviewing the candidate and discussing the coding tests. Thus, you can evaluate the candidate in one day and speed up the interviewing and hiring process.

Ask the right tech interview questions to evaluate candidate experience

Before interviewing software engineers, it is necessary to prepare the questions you will ask the candidate during the technical interview to assess their skills. It is important to remember that you don’t have to ask theoretical questions that programmers can memorize before the interview. Instead, it is better to ask something that will directly show the level of the developer’s skills needed for your project. To evaluate a candidate’s experience, you can use the list of questions on GitHub. Useful lists of questions can also be found on Stack Overflow—it is a methodology with a set of interview questions and answers about programming.

In addition to how qualified the developer is, it is also important to determine whether they suit your team. You have to find out how quickly the developer finds a common language with people, what conditions they prefer to work, etc.

And to make things easier, you can also use our remote developer interview tool.

• Woven—by using this platform, you can get customized assessments tailored to specific roles and seniority levels, ensuring relevance to the hiring organization’s needs.
• Saberr—with this platform, you can find out if the values of new candidates align with other team members.

Run a coding test

A coding test is considered the best way to test a developer’s technical and coding skills.

Very often, these are live tests. If you try this option, it is important to have a teammate who will carry out these tests and is adept enough to evaluate the tech’s skills. However, a more convenient and better option is a “take-home” test. A knowledgeable team member will then evaluate the candidate’s results.

To optimize the coding test process, there are different services and platforms:

• TestDome—here you can find a large number of tests as well as a feature for adding questions and tasks yourself.
• Devskiller—the convenience of this resource is that it contains analytics and reports so that you can better see the developer’s results.

As in the previous stages, it is just as important to act quickly. After all, tasks that take too long can alienate qualified candidates. Therefore, assigning tasks requiring no more than four hours is recommended. It is also essential to remember that these tasks should be paid at the developer’s rate.

Make the interviewee interested in your company

Developers are currently receiving multiple job offers. Because of the tight job market, interviews are a two-way process. As companies search for their best candidate, developers are also comparing and narrowing down job positions that best suit their needs. That is why your job description should be attractive. It’s also a good idea to ask your current employees to review your company on Glassdoor. During an interview, you can comfortably answer a stream of questions about your company and the projects you are undertaking. You need to intrigue the potential candidate and pique their interest. Remember, you just have this one opportunity to attract and interest the candidate.

Hire prospective candidates

Many companies aim to find the best candidate with the full range of tech skills and knowledge needed for the project. However, this option is not the easiest and is quite time-consuming. So, for example, let’s imagine a situation where you are looking for a senior or a middle expert who has an excellent background. It is necessary to evaluate their key skills. There’s no need to look through all technologies and frameworks mentioned in their CV.

Also, if the developer does not know some additional framework that can be quickly mastered, you can discuss it with them. After all, if a software engineer is interested in your project and the opportunity to work with you, they will be ready to learn. For you as a business owner, it’s also beneficial as a coder can gain a new skill within a month or so, and searching for a qualified senior developer with all the skills and expertise needed could take much longer.

Taking all of this into consideration, we can safely say that you should not focus on finding the ideal, best match, or perfect fit. Instead, it is better to take into account the ability to learn and quickly master new things. This way, your engineering team will be filled up with top talent programmers.

Make fast decisions

After you have interviewed and tested a developer, you can already conclude whether a software engineer is right for you and your team. At this stage, it is also important not to delay the process and to let the candidate know if they are the right developer for the position as quickly as possible. After all, if you drag out making a decision for too long, you waste your and the programmer’s time. And, even worse, the developer may start considering offers from other companies without even waiting for your decision.

Wrapping up

Many companies now need to replenish their engineering team quickly. However, interviewing software engineers is quite a long and difficult task. For the companies and developers, it is important to optimize the hiring process.

How to speed up your hiring process is a constant question, and this article has tried to provide some answers. Firstly, when hiring new employees quickly, it is essential to reduce the number of interview steps and get all the right people together at the same time. In addition, you need to carefully prepare the most important questions to vet a developer’s skill level—one way is to conduct a coding test. And do not forget that during the interview, you are evaluating the candidate—but they are also evaluating you. So, you need to interest the developer as much as possible.

All these points are covered in the article.  By using these tips, you can quickly and effectively conduct interviews and expand your team.