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Internal hiring strategy to find senior software engineering talent from Codingscape CTO Jimmy Jacobson 🎯 "Our leadership team at Codingscape used a Mark Twain book to shape our internal hiring process. Here’s how the “Tom Sawyer approach” came about and why it works: One of the most famous sections from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” is when Tom Sawyer gets in trouble and has to whitewash his fence. Naturally, he’s annoyed he has to waste a perfect summer day doing something boring instead of playing outside. Later, some other kids visit to make fun of Tom. But Tom just ignores them and cheerfully continues painting. When the other kids ask what he’s doing, Tom goes, “I’m painting my aunt’s fence. It’s the most fun thing I’ve ever done.” The other kids don’t believe him but Tom is persistent. Eventually, someone says, “Well, if it’s so fun, I want to try.” Tom feigns resistance but eventually gets him a paintbrush. Soon, he has all the kids happily painting the fence for him! So how does this apply to hiring? Well, when we’re writing up a job description, we share it with our close network for feedback since they’ll likely know people who are a good fit. But 9 times out of 10? Someone within our close network will read the job description and say, "Hey, I want to do this job." This has happened enough times that we’ve coined it the Tom Sawyer approach. We show someone how fulfilling it is to work at Codingscape by having them do a consulting project with us or reviewing a job description, and if they say they want to do it, we let them do it. This especially works well with people who ran their own businesses previously, as they have multiple skill sets and can transition between different roles and responsibilities. At the end of the day, the fence gets painted and everyone is happy." Follow Jimmy Jacobson for more wisdom on hiring and retaining senior software engineers 🙌 #tech #hiring #softwareengineers #devs #talent #ctoinsights

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