Part II: Sourcing effectiveness for Engineers at Riot Games
Five months ago I shared a blog post on sourcing effectiveness after one year hunting for senior polyglot software engineers. I want to share the latest update on the numbers and I wanted to compare these numbers with my efforts in finding System Engineers and Network Engineers. You will see there is a lot of difference!
UPDATE ON THE NUMBERS
The response rate showed a slight decrease, but the other metrics showed solid improvement.
OTHER ROLES I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON
Sourcing System Engineers
Similar to Software Engineers, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all “DevOps” role, so let me share the context and boolean string I used.
Current title:
(“site reliability engineer” OR sre OR “site reliability” OR “reliability engineer” OR “operations engineer” OR “system engineer” OR “systems engineer” OR “systems engineering” OR “system engineering” OR “operations engineering” OR devops OR “dev ops” OR “infrastructure engineer” OR “platform engineer” OR “Linux engineer”)Must have skills:
(Docker OR containerization OR Kubernetes OR mesos) (“High scalability” OR scalability OR “High availability” OR “Load balancers” OR “Load balancing”) (Ruby OR python OR node)Location:
EU locations that do not require a work permit for IrelandThe numbers
I’m pretty happy with the similar response rate compared to Software Engineer, but the number of qualified candidates I reached out to is considerably lower. I will share some assumptions at the end of the blog.
What surprised me is the % to interviews/screens. So 37% of all the people I reached out to are up for a chat with either me or the hiring manager.
Network Engineer
Current title:
(senior OR lead OR principal OR Architect OR engineer)Must have skills:
(CCIE OR JNCIE) MPLS BGP SDN (Programming OR python OR java OR automation) (design OR architect OR deployed OR production) (Global OR EU OR EMEA OR distributed)Location:
EU locations that do not require a work permit for IrelandThe numbers
As you can see the response rate is approx. 15% lower compared to the System Engineer and Software Engineer. The Network Engineers that do end up in interviews/screens have 50% hire rate. Would have loved to have the same % for the other roles ;-)
BUT.. WHY THE DIFFERENCE?
I used the same approach as described in my first blog post. The numbers differ quite a lot and please find some of my thoughts below on the why. Curious to get your take on this as well. Engineers, please feel free to comment!
System Engineers
System Engineers proved to be a tougher candidate market. With on avg. 190 resumes for just one hire. My assumptions are:
- System Engineers are harder to find as they tend to have limited social presence. System Engineers tend to spend more attention to security and are usually more reluctant in posting info online. This would explain the relatively lower total candidate reach outs.
- System Engineers with experience at scale are more scarce compared to Software Engineers and they are usually well taken care of by their employers.
Network Engineers
Network Engineers had a far lower response rate, but a higher success rate of % interview to hire. My assumptions are:
- Network Engineering has been around for a while and most of the Network Engineers work at large Telco’s, ISPs where scale is huge and there are just a few companies that are able to compete against this scale (e.g. Facebook, Google, Linkedin etc.) This might have prevented Network Engineers to respond positively.
- There are not that many Network Engineers that have experience in automation/writing production code (e.g. solid experience with SDN — besides many engineers at Google that don’t want to leave). I’m assuming not all Network Engineers felt comfortable with having the full skill set.
- There are not that many gamers among Network Engineers.
Again, curious to hear your thoughts on this!
In two weeks I will post my next blog post and will share the tools I’ve used in hunting for Software Engineers, Network Engineers, and System Engineers.