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Updated August 24, 2022You’re reading an excerpt of The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring, a book by Osman (Ozzie) Osman and over 45 other contributors. It is the most authoritative resource on growing software engineering teams effectively, written by and for hiring managers, recruiters, interviewers, and candidates. Purchase the book to support the author and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, over 800 links and references, commentary and future updates, and a high-quality PDF download.
Much hiring and recruiting advice is anecdotal or specific to a particular type of company. It can be contradictory, even when coming from experts. It’s also spread about on blogs and articles that focus on specific aspects, such as building a brand, interviewing, or closing a candidate. We believe there is a need for a consolidated and shared resource, written by and for people on different sides of hiring decisions, including hiring managers, founders, recruiters, and candidates. This reference exists to answer the needs of beginners and the more experienced.
This Guide is not perfect, but aims to be the most inclusive and practical Guide available to the subject. Every candidate and every company is unique. Whether you’re a hiring manager or anyone else who’s involved with the hiring process, we want to supply you with both the principles and the tools to empower you to build great teams.
Our approach to building this Guide has been to:
Draw knowledge from multiple experts. We are not replicating any one company’s practices or one person’s perspective. Our authors and editors have drawn on the input of dozens of experts and practicing hiring managers.
Start with first principles. To begin, we give a framework for thinking about the challenges of hiring, candidate-company fit, and describe a set of principles for designing a hiring process. Even experienced hiring managers can find it useful to remind themselves of the goals and first principles of hiring, and then how those principles should be applied in the specific situation.
Give practical guidance on each part of the hiring process. We’ve covered background knowledge and practical, in-depth guidance for every step of the hiring process. Our goal is to encourage a candidate-focused, fair and inclusive, and effective hiring process that fits a companies’ needs.
We’ve been involved in recruiting on both sides of the table. We’ve been at sprawling, successful companies and tiny, unproven startups. We’ve seen success stories and the impact and sense of fulfillment that comes with finding good fits between candidates and companies—and we’ve been humbled and frustrated when things haven’t worked out as well. We’ve had interesting and tough conversations, reviewed what’s been written before, and done our best to reconcile and present the most helpful expert advice and experience.
The Holloway Reader you’re using now is designed to help you find and navigate the material you need. Use the search box. It will reveal definitions, section-by-section results, and content contained in the hundreds of resources we’ve linked to throughout the Guide. Think of it as a mini library of the best content on the subject of technical recruiting and hiring. We also provide mouseover (or short tap on mobile) for definitions of terms, related section suggestions, and external links while you read.
A reference like this cannot be perfect or complete. Please suggest improvements, add other helpful comments, or call out anything that needs revision. We welcome (and will gladly credit!) your help.
important Most of the contributors to this Guide have worked in the United States, in the Silicon Valley job market and at growing, engineering-focused companies of various sizes. The principles and high-level advice apply much more generally than these constraints, though culture, values, and the dynamics of the job market may vary in different geographic areas and across the industry. If you have experience in other contexts, we’d love to hear from you.