Episode 3: How to up your collaborative hiring game in 2020 ft. Breaking Bad

We hope you are enjoying our series on #NetflixandHire and that it’s helped you be productive and get better at recruiting while binge-watching a TV show! For our third episode, we learn some lessons on collaborative hiring from a show so iconic that even the Simpsons paid a tribute to it.

Just in case you’ve missed our first 2 episodes, here they are – Episode 1 and Episode 2

(Drumroll!) Breaking Bad 😎

Why did we choose it? Because it takes collaboration to heights like no other. If you’re wondering why so many people are enthralled by the antics of two meth cooks, we’ve tried to explain the show’s awesomeness with 3 iconic collaborative hiring takeaways for recruiters—Breaking Bad style.

1) Never compromise on the quality (of your candidate experience)

Viewers who have seen the show can easily relate to Blue Meth, a 99.1% pure form of crystal meth that the lead character, Walter White, creates. In fact, White was so obsessed with the quality of the Meth that he wouldn’t even let a fly get into his Meth lab. His product was so potent that he couldn’t tolerate even 0.01% of depreciation! 

Source: Behance.net

Maybe as recruiters, it’s impossible (and a little unhealthy) to have Walt’s irrational and obsessive quest for perfection, but running a near-perfect hiring process can have its perks.

Now think about it—you provide a candidate experience so supreme that:

 ✅ Candidates remain positive and engaged and can’t wait to work with your organization.

 ✅ You build a great developer brand that they can’t say no to.

 ✅ And, as a result, you end up building a stronger talent pipeline.

In a nutshell, providing a great experience by collaborating well with your candidates should be one of the main objectives of your collaborative hiring process 

At HackerEarth, we take pride in being a developer-first company and we follow a few steps to provide a great candidate experience: 

1. Simple and clear job descriptions. 
2. A short and mobile-friendly application process.
3. A bias-free screening process using an assessment platform. 
4. Acknowledging, communicating with, and thanking candidates at every step of the hiring process. 

2) It takes two flints to make a fire (so make your employees your brand advocates)

While Walter White can cook meth like nobody’s business, Jesse Pinkman (his sidekick) has the street smarts to connect the product with the customer. Honestly, both these characters could never function without each other. In Walt’s own words—

“You kill me, you have nothing. You kill Jesse, you don’t have me.”

Source: Amazon

If this doesn’t spell collaboration, we don’t know what does. Collaborating well with both your internal and external community can spell great benefits when you go about making a hire. And the best part is, you can inculcate this into your hiring process by making your tech team your brand advocates. This is one of the most effective ways of bringing in talent and here’s how you can do it:

Collaborative hiring through referrals

Every time you are looking to close a position, make sure you check internally for referrals. You could run some really cool referral programs for your employees. Perks could include handsome referral bonuses or a chance to win some awesome tech gadgets.

Collaborative hiring through developer experiences

If you’ve followed step 1 to a T, you’d now know how to provide a great screening experience for your candidate. The next step is to have these developers share their experience either working for your organization or interviewing for it on social media. This is one of the best ways to showcase what you stand for as a brand. These recommendations also attract other developers to try out your brand, thus helping you generate a pipeline of developer talent with almost no effort.

3) It takes a village (to build your dream team)

Fans of the show will know who Gustavo Fring is. For the uninitiated, Gus is a respected restaurateur who uses his business savvy to run an extremely successful meth distribution empire. But when Gus isn’t orchestrating drug operations or running his legitimate fast-food business, he gives his time to his community (whether providing food for the entire Albuquerque police department or glad-handing with the DEA)

Source: Pinterest

Just like Gus, forging ties between your company and your community has big benefits, especially for a recruiter. Collaborating with a tech community gives you a chance to discover potential hires. Here is a great example of leveraging a developer community like GitHub to make your collaborative hiring goals come true:

Collaborative hiring via GitHub

GitHub is one of the world’s largest code hosts, with close to 31 million developers. A developer’s GitHub profile gives you a wealth of information. Before you start shortlisting profiles on GitHub, make sure that the developer is open to recruiters approaching him/her with jobs. Once this is sorted, follow these steps to find the best talent on GitHub.

Other great forums to find some amazing developer talent include StackOverflow, Kaggle, HackerEarth, and HackerNews.

Other ways that you could run a collaborative hiring process –

• Recruit through virtual job fairs 
• Find great developer talent at your local meetup
• Hire from social media

You could read more about collaborative hiring in this Ebook. There you have it-our lessons on collaborative hiring vis a vis Breaking Bad. See you at our next one!

Soumya Chittigala Author 14 Blogs