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As Coronavirus is driving companies remote, adopting remote-first processes for hiring software engineers now will reinforce your technical hiring tactics for 2020 and ensure your technical hiring plan is still attainable.
In the wake of COVID-19, hiring teams worldwide are realizing what remote teams have known for 5 years already: remote-first technical hiring can be very effective.
Why go remote-first?
Aside from the obvious, going remote allows you to source from a wider pool of engineers, process candidates through your workflows faster, and offer more flexible work environments for your employees.
Today, the IT sector has one of the fastest-growing rates of remote work. 61% of engineers have the ability to work remotely, and of those working in traditional offices, 46% would like to try going remote. The trend towards more flexible work setups is undeniable and for good reason. In our 2019 survey, we found a positive correlation between engineering teams with remote work policies and feeling successful at work. At the same time, in a recent survey, 76% of females working in technology said that having remote work policies are increasingly necessary to attract and retain women in tech.
Put simply, those who’ve tried working remotely, tend to like it.
But moving your work remote-first requires agile processes, great communication, and stable platforms. It requires rethinking the way you source, hire and manage your engineers.
It’s not impossible to do, but it does require some thought.
Source from the World Wide Web with Online Coding Competitions
The campus recruitment event season is going to be different this year. With a high risk of cancellation, thinking about how you can run sourcing events without a physical presence will give you a competitive edge.
We’ve built CodeChallenges for this. Designed for teams running online campaigns via social media, email or to a database of candidates, CodeChallenges are online coding competitions – a unique way to engage passive candidates, ignite online coding competition, and re-engage your database:
- Create your own branded online coding competition landing page, hosted by Codility
- Codility handles the CodeChallenge itself – using a special technical problem designed to be equal parts tricky and fun
- Advertise your CodeChallenge on social media, via email and to your database
- Participants provide their contact information when they attempt the CodeChallenge, with their solution automatically scored and ranked
- During and after the event, your sourcing team can reach out to participants directly
Being able to source from a wider pool of candidates allows you to increase your talent pipeline, removing the artificial limitation of distance.
Taking Hiring Software Engineers Online
Let’s be honest, most of the technical hiring process can be done online. But there remains one sticking point: the on-site interview. On-sites are the foundation of hiring programs around the world. This is the hiring team’s chance to get to know the candidate face-to-face, to see them work in real-time, and to ask them questions in a way that mimics a natural conversation.
Over the last 3 years, we’ve seen our customers adopt new technology to achieve the same from on-site and remote interviews. They’ve taken advantage of Codility to host remote interviews with a shared editor and whiteboard, connecting via video and voice call to have conversations with candidates where they can code, refactor, or talk about alternative approaches to solutions. Our customers have found remote interviews to be effective, helping them make the right hire, faster.
Using Codility, you can move your technical hiring online and conduct remote interviews before the end of the week.
Working together when you’re not together
Companies across all industries are rushing to adopt remote work policies, and employees are following the early adopters. According to Zapier’s Remote Work Report, 26% of employees in the US have quit their job for one which supports remote work policies. But managing remote teams requires different management tactics and communication strategies.
1. Set clear expectations
Each engineering team member needs to know what needs to be done at the beginning of the project, and who must do what. When you’re on a remote team, you need to be able to identify blockers and handle friction points efficiently. Asking engineering team members in one-on-ones about bottlenecks to their delivery will encourage them to speak up and proactively give you insight into what can be optimized.
2. Establish availability protocols
Let your remote team know which channels of communication to use for what purposes, be clear on when people are online, and use written communication to maintain a record of progress and decisions made. Where needed, add processes or internal Service-Level Agreements (SLAs).
3. Check-in on progress regularly
Track progress via project management tools like Jira and Asana so you can keep everyone updated, without too much distraction. These platforms will help you manage and identify burnout by spotting workload imbalances.
Whether you are looking to take hiring software engineers remotely, improve your technical hiring processes, find an alternative to campus recruitment, or manage remote teams efficiently, Codility can help. Visit our blog for more resources or contact us to find out how we can take your company remote.