When hiring a software engineer, it’s important to take the time to do it right. The cost of bringing on an employee only to let him or her go within a month or two is costly and stressful. We highly recommend doing the up-front work to hire the right candidate.
However, it is possible to take too much time hiring software engineers. The job market is fast-paced in the tech world in LATAM, and it’s not uncommon for a good candidate to be under consideration by multiple companies.
We don’t want your company to miss out on great talent, so here’s a quick rundown on how much time it should take for your company to hire LATAM tech talent.
Tech hiring timeline facts
There are four routes companies generally take when it comes to recruitment:
- An internal recruiter
- An external headhunter
- A niche recruitment agency
- A large recruitment agency
The recruitment turnaround time usually depends on the connections of the recruiter or agency and how specialized the position is to fill. When working to develop a near source or outsourced team, recruitment becomes even more challenging.
According to our own internal data, there is definitely a sweet spot for hiring software engineers and developers.
On average, it should take about 30 days to hire a qualified candidate. Of course, the hiring process works best if it is under 20 days, but 30 days is standard. If a company takes longer than 45 days, there is a good chance the candidate will no longer be available for hire.
Since the average turnaround time for hiring is less than 30 days, it is really important that a company thinks through the hiring process and takes out anything requiring unnecessary time.
Different recruitment structures
One of the best ways to cut out time in the hiring process is having a good hiring structure. If there is not enough structure, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks and lose potential talent to other companies. If there is too much-complicated structure, the same thing can happen.
Either way, whether it’s too much or too little structure, the outcome is the same. The hiring process takes too long and the talent goes elsewhere.
Examples of Good Structure
We found that a three-step process works best to vet the candidate while also not dragging things out.
- Culture fit interview – This is where you and the candidate get a chance to have a conversation, talk about background and culture, share vision and get a feel for how they might work with the rest of your team. If your recruiter or recruitment agency has done their job, you already know that this person meets the basic qualifications for the job.
- Tech Live Assessment – Once you feel a candidate will fit culturally, give them a chance to show you what they can do. Don’t make it too complicated, but also make it challenging enough to really ascertain candidates’ capabilities.
- Final interview – At this point, you should be ready to extend an offer. The final interview is a chance to maybe have them meet some other people on the team, have a few follow up questions, and do your final due diligence.
Especially if you work with a niche recruiter who has already vetted the candidates, these three steps can be done relatively quickly and still give you a good sense of which candidate is right for the position in your company.
Examples of Bad Structure
There are a lot of things you shouldn’t do when trying to hire new software engineers and developers, more than we can list here. But here are a few of the most common ones:
- Taking one week to look through profiles – Remember, your competitors are looking at the same profiles. If it takes you a week to do what other companies do in an afternoon, you’ll miss out on great talent.
- Scheduling an interview late in the second week – By the end of the second week, all potential candidates should be interviewed and preparing for some type of tech assessment. If you aren’t scheduling the interview by the end of week two, you are already half way through the average hiring time and you haven’t even met with the candidate.
- Not providing feedback for another week – Candidates are evaluating your company as much as you are evaluating them. That means that taking over a week to send feedback can send up a red flag to the potential hire, making them more likely to say yes to a different company.
- No process – When there is no process, things get missed. Either there will be redundancies that could have been avoided, or certain things won’t happen altogether. This should go without saying, but ‘no process’ is a bad process.
- Very stringent technical assessment – In a technical assessment, it’s important to make it challenging enough to really get a feel for the candidate. But if the assessment is too technical, stringent, or complicated, the candidate will likely just move on to a different company or worse, little-to-no candidates will pass the technical assessment and you’ll take longer to find an engineer to tackle your business needs.
First place wins
The demand for qualified IT talent in Latin America is high as more and more companies are either starting or expanding through near sourcing. When a software engineer or developer looks for a job, they are almost always applying at multiple companies and will accept the first legitimate offer they are given.
We’ve seen this happen too many times. A recent client of ours had made a decision to hire a developer but waited three days to communicate with the talent and make an offer. In the course of those three days, another company made an offer and the candidate took a job with the other company.
Companies can’t afford to lose time in the hiring process.
Are you willing to lose talent to time?
One of the best ways to cut time out of the hiring process is to work with a recruiting agency that can pre-vet qualified candidates and only send you talent that makes sense for your needs. This is especially true when you are trying to hire in a foreign market.
CodersLink empowers scaling companies to build, grow and manage remote tech teams in Latin America. Through remote staffing and direct placements, we ensure the best companies find the best talent to continue growing their technology teams, fill skill gaps and respond to scaling needs.
Don’t lose talent to time! We’d love to help you find your next hire.
Photo by Brands&People on Unsplash
