# Align your team to avoid expensive hiring mistakes.

## A practical, expert-reviewed Guide to growing software engineering teams effectively, written by and for hiring managers, recruiters, interviewers, and candidates.

- **440-page online book**  
- **837+** links and references  
- Digital access to this title in the Holloway Reader  
- Downloadable PDF for personal offline use

**Length:** 440 pages  
**Edition:** e1.0.8  
**Language:** English  
**ISBN (Holloway.com):**  
978-1-952120-11-4  
**ISBN (print):**  
978-1-952120-08-4  
$75

**Without a doubt, this guide is the best resource I’ve read on technical hiring, by a substantial margin.**  
Kellan Elliott-McCrea(Dropbox, formerly Blink Health, Etsy)

# Everyone should have access to expert knowledge.

Hiring software engineering talent is a struggle for most companies. The ever-growing demand for software in almost every business leads to extensive searches for the right candidates. Hiring is rated as one of the biggest obstacles to growth by most CEOs. Hiring managers, recruiters, and interviewers all wrestle with how to source candidates, interview fairly and effectively, and ultimately motivate the right candidates to accept offers. The whole process is often costly and frustrating for companies, and all too often stressful or unfair to candidates navigating this high-stakes process.

Anyone who cares about building effective software teams should benefit from the experiences and knowledge of those who have tackled similar challenges, and avoid repeating common and costly mistakes. In this Guide, we’ve assembled know-how from some of the most insightful and experienced leaders and practitioners—senior engineers, recruiters, entrepreneurs, and hiring managers—who’ve built teams from early-stage startups to thousand-person engineering organizations. The lead author of this Guide, Ozzie Osman, previously led product engineering at Quora and teams at Google, and built (and sold) his own startup. Additional contributors include Aditya Agarwal, former CTO of Dropbox; Jennifer Kim, former head of diversity at Lever; veteran recruiters and startup founders Jose Guardado and Aline Lerner; and over a dozen others.

We believe recruiting and hiring can be done well, in a way that has a positive impact on companies, employees, and every candidate. With the right foundations and practice, teams and candidates can approach a stressful and difficult process with knowledge and confidence.

# What People Are Saying

Matthew Howells-Barby  
The [@holloway](https://twitter.com/holloway) books are some of the best primers on complex topics I’ve ever come across. Beautiful online reading experience too.

Will Larson  
As a candidate, sometimes recruiting processes can feel like they’re designed by someone trying to recount the series of incantations that summoned new hires at their previous organization. This guide walks back the magic, building the foundation for an equitable, effective recruiting system that works for your candidates and your company.

Tammy Han  
People are the lifeblood of your company, because without them, there is no company. This guide is mandatory reading for anyone who is in a hiring manager or interviewing role and wants a practical, step-by-step playbook to set up technical recruiting and hiring processes for success. Holloway has curated actionable advice, resources, and battle-tested approaches from the best hiring managers and veteran recruiters in the tech community—honest advice you won’t find anywhere else, that can be implemented by your team tomorrow.

## Table of Contents

Part I  
- Foundations  
  - [Candidate-Company Fit Read Preview](https://www.holloway.com/g/technical-recruiting-hiring/sections/candidate-company-fit)  
  - Do You Need to Hire?  
  - Principles  
  - Cast of Characters  
  - Overview of the Hiring Funnel

Part II  
- Diversity and Inclusion  
  - [The Tech Industry: By the Numbers Read Preview](https://www.holloway.com/g/technical-recruiting-hiring/sections/the-tech-industry-by-the-numbers)  
  - What Is D&I?  
  - D&I in Hiring  
  - D&I Myths and Pitfalls  
  - Improving D&I in the Hiring Process

Part III  
- Internal Alignment  
  - [How Roles, Levels, and Titles Fit Together Read Preview](https://www.holloway.com/g/technical-recruiting-hiring/sections/how-roles-levels-and-titles-fit-together)  
  - Defining Roles  
  - Setting Levels and Titles  
  - Compensation  
  - Hiring Plans  
  - Job Descriptions

Part IV  
- Connecting With Candidates  
  - [Early Signals Read Preview](https://www.holloway.com/g/technical-recruiting-hiring/sections/early-signals)  
  - How To Read a Resume  
  - Candidate Sources  
  - First Conversations

Part V  
- Interviewing  
  - Conducting Interviews  
  - Preparing Interviewers  
  - Technical Interview Formats  
  - Technical Interview Questions  
  - Nontechnical Interviewing  
  - Best Practices for Interviewers  
  - Evaluating Interviews  
  - Legal Considerations for Interviewers

Part VI  
- After the Interviews  
  - Checking References  
  - Making a Decision  
  - Extending an Offer

# Definitions of Key Terms

**Job Requisition:** A job requisition (or job requisition form) is an internal company document a manager uses to formally request permission to fill a role or position. These documents are particularly useful for coordination and wider alignment at larger companies.

## Pitfalls and Confusions Explained

**Danger:** Wording in your job description can have unintended consequences in determining who applies.

**Confusion:** People often confuse percentiles and percents, with serious consequences. When someone recommends compensating at the 75th percentile, they are talking about percentile rank, or paying at a rate that is greater than what 75% of companies pay for a role.

**Controversy:** The “best” interview format for coding questions is a notoriously controversial topic. While many companies rely primarily on onsite, face-to-face coding interviews, a significant fraction of engineers consider “whiteboard coding” to be intimidating, stressful, and not predictive of job performance.

# Researched, written, and edited by experts.

**Written by practitioners. Edited by professionals.**  
Original Author: Osman (Ozzie) Osman (Monarch Money, formerly Quora and Google)  
Contributing Authors: Aditya Agarwal, Alex Allain, Jose Guardado, Jennifer Kim, Aline Lerner, Joshua Levy, Viraj Mody, Kevin Morrill, Jason Wong, Scott Woody.

# Get lifetime access now.

The full book, interactive and searchable. Plus all future updates.

$75

**We believe in a reading experience that goes beyond paper or e-books.** Reading on Holloway means a distraction-free, interactive format.