In this article, we’ll explore strategies for building and growing a cohesive engineering team and effectively connecting it with your product team. This guide is tailored for CTOs, COOs, CEOs and HR managers of digital product companies and SaaS businesses aiming to scale.
Recruitment is a delicate balancing act where you validate a candidate’s potential while simultaneously convincing them that your company offers an opportunity that aligns with their aspirations, for the next years ahead.
Although there is no one-size-fits-all approach to perfecting this process, there are key factors to consider when evaluating potential hires. Throughout the text, we’ll illustrate how to set up your recruitment process to validate the potential of your candidates while simultaneously engaging them with your opportunity or company. We’ll also share some examples in italics. Additionally, we’ll discuss how partnering with a talent agency can help you secure top-tier talent in a timely manner, allowing you to focus on implementing your strategy.
1. Start by validating Intelligence & character
After making an initial selection of potential engineers (based on CV screening), it’s essential to start the recruitment process by evaluating their potential through a combination of intelligence and character tests.
- Intelligence is essential for problem-solving and critical thinking. We look for indicators such as reasoning test scores or educational degrees.
- Character reflects how well a candidate aligns with your team and company values. This can be assessed through discussions about your company’s values or by (online) professional personality tests. As a Talent Partner, it’s crucial to find individuals whose ambitions align with the job. It’s important you figure this out in the first conversation. Additionally, ensure candidates understand your team’s working style and goals. Clear communication from the beginning helps everyone understand their role and contributions.
2. Assess your candidate’s experience level
- Experience provides a deep understanding of the field or industry. We evaluate this through (business) case assessments, and reviewing candidate’s past professional and educational experience.
We incorporate practical assessments or trial projects to see how candidates perform in real-world scenarios.
For example, in a MedTech SaaS company, you might begin by administering a reasoning test to candidates. There are excellent tools available for this, and we can guide you to the right ones. Intelligence is a strong indicator of success in complex environments. Candidates who pass the test are then interviewed to assess their values alignment and subsequently put into practical situations. You might ask them to develop a small feature for your software, such as a new data visualization tool for patient records using dummy data. This approach allows you to evaluate their problem-solving and coding skills in a practical context. You can write the assignment in a format used by your product team, like a fictional brief from a product owner on a scrum board with user stories explaining the expected output.
3. Engage passionate engineers with your tech stack and expected impact
It’s important to align your recruitment tactics with the company’s engineering needs. Passionate engineers are drawn to innovative technologies and the ability to do pioneering work, so clearly presenting the tools and technologies your team uses will attract strong candidates.
Taking another example now, of a FinTech company, highlighting your use of advanced programming languages, cloud technologies, infrastructure tools and data analytics tools can make the environment more appealing. Emphasizing opportunities to work on pioneering financial solutions, such as AI-driven fraud detection systems using novel tech, can attract passionate talents.
When hiring product managers, it’s important they also understand the tech stack. They need to effectively communicate with engineers and understand the implications of technology choices on product development.
4. Show how success is measured (already in the recruitment process!)
Showcasing career development opportunities and investing in continuous learning and skill development can demonstrate that your team is invested in the individual’s future. This approach also ensures that your team speaks a consistent language regarding talent development, from the recruitment process through to ongoing assessments once they join.
Hence, it’s beneficial to create a clear growth structure for your team so they know what to expect at each level. This can be created in a matrix structure, see this simplified hypothetical example below. Share this with your future engineers so they understand their role and how to grow in your organization.
Each level can have a different salary range. You could choose to share these ranges openly with your team and candidates. Some countries, like Belgium, must have a salary transparency policy by 2026. Doing this now could give you a competitive edge.
5. Last but not least: a perspective on Always-on hiring vs. fragmented hiring
As a specialized talent agency, we pride ourselves on maintaining an always-on hiring engine. This enables us to offer expert insights on all aspects of recruitment, particularly within our niche areas of product, engineering, and innovation. This is very helpful for companies with irregular hiring needs, ensuring they can access top talent and insights whenever necessary.
We have successfully recruited for diverse verticals (incl. MedTech, FinTech, FMCG, AI, Construction, agencies/consulting etc.) consistently focusing on profiles that can drive product development and business innovation.
A talent agency should also serve as a strategic partner in building your engineering and product teams. Whether you’re deciding between on-prem or cloud solutions, or weighing the benefits of hiring juniors versus seniors, we can compare the pro’s and con’s together with your executive team. Additionally, we can guide you through the financial considerations of hiring full-time contractors, temp freelancers, or full-time employees.
