Chapter 7
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You’re sitting in your one-to-one meeting with Lisa, your manager. As you finish summarizing your plan for rolling out the latest upgrade to the ingest pipeline, you notice the corners of her mouth beginning to form into a smile.

“There’s something else that I need to talk to you about as well.”

“What’s that?” you reply.

“We’ve just reforecast the budget for the second half of the year. Commercial has had an amazing couple of quarters, and the board think that it’s time to start expanding again.”

“OK, but what does that mean for me?”

“You’re expanding too! I’ve given you two more headcount that I’d like you to fill as soon as you can.”

You start jotting down notes in your notebook. Two headcount. ASAP.

“What sort of seniority and budget are we working with?” you ask.

“Whatever you think you need. The board is being pretty bullish with the budget at the moment. If you can get two good seniors in, then by all means we can find the money for them.”

“Nice!” you say, jotting down more notes. “So how does hiring actually work here? What do I do?”

“A good question,” Lisa replies. “We like to give hiring managers—that’s you—the responsibility for pretty much the whole process. Our HR team will help you put your job descriptions out there, but what you do from there is your call. Whatever works best for your team.”

“OK,” you say, slowly. “I’ll have a think about it and have a read around.”

“If you have any questions just let me know.” Lisa stands up from her chair, sidesteps toward the door and opens it for you. “I’m looking forward to seeing you get some new faces!”

“Totally!” you reply, parting ways.

But how does hiring work? How do you know who you should hire and how do you describe them in a job description? How should the interviews be structured? What should you look for in a good candidate? The questions start to percolate inside your head…

Well, look no further. This chapter is going to be all about hiring, from thinking about the people that you want to hire to having them accept your offer.

In this chapter you’re going to learn how to:

• Decide who to hire. You’ll consider the team, their skills, and their dynamics and come to a conclusion about who is best to recruit.

• Write job descriptions. You’ll see how to describe the roles that you want candidates to apply for, and you’ll do so in a way that is appealing and doesn’t implicitly discriminate against certain types of people.

• Run an interview process. You’ll consider a number of options for interview stages, from phone screens to making the offer.

It goes without saying that the hiring process in the technology industry has been fraught with issues. Searching online for “tech job interviews” or “how to do tech interviews” will present to you all sorts of conflicting information, such as advice to candidates to study whole textbooks worth of computer science problems in order to stand a chance at getting through the door at the world’s best companies. You’ll also find, in equal measure, horror stories about endless interviews, rejection, embarrassment, and sweating profusely in front of whiteboards.

What I just described is not what this chapter is going to be about. You’re going to learn it’s possible to find fantastic people by being kind, considerate, reasonable and human. Hiring doesn’t have to be painful. Now that you’re a manager, you have the power to be an agent of change for our industry.

So, are you ready to start adding more people to your team? Let’s find out how!