You’ve found a great candidate for the new role you’re hiring for, and both of you are interested in connecting – great! Based on 0+ technical hires we've made since 2019 for 549+ active startup clients, we've observed that efficient and effective phone screening is critical to maintaining a rapid 29-day average time to fill. When setting up your phone interview or initial screening (Zoom works too), the best advice is to try to prepare and organize in advance as much as possible. This foundational preparation ensures a smoother, more informative interaction, setting the stage for successful placements.
Sending interview details in advance is a fundamental courtesy that significantly impacts candidate experience and preparation. Include your full name, job title, and a clear explanation of how your role interacts with the prospective hire – for example, whether you'll be their direct supervisor, a peer, or a stakeholder from another department. Any context shared here is valuable. This transparency helps your interviewee feel much more comfortable and gives them the opportunity to conduct some preliminary research on you and your background. Enabling candidates to do some "LinkedIn sleuthing" allows them to formulate more thoughtful questions, demonstrating genuine interest and engagement. This small gesture signals respect for their time and effort, fostering a positive perception of your company from the outset, which is particularly important when attracting high-caliber Engineering and AI/ML talent in a market where the average salary for placed engineers is around ~$252K. A well-prepared candidate is more likely to have a productive and insightful conversation, leading to a clearer assessment for both parties.
2. Considering adopting a calendar scheduling tool like Calendly.The administrative burden of coordinating interview times can significantly slow down the hiring process. Adopting a calendar scheduling tool, such as Calendly, eliminates the back-and-forth email chains that often consume valuable time. This efficiency is critical, especially for candidates who are currently employed and need to schedule interviews around their existing 9-5 commitments. By sending a single link to your available calendar, you empower the candidate to find a time that seamlessly integrates with their personal schedule. This not only improves the candidate experience but also directly contributes to a faster progression through the initial screening stages. Given that Recruiting from Scratch achieves an average time to fill of 29 days, optimizing every step of the process, including scheduling, is vital. In a competitive talent market, delays in scheduling can mean losing out on top candidates who may receive other offers quickly. Optimizing this process ensures you can engage with promising candidates without unnecessary friction.
3. Preparing your interview questions in a scorecard format.Consistency and objectivity are paramount in early-stage candidate assessment. Preparing your interview questions in advance, ideally within a scorecard format, is essential. This involves writing down a standardized set of questions and establishing a clear method for taking notes on candidate responses. The rationale is simple: if you ask entirely different questions to different candidates, comparing their qualifications and suitability for the role becomes subjective and unreliable – akin to attempting to compare apples to oranges. A standardized question set ensures that all candidates are evaluated against the same criteria. This creates a fairer process for the candidates themselves, as they all face a similar examination. For the hiring team, it simplifies the decision-making process by providing a consistent data set for comparison. This systematic approach is a cornerstone of effective hiring, helping to reduce unconscious bias and improve the accuracy of talent identification. Based on 0+ technical hires we've made since 2019, a structured approach is directly correlated with successful placements and high candidate satisfaction, reflected in our 90+ NPS.
4. Taking post interview notes as soon as the interview is over.The human memory is fallible, especially when processing multiple candidate interactions over a short period. Therefore, taking detailed post-interview notes immediately after the call concludes is non-negotiable. Quickly debriefing and documenting your initial impressions captures nuances that might otherwise fade or be confused with other candidates. Ask yourself: Was there anything that truly stood out – positive or negative – that wasn’t directly captured by your scorecard answers? This is also the opportune moment to record observations on soft skills, communication clarity, enthusiasm, or any red flags identified during the conversation. While it may seem like an additional step in a busy schedule, dedicating a few minutes to this immediate documentation saves significant future headaches. Accurate, timely notes prevent misremembering details, provide a reliable basis for team discussions, and contribute to faster, more confident decisions on who to advance. This practice supports the efficiency necessary to achieve our 29-day average time to fill without sacrificing the quality of hire.
These questions are designed to quickly gather crucial information about a candidate's motivations, expectations, and basic fit, allowing you to make an informed decision about advancing them to the next stage.
1. Why are you looking for a new position currently? * Purpose: This question uncovers the primary drivers behind a candidate's job search. It helps identify if they are proactively seeking growth, reacting to a negative situation, or simply exploring options. * Insight: A candidate seeking new challenges or specific growth opportunities is often more motivated than one primarily driven by dissatisfaction with their current role. Look for thoughtful answers that align with the opportunities your role offers. Evaluation: Assess alignment with your company's environment. Are they running from something or to* something? The latter is generally preferred for startup environments. 2. What are you looking for in your next position? * Purpose: This question shifts the focus from their past to their future aspirations. It provides insight into their career goals, preferred work environment, and what they value most in a role. * Insight: Listen for specific details about responsibilities, team structure, company culture, and opportunities for impact or learning. This directly indicates if the role you're hiring for truly matches their desires. * Evaluation: Compare their stated preferences with the actual reality of the position and your company culture. This helps prevent misalignments early on, which are costly given the average time to fill for technical roles. 3. Is there a specific type of company or industry that you're targeting? * Purpose: This helps gauge their focus and intentionality in their job search. It reveals if they have a clear idea of where they want to contribute and if their target aligns with your organization's sector or stage. * Insight: A candidate specifically targeting seed through Series C startups or AI/ML-focused companies, for instance, shows a deeper understanding and potential fit for Recruiting from Scratch's client base. Vague answers might indicate a less focused search. * Evaluation: Strong alignment here suggests higher motivation and a better chance of long-term retention in a specific startup environment. 4. What size of teams have you worked on? * Purpose: Team size profoundly impacts an individual’s responsibilities, communication style, and comfort level. This question helps understand their operational experience within different organizational scales. * Insight: A candidate accustomed to working in small, agile teams might thrive in a startup, while someone from a very large enterprise might struggle with the often leaner resources and broader responsibilities. * Evaluation: Determine if their experience aligns with the team size of your open role. For our startup clients, experience with smaller, high-impact teams is often a strong indicator of success. 5. What is your ideal company size? * Purpose: This builds on the previous question, exploring their preference rather than just their experience. It directly addresses cultural fit regarding organizational scale. * Insight: A preference for smaller companies indicates comfort with ambiguity, faster decision-making, and often a desire for direct impact, common in seed through Series C startups. A preference for larger companies might signal a need for more structure. * Evaluation: Mismatch in ideal company size can lead to disengagement. Confirming this fit early is crucial for roles with our specialized startup clients. 6. What technologies and coding languages do you know? * Purpose: This is a foundational technical screening question. It provides an overview of their practical skills and helps determine if they possess the baseline technical requirements for the role. * Insight: While not a deep technical dive, this question quickly flags any significant gaps between their skillset and the role's essential technical stack (e.g., Python, Go, Rust, specific AI/ML frameworks). * Evaluation: This helps confirm basic qualifications before investing in a more extensive technical interview. For Engineering and AI/ML roles, fundamental tech stack alignment is non-negotiable. 7. Are you interviewing with any other companies? * Purpose: This question provides insight into their market activity and demand for their skills. It's not meant to be a judgment, but an awareness tool. * Insight: If a candidate is actively interviewing elsewhere, it signals they are a desirable candidate and potentially has other offers in the pipeline. This informs the urgency of your process, especially with an average time to fill of 29 days. * Evaluation: Knowing this allows you to manage expectations regarding speed and competition. Acknowledging their market value is key to securing top talent, who often command salaries around ~$252K. 8. What are your salary expectations? * Purpose: This is a critical qualifying question to ensure alignment on compensation early in the process. Addressing this upfront saves time for both parties. * Insight: A candidate's salary expectations should ideally fall within the approved budget for the role. If their expectations are significantly higher than the average salary for placed engineers (around ~$252K for RFS), it indicates a potential mismatch that needs to be addressed immediately. * Evaluation: Misalignment on salary expectations is a common reason for candidates to drop out or for offers to be rejected. Clarity here prevents wasted effort later in the process. 9. What’s your ideal timeline and start date for beginning a new job? * Purpose: This logistical question clarifies their availability and helps plan the next stages of the interview process and potential onboarding. * Insight: Candidates currently employed often have notice periods (e.g., two weeks, a month). Understanding their timeline allows you to set realistic expectations and accelerate your process if necessary. * Evaluation: This ensures that your hiring timeline aligns with their availability, particularly important for roles where rapid integration into a new team is desired.Recruiting from Scratch has been specializing in Engineering and AI/ML roles for seed through Series C startups since our founding in New York City in 2019. In our data from 300+ placements, we maintain a 90+ NPS, reflecting our consistent success. We've placed engineers at 549+ active startup clients, and based on these 0+ technical hires, we've achieved an average time to fill of 29 days, with an average salary for placed engineers around ~$252K. This direct experience provides us with real-time, actionable insights into effective hiring practices, particularly in the competitive startup talent market.
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