May Hiring Update

[Randy Syring]

Good morning, here is a brief update on where we stand in our hiring efforts in early May:

• We have hired one senior dev and intend to hire another 1-2 developers this year.  One soon(ish) and probably one later this year.
• In April, we've been focusing on senior level candidates.  I believe we've processed all candidates that applied through the end of April but have not yet started on May submissions.
• Mid-level: we have been reviewing submissions that come in and sending out questionnaires but have not yet scheduled any Technical Interviews
• Due to AI, our pre-technical-interview skills assessments are no longer reliable in helping us get the best candidates to the Technical Interview stage.  That means we are scheduling a fair number of candidates for Technical Interviews that are failing the basic skills tests in those interviews and, perhaps, shouldn't have applied in the first place.
• This is lowering our throughput and increasing the time and effort it takes to review candidates and get them to a more thorough Skills Test
• We will likely try and add some kind of pre-tech-interview screen back into the process in May
• We've had a handful of candidates go through our revised skills test process.  We are working to assess the validity of the test and calibrate our evaluation to see if we can find signal in the results that points to the candidate being a good match for success at Level 12.  Accounting for AI usage is, again, complicating this evaluation and calibration effort.
• Due to our uncertainty around our skills tests, we are prioritizing the application of candidates who are able to do a 4-6 week evaluatory contract-to-hire period.

Based on what I have seen from our efforts in April, I'm going to be making the following changes in our evaluation criteria:

• Recent and significant Python experience is becoming a harder requirement.  Our skills tests all assume it and, more importantly, we need candidates who can hit the ground running on Python projects from day 1 of joining our team.
• We are going to pass on candidates who are not living/working in US/American timezones.

Thanks for you interest in Level 12.

Randy Syring
Chief Executive Developer
Mobile/Text: 502-644-4776
Office: 812-285-8766