What are the costs associated with a bad hire? Is there a way to minimize the potential damage and allow for a wider net to cast?
Could the on boarding process be more akin to a mentor-apprentice relationship and utilize open source as the avenue, with the burden of work placed on the apprentice. Your company has both closed and open source projects that many of your engineer's contribute to and manage. An apprentice level candidate works on and applies a patch with the feedback from the mentor level engineers. At some sufficient level of acceptance based on performance the apprentice is brought in for a culture fit type interview and potentially offered a position.
From the view of the apprentice this may seem like MORE work then writing resumes and prepping for technical interviews. But from my point of view as an apprentice I'd be learning skills that seem more useful than gaming resumes, screening and technical interviews, and adding to my portfolio that may never get glanced at. Skills like communication and coordination with a team, Real world coding experience and pushing to production. From the viewpoint of the mentor, I see candidates that have already been introduced to the internal workflow and show the communication necessary to work with my engineering team.
Could the on boarding process be more akin to a mentor-apprentice relationship and utilize open source as the avenue, with the burden of work placed on the apprentice. Your company has both closed and open source projects that many of your engineer's contribute to and manage. An apprentice level candidate works on and applies a patch with the feedback from the mentor level engineers. At some sufficient level of acceptance based on performance the apprentice is brought in for a culture fit type interview and potentially offered a position.
From the view of the apprentice this may seem like MORE work then writing resumes and prepping for technical interviews. But from my point of view as an apprentice I'd be learning skills that seem more useful than gaming resumes, screening and technical interviews, and adding to my portfolio that may never get glanced at. Skills like communication and coordination with a team, Real world coding experience and pushing to production. From the viewpoint of the mentor, I see candidates that have already been introduced to the internal workflow and show the communication necessary to work with my engineering team.