Recruitment and Selection of high performing programmers

Recruitment and Selection of high performing programmers

August 26, 2023<br>by Eduardo Bellani

What could be more important for a technology company than great<br>software? High performing software developers and their teams. After<br>all, they are the ones who actually create and maintain that great<br>software.

But do they really make a difference?

I&rsquo;ll let the numbers speak for themselves. Here are the typical<br>variations in:(Steve 2014)

Individual performance<br>20 to 1,<br>Team performance<br>10 to 1,<br>Method performance<br>1.2 to 1.

One can find a compelling illustration of these data on<br>(Oram and Wilson 2010). Two organizations, similar resources,<br>similar goal, vastly different performance:

Microsoft excel 3<br>649000 Lines of Code (Loc) in 50 Man Years (MY) = 12980<br>Lotus 123<br>400000 LoC in 260 MY = 1538

Recruitment and selection

Recruitment is the process of finding potential candidates to apply for<br>a job position, whereas selection is the process of identifying the best<br>candidate to hire. (Team 2023)

To find high performing candidates, you need to find markers of<br>belonging to some high performing culture. Usually something that is<br>very hard to master and that the marketplace ignores is a good bet. As<br>an exapmle, for backend developers, one might look for:

Haskell or other functional programming language not in widespread<br>use;

Relational theory and other rigorous discipline misunderstood by the<br>majority of the marketplace,

To filter them, I&rsquo;d advise using a combination of the following methods<br>(Schmidt 2016):

Table 1:<br>Validity of selection methods

Procedure<br>Validity(r)<br>Multiple(R)<br>% gain

GMA tests<br>.65

Integrity tests<br>.46<br>.78<br>20%

Employment interviews (structured)<br>.58<br>.76<br>18%

Employment interviews<br>.58<br>.73<br>13%

Interests<br>.31<br>.71<br>10%

Phone-based interviews (structured)<br>.46<br>.70<br>9%

Conscientiousness<br>.22<br>.70<br>8%

Reference checks<br>.26<br>.70<br>8%

Openness to Experience<br>.04<br>.69<br>6%

Biographical data<br>.35<br>.68<br>6%

Job experience (years)<br>.16<br>.68<br>5%

For instance, a (GMA + Integrity + Conscientiousness + Structured<br>interview + Work Sample) combo should take at most 3 hours from the<br>candidate and 1 from your team.

References

Oram, A., and G. Wilson. 2010. Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It. O’Reilly Media.

Schmidt, Frank. 2016. “The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 100 Years of Research Findings.”

Steve, McConnell; 2014. “Seven Diagrams Every Software Professional Should Understand [Online; Accessed 2023-01-02].” https://youtu.be/zTKi4ijEsH0?t=2566.

Team, Indeed Editorial. 2023. “Recruitment Vs. Selection: What’s the Difference?” https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/recruitment-vs-selection.