Hiring process

After a few interviews in the past weeks with several companies, I realized how important my participation in VTEX’s hiring process has been. First, it prepared me to handle the job search. Really. I have been doing interviews on the recruiter side for a while and it brought me confidence with the exercise in the candidate seat. Second, I realized that it is something recruiters do ask about. The classic question being “How did you grow this team of yours?”. Therefore I decided to write a second post in EM Talks about my takeaways after four years in the process.

Why should I care as an Engineer Manager?

Most of the material I have read while participating in the redaction of VTEX’s EM and SWE tracks has the “team-building” category written down at some point. It is expected that you will have to perform this exercise, whether to build your team or to fill another team’s position. As an EM, it will allow you to get to know external professionals, your company’s hiring team (or at least some members), learn something different, and of course, grow your team.

Start small and be curious

The first thing I did while still in an engineer position was to participate as a “shadow”, meaning sticking to recruiters, whether engineers or RH members and absorbing knowledge. Choose a step of the process you feel comfortable about. Generally, developers tend to stick first to the Coding Challenge or System Design. In my case, I did a few of both and very quickly switched to what VTEX called the Candidate Advocacy, the first interview of the process when you sell the company and the position as well as ask a few questions to the candidate. This one really caught my attention. As a shadow I listened without even speaking during the first ones and little by little got to talk a bit, ask questions and even present a part or two of the pitch.

Grow and lead

Once you get acquainted with many steps, focus on what you feel will best suit you. I went for the Candidate Advocacy and improved my pitch for the company, the position, and the front-end ecosystem. I did several interviews with one member of the HR team to be mentored and to improve my skills, moving from shadow to a leading position. Once this was stable, I then started to mentor other shadow engineers. At this time I was still only receiving interviews from the hiring team.

Step up and hunt

In 2021 after a year as EM, I realized one of my projects was so large I could not possibly deliver it in time without growing my team. That is when I stepped up and went further. Large tech companies usually hire all the time and even if you open a position with HR for your team, it might take a while before you receive someone new within the regular process.

This is where I decided to confirm the open position with my leader and “go for it”. I published a new entry on our careers site, published a post on LinkedIn, created my catchphrase, and started sending messages. Note that developers tend to pay more attention when an EM or Senior developer sends a message rather than a recruiter/HR team member. Messages were targeted to front-end developers with keywords in their resumes or job descriptions to improve the chances of getting a good response.

One key element at that point was the relationship I created with one specific member of the hiring team. We both decided to create weekly small syncs to talk about what we were focusing on, who we were bringing to the pipeline, our strategies, and so on. That helped a lot.

At the time I was still actively doing the Candidate Advocacy but also one of the last steps, the Hiring Manager interview with an Engineering Director or Senior EM. Note, both those steps have a focus on people rather than tech. I chose to leave those to more skilled coworkers.

In the end, I managed to hire a Senior Engineer pretty quickly. I also repeated the strategy for positions outside my team. The trick at this point was to talk to one or two external team members, generally EMs but also PMs or developers. to understand the challenges of their products and be able to sell the position.

Note: we had a front-end engineering hiring guild, a group of volunteers made of engineers and an HR person, to improve the whole process for hiring front-end engineers. This group was acting specifically in the Coding Challenge and System Design steps.

Scale, share, and keep track

Once you manage to have a direct impact on a hire, do not stop there. Aim for more senior roles, incentivize your team members to do so to scale the process, hunt for other teams, share your experience with other EM,s and write down those in your Self Assessment (more on that in an upcoming post). This is a part of your professional achievements as well.