Choosing between candidates
The last station. Two strong candidates and one seat, a rejection nobody explained, and a leader who wants to know why an engineering search takes twelve weeks.
Lessons
- How do you decide between two engineers and defend the call? The one guide to the decision: what separates strong engineers from average ones, what brand is worth, how to make the trade-off calls, and how to explain an engineering search upward.
- What separates a strong engineer from an average one? The rubric, assembled from three stations. Two resumes look the same and the evidence underneath does not.
- Does a Google name on a resume matter, and does a bootcamp background matter? Brand certifies a past filter. After year three the origin story is noise against the work record, and you can now read the work record.
- Exact stack match or stronger engineer: which one wins? The three calls that decide most shortlists, each turned into a function rather than a vibe.
- Why did the hiring manager reject a candidate who "checked every box"? The invisible reasons, all of which are things the earlier stations taught you to detect.
- Why don't engineers reply to recruiters, and why is the search slow after layoffs? The funnel, quantified and aimed upward. Numbers a leader can put in a slide.
- Why does a 24-year-old engineer earn more than a 40-year-old manager, and why is this req hard? The capstone of the course. Compensation explained by scarcity, and one paragraph that says why this specific search is hard, with evidence.