Recruitment could be your company’s biggest source of competitive advantage, but more often, it’s just a headache. Here, Chris Whyte of Kodu shares his advice on hiring the best design and engineering talent
For many founders and design leaders that I speak to, recruitment of great design and engineering talent is important, but the process of recruiting itself can be hugely time-consuming and frustrating.
Typically, they cite one or more of the following reasons. First, the skills they require are in short supply but high demand, meaning they end up losing candidates to competitors or counter-offers.
Second, application rates are high, but it takes so long to screen out irrelevant profiles that the best talent is off the market by the time they get to speak to them.
Third, they struggle to find candidates of the right calibre, often because the recruiters they work with (either internally or from an agency) don’t understand what ‘good’ looks like, or have other priorities.
No doubt you’ve experienced some of the above and have probably had a few moments, over the years, where you’ve thought, “I’m better off doing this myself.”
The recruitment loop
I’ve seen this so many times throughout my career. Hours and hours are sunk into inefficient recruitment and sourcing practices, screening CVs, conducting screening calls, and interviewing candidates. All that time gets invested, and you still lose great candidates along the way.
When do you finally make an offer, the candidate ghosts you for a week, before joining a competitor, or accept a counter-offer to stay with their current employer.
How many times have you had this happen and had to start all over again? I recently surveyed my network of design and engineering talent, asking how many vacancies they typically applied for when looking for work. Almost half said that they applied for between three and ten jobs. While that’s not too surprising, almost one quarter of them said they applied for over 25 vacancies.
It’s no surprise, then, that many design leaders find themselves caught up in a frustrating recruitment loop.
Getting engaged
Next time you’re hiring, consider this: most applicants consider multiple roles. So not only do you need to at least keep pace with your competition, but also and more importantly, you need to be better at engaging your candidates. But how?
Often, the best way is to engage with a professional recruitment consultant. And by that, I mean a recruiter who is embedded in your industry, understands it, and has long since notched up the 10,000 hours that it’s said are needed to master a skill.
A professional recruitment consultant will have a huge network in your niche. They’ll give you access to a much wider pool of relevant talent than advertising or sending out LinkedIn messages will achieve. They can introduce you to people who are not actively applying, but might consider a move if the right opportunity came along.
Your recruiter should work with you to design an efficient recruitment process, defining desired outcomes, building a candidate engagement strategy and project-managing the whole thing, so that you only need to interview three or four highly vetted, super-relevant and highly engaged candidates per role.
DIY recruitment
Still determined to handle recruitment yourself? Here are some pointers:
1. Create a compelling LinkedIn post to tell your network about the opportunity. You should write it as if you’re telling a friend about the role. In other words, make it sound natural. Post it on your personal page and ask your network to share it. (Personal posts typically attract ten times the engagement as compared to business pages.)
2. Block out time at least once a week to meet with the hiring team and review their progress. An agenda should be set for the meeting and next steps agreed. Candidates should never be kept waiting more than a week for feedback.
3. Aim to see all candidates for a role in the same week and block out, for example, six two-hour slots in advance. If you let your candidates know about the interview slots at the pre-screening stage, you’ll avoid unnecessary back and forth.
4. Share as much information as you can. If you don’t have a ‘Work For Us’ page on your website, create one and share it! Have you or your company appeared on a podcast or been featured in the press? Share it with your candidates! Do not assume that they are interested in or knowledgeable about your firm, just because they applied.
5. Keep candidates informed if you need more time to decide. Don’t expect them to still be available if you leave it two weeks to follow up.
Recruitment doesn’t need to be overly complicated or difficult. It just needs time dedicating to it. Take the short-term hit on the project now and you’ll reap the rewards later. Get it right and you’ll turn a recruiting headache into a competitive advantage!
About the author:
Chris Whyte is the founder of Kodu, a specialist recruitment consultancy for physical product development roles.
He has over a decade’s worth of experience in connecting design and engineering talent with user-focused technology brands and consultancies.
This article first appeared in DEVELOP3D Magazine
DEVELOP3D is a publication dedicated to product design + development, from concept to manufacture and the technologies behind it all.
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