Case Study - The Value in Positioning

Why is the positioning of a role important?

It determines the talent pool you fish from but also decides how many bites you will get.

If a role is not correctly positioned it will mean that candidates who could be great for the business look at the role as a lateral move or a step backward when in reality the role would demonstrate progression.

This is exactly what happened with a recent placement I made with Montega - they are an investment research business in Hamburg. Originally they were looking for a Senior Engineer to work on-site as the first engineer to help scale out the team underneath this individual. The aim was to initially Lead some existing external providers and freelancers both from a people perspective and a technical perspective. The role would have an influence on the technical direction of the product and impact multiple stakeholders. It's a great opportunity for an Engineer they would get the scope to push a product forward which had great traction. Improve their skills both as a technical leader and people leader whilst making a real impact on the business and their customers.

The catch here is that’s a big remit for a Senior and as it was a first hire of its kind into the business they were open to reevaluating the role description. Framing the role as a Principal created greater alignment and opportunity in the market.

Montega also reconsidered their stance around onsite work when comparing the duties of this role to that of other teams internally in the business and agreed after an onboarding period being on site would be less important for them as a business.

By having the correct name for the position it appeals to a greater section of the market if you were a Principal, Staff Engineer, Lead Engineer, or even an Engineering Manager looking to move back to hands-on work you would not view a Principal Engineer role as a step backward. Also, a Senior engineer ready to make the next step who could demonstrate technical leadership and mentorship can see this as the next logical step forward, meaning you have a pool of candidates who can be open to lateral moves and a larger pool of candidates who can see the next step forward.

This created a much larger candidate pool let's take a quick look at numbers from LinkedIn for candidates within Greater Hamburg without getting into granular tech stacks and individual characteristics.

Candidate pool

Senior Software engineers based in Hamburg – 903

Lead software engineer - 132

Staff Software Engineer - 46

Principal Software Engineer – 40 Engineering Manager – 48

Pool increase = 266

That’s a 29.45% increase in the candidate pool, also the candidates in this larger pool are likely to have the higher level skills required for the role in comparison to the original candidate pool of Senior Engineers.

A danger in positioning a role poorly:

A Senior engineer's role will appeal to the wrong end of the market. Candidates wanting to take a step up to the role who are ready to be senior but not ready to Lead and create a technical vision for the company. This will create a lot of noise and give you as a manager significantly more work to undertake in screening and interviewing.

This pool is less well defined also as you may have contractors or freelancers included, as well as new entrants such as graduates.

A quick search provided over 4,500 candidates, with only 226 having held more senior positions than software engineer in their previous roles.

Conclusion

A key reason positioning is a difficult conversation is the definitions of roles within the market, there is no common framework to ensure that all roles are similarly positioned. This is where consultation can be valuable! Internal definitions may misplace your role and potentially undersell the opportunity or give you a lot of noise to cut through to find the right candidate.

I speak with engineers across the industry daily and have done so for almost 12 years – I have recruited within the UK, USA, EU, and APAC. This means I have interviewed engineers within differing locations' tech stacks and for different business needs allowing me to calibrate quickly to new markets and new technologies. Once the role is correctly aligned I can then apply the correct focus to identify talent that will be the right fit for a business's needs whether that be focusing on specific technical skills or softer skills.

So if you are struggling with a role or have historically struggled look at the positioning!

This may be role type, location, Salary level, or tech stack there are a number of different elements to positioning to consider, and if you are unsure I am happy to set up a strategy call to help search for the right talent for your business.