What to look for when hiring a new engineer for your team?

During my career, I had the pleasure to interview more than 300 engineers.

Throughout my experience, I came across an important finding that always stood out with engineers that were successful in the role after they joined the team.

They were all great engineers, but what made them great was not just their technical expertise, but their soft skills.

When I’m interviewing a new engineer I value soft skills more than technical expertise.

Unless I’m hiring for a strict expert in a particular technology, I normally look for engineers that can reasonably articulate things and can demonstrate drive, motivation for learning, as well as being a good team player.

The reason for this, as said above is that teams build great software, not individuals.

I am a big believer in hiring people that can make others around them better, not just focus on their individual contribution.

If everyone makes everyone around them better, we are all exponentially growing. There is no better environment to be in where everyone is always there to help and support you.

What are your thoughts?

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Comments

[Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard]

Rant: I agree that communication, empathy, writing are super important.

But the way we call things matter, and I find absolutely terrible that we choose the words soft skills as a super broad category opposed to the supposedly hard things.

There are three issues with the name soft skills

1. communication, empathy, writing, ... are not soft at all. They are the reason why IT projects, most couple, most families fail. Because they are hard as hell. I think that we devalue them by calling them softer than C++. ChatGPT can do C++ but it cannot do empathy.
2. communication, empathy, writing, ... often not skills either : they are often personality traits. Being kind will serve you in some situations, and you will be abused in others. Being an introvert is not better or worse than being an extravert, but many things presented as soft skills relates in fact to that personnality trait.
3. there is a not very subtle background of sexism behind those terms. Things that were placed into "hard" box are "traditionnally men skills" while things that were placed in the "soft" box are "traditionnaly women skills".

TL:DR communication, empathy, writing,... are important but the broad category to describe them as "soft skills" is a bad invention from HR consultants.

[Gregor Ojstersek]

Right. Term soft skills might not be the best, because they are the most important and not so easy to develop.

Agree on they are the reason for success and also that they depend based on overall personality.

Everyone is different and everyone can help others in a different way + be a team player in a different way.

The key is that they have this traits. It's up to that specific person how they do that.

[Tanvir Shaikh]

You shared a really good point.

Finding such good engineers these days is so difficult and takes a lot of time.
I have interviewed so many developers, and I see they are missing soft skills; they can explain concepts and write code but don't know the terms. speaks very poor English, etc.

It's difficult to find a good engineer. when resource demand remains high as we are service-based. Then we have to settle for someone who can get the work done, and we can start the project.
However, this is a common problem across corporations.

What can we do to hire a good engineer in a demanding environment? where developer's leave often and teams get scattered.

[Gregor Ojstersek]

You are right Tanvir, engineers with good soft skills are hard to find. They need to be appreciated when you have them. If the demand is too high and you are not getting the right candidates, you could:

• use additional different pipelines to get candidates,
• provide regular learnings on soft skills for engineers and grow their skills internally,
• good coaching and mentoring form experienced managers can go a long way.

[Josh De Rosa]

I like this article because it is true I love helping others who want to grow I rather grow with people than myself.

[Gregor Ojstersek]

Thanks and great to hear that Josh!

[Jake Lundberg]

This!

This is easily the most important thing when brining someone onto any team. We can teach anyone the technicals. But empathy, compassion, curiosity, and a desire to communicate, not so much.

Well said, friend! Keep up the great work!

[Mateusz Koteja]

Not everybody can be taught technical things. Maybe to some degree only, but there is glass ceiling for some sort of people. I would say roughly there are two kinds of people: those who innovate good solutions or those who can just copy. Those who are always ahead, and those who are always behind. There is more, naturally, but it kind of resolves in the end into those two groups. Not saying the second group is worse, however if I can choose I prefer to work with the first group.
I agree with the rest though.

[Jake Lundberg]

I would have to disagree with you. Technical skills are like any other subject, like math or history. There are certainly people who pick these things up quicker or more easily than others. but that doesn’t mean that anyone can’t learn them with enough time and focus. I’ve noticed the people who pick them up more slowly just need a shift in perspective. A teacher to show them a different way of relating to the information to get them to that “ah ha” moment. But slowly or quickly, anyone truly can learn these skills.

[Gregor Ojstersek]

Appreciate you Jake! "We can teach anyone the technicals. But empathy, compassion, curiosity, and a desire to communicate, not so much." - You couldn't have said it better.