7 Hiring
This chapter covers
- Getting into the hiring mindset
- Using a hiring framework
- Staffing from scratch versus hiring for an existing team
- Hiring externally versus growing internal talent
- Building a healthy hiring pipeline
- Sending positive-reinforcement messages to employees with hiring programs
It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.
In the soft glow of the early-morning light, you find yourself surrounded by a multitude of open browser tabs containing the résumés of candidates for your software engineering team. The weight of responsibility rests on your shoulders—responsibility for sculpting the future of your team, a decision that will affect not just your team but also the success of your organization.
Hiring is an art. It means delicately crafting a team on which each member becomes a vital piece in the intricate puzzle of innovation. Whether you are tasked with developing a product or pioneering the next tech breakthrough, you need a robust team of software engineers, managers, and cross-functional partners. As we’ve learned, your success as an engineering manager (EM) is intricately tied to the success of your team(s).