Success in tech hire is not just about the tech. It’s not about the number of lines of code written. The key to success is positive, empowering leadership behaviour. Leadership skills are one of the most misunderstood responsibilities in the tech world. Too many people confuse leadership with rank and authority; however, leadership is not about being in charge. Instead, leaders are those who bring out the best in their colleagues and the company at large.
Find out the qualities you should be looking for when identifying leaders in your talent pool.
Leadership Skills that Make a Tech Hire Worthwhile
Certain traits make a tech hire better as a leader. You might want to look out for these leadership skills while hiring the next tech talent for your company:
1. Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
The approach for recruiting a rewarding tech hire is to look for capable and willing people to work together. Leadership qualities scream from candidates who can demonstrate collaborative behaviour and can showcase their ability to eliminate silos that might arise in information and knowledge sharing.
Apart from constantly updating their technical abilities, a leader will always seek to challenge themselves. Be it helping other developers with their projects, explaining a complicated task to a co-worker or helping the team troubleshoot tasks.
2. Mindset Matters
Look for tech hires who are genuinely passionate about what they do. Make the interview process conducive for the candidate to bring out their enthusiasm. However, do watch out for signs of love for their work. This will ensure you don’t hire people who only work for the sake of the paycheque.
3. Adaptability is the Name of the GameÂ
Being open to new points of view and new ideas and contradictions that challenge their thinking are attributes of a leader. As a recruiter, touching upon the topic of feedback in the interview process could be a start.
A tech hire with leadership skills deeply instilled will not mind the prospect of a change in direction if required. Leaders strike a balance between their dreams and inner personal skills to adapt to the changing wind of life. When posed with a problem, a leader will look for different and often unique ways to solve it with more insight and creativity.
4. Good Leaders are Right, But Not All the Time
When hiring, consider a candidate that does not feel the pressure to be correct all the time. It’s an incredible hack to determine whether the potential employee has the smarts AND the mindset you’ve been looking for.
An essential quality to seek in hiring a leader is their willingness to understand that somebody could help them with their expertise and shed light on things that weren’t foreseen. Sometimes, it’s okay not to know it all and receive help and constructive criticism with grace and have a collaborative approach to solving a problem.
An ideal candidate will forever be open-minded to new technology solutions, showcasing a willingness to work with others and embrace their ideas.
Probing questions and interactions with your new tech hire could help you decide whether they’re willing to admit when they’re wrong and are eager to change their minds if and when required. Regulating oneself to change and revision, and not being stuck in a box of stagnation over an idea, is a mark of a true leader.Â
When Hiring, Don’t Forget to
These are some tangible and intangible elements that HRs and hiring managers must keep in mind before hiring:
1. Emphasize Cultural Fit
Although a potential candidate’s technical skills may appear to be the only criteria, a cultural misfit may be a significant deterrent to their performance as a potential leader. During the hiring process, measuring their fit for the organisation will ensure that employees feel successful and have a sense of belonging, which is essential for a future role as a leader.
2. Ask About Short-Term Plans
Apart from discussing long-term goals, discussing short-term to midterm priorities will allow your potential tech hire to communicate their current problem-solving skills, giving you an added insight into possible qualities similar to that of a leader.
3. Continue to Check-In Â
Asking insightful questions and genuinely staying engaged and interested in a potential candidate’s vision and true motivators could help you understand the decision-making process. Being a leader requires a lot of reasonability, and thus creative questioning will help you determine if the candidate has the skills to manage a team and prioritize tasks.
The Takeaway
Companies thrive when their workforce is filled with leaders. A leader will inspire and motivate people, building a diverse collaborating team.
The result? Apart from the engagement, the overall collective effort of technical achievements increases dramatically. CodeQuotient works with companies that are seeking to hire the best tech talent. Our grads have worked with firms like Samsung, Amazon, and Oyo, to name a few. Interested? Drop us a line at info@codequotient.com for more information.
Happy Hiring!
Also read: Avoid these 6 Mistakes During IT Recruitment
