BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads
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Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads
#2As a former hiring manager, I am a little puzzled what the deal is for employers.
New grad positions are usually the easiest to fill, by far - much easier than any software engineering position where you’re hiring for some former experience. Also, new grads are almost always put on a team with more experienced engineers - one new grad at a time. This is so they get mentorship, onboarding and taking team dynamics into account.
So I see little to no point in bringing a cohesive group of new grads into a company, who want to negotiate a higher compensation to come in, as a group. Instead: just hire individual new grads, have them start together, they are broken up into teams but give them space to socialise with each other. It’s how new grad programs work at most tech companies.
I get that this setup sounds amazing for new grads. Come with a team you already know! Earn more money!
But I just don’t see the sell working for most companies.
Paying a premium to hire a team of engineers with experience absolutely makes sense, assuming that team keeps working as the same unit. This is why acqui-hires often negotiate a higher price than hiring each member would be. Note that during acqui-hires, companies interview each team member and usually refuse to take on people who they decide don’t meet their hiring bar.
A team of new grads, who likely wouldn’t work on the same team after hiring? Trusting interviewing with a third party company which probably has a different standard than my company? Paying more for this group than if I individually hired new grads? I cannot see any appeal, putting my hiring manager hat on.
What am I missing?
Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads
#3As a former hiring manager, I am a little puzzled what the deal is for employers . New grad positions are usually the easiest to fill, by far - much easier than any software engineering position where you’re hiring for some former experience. Also, new grads are almost always put on a team with more experienced engineers - one new grad at a time. This is so they get mentorship, onboarding and taking team dynamics int…
Indeed, that is one of the primary concerns on the employer side we've heard.
It is easier to hire new grads for sure. Our solution to that is to offer highly desirable engineers. Our founding group is a set of high school friends, currently all juniors at Caltech, CMU, and MIT. In our first batch, we have numerous groups with high Putnam scores, high ranking competitive programmers, and 2+ FAANG internships. There will likely be a sense of FOMO for companies in order to recruit these groups, as they'd be losing out on multiple highly regarded talents. Eventually, we would scale down the quality factor as this method of hiring becomes less peculiar. We've already had a number of companies commit, so I suppose it's working.
Plus, these students don't necessarily need to work together in the same department. Students have expressed a tremendous want towards just being in a new city with the same subset of friends.
There's also some unfounded benefits we will be analyzing and testing in our first few batches. We theorize that this could greatly influence the retention and burnout rates at companies, which is a big issue in tech.
As for trusting a third-party with interviews. We agree that this is one of the biggest leaps companies will have to make, but we think multiple rounds of leet-code style interviews aren't correlated with success anyway. And, applicants have to do basically the same problem sets over at each interview and company. We also let companies add supplemental questions to roles, like the college admissions process, so we hope that's enough to bridge the gap for now. I agree that is might be even more experimental, but I think it's necessary in the long run, for other reasons too.
Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads
#4As a former hiring manager, I am a little puzzled what the deal is for employers . New grad positions are usually the easiest to fill, by far - much easier than any software engineering position where you’re hiring for some former experience. Also, new grads are almost always put on a team with more experienced engineers - one new grad at a time. This is so they get mentorship, onboarding and taking team dynamics int…
Indeed, that is one of the primary concerns on the employer side we've heard. It is easier to hire new grads for sure. Our solution to that is to offer highly desirable engineers. Our founding group is a set of high school friends, currently all juniors at Caltech, CMU, and MIT. In our first batch, we have numerous groups with high Putnam scores, high ranking competitive programmers, and 2+ FAANG internships. There w…
The idea of a company being more cohesive seems appealing from the employer side as well.
I don't remember if I've seen studies to back this up, but I'd suspect that retention is much higher when your employees have formed meaningful relationships within the company.
Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads
#5As a former hiring manager, I am a little puzzled what the deal is for employers . New grad positions are usually the easiest to fill, by far - much easier than any software engineering position where you’re hiring for some former experience. Also, new grads are almost always put on a team with more experienced engineers - one new grad at a time. This is so they get mentorship, onboarding and taking team dynamics int…
Indeed, that is one of the primary concerns on the employer side we've heard. It is easier to hire new grads for sure. Our solution to that is to offer highly desirable engineers. Our founding group is a set of high school friends, currently all juniors at Caltech, CMU, and MIT. In our first batch, we have numerous groups with high Putnam scores, high ranking competitive programmers, and 2+ FAANG internships. There w…
It’s true that if you can say “you can hire from {top N colleges like MIT}” then this would be attractive. Trouble is, this won’t scale beyond the top 10: the ones which get far more recruiter reachouts than students.
The other thing that could be a sell is retention. Retaining new grads beyond a year or two is notoriously difficult. If you’d have data or proof that this approach significantly increases retention and its because of the group setting, that could make the premium laid worthwhile.
You still need to convince companies to trust your assessment method: not a problem while you only have new grads from the very top schools, but would be a problem if you open up to all colleges.
Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, that is one of the primary concerns on the employer side we've heard. It is easier to hire new grads for sure. Our solution to that is to offer highly desirable engineers. Our founding group is a set of high school friends, currently all juniors at Caltech, CMU, and MIT. In our first batch, we have numerous groups with high Putnam scores, high ranking competitive programmers, and 2+ FAANG internships. There w…
It’s true that if you can say “you can hire from {top N colleges like MIT}” then this would be attractive. Trouble is, this won’t scale beyond the top 10: the ones which get far more recruiter reachouts than students. The other thing that could be a sell is retention. Retaining new grads beyond a year or two is notoriously difficult. If you’d have data or proof that this approach significantly increases retention and…
Thanks for your input! I agree with all your points. Right now, we're just doing things that don't scale and hoping it works out. A year after the first two batches graduate, hopefully we have enough data points to workout tangible benefits.
Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads
#7As a former hiring manager, I am a little puzzled what the deal is for employers . New grad positions are usually the easiest to fill, by far - much easier than any software engineering position where you’re hiring for some former experience. Also, new grads are almost always put on a team with more experienced engineers - one new grad at a time. This is so they get mentorship, onboarding and taking team dynamics int…
Indeed, that is one of the primary concerns on the employer side we've heard. It is easier to hire new grads for sure. Our solution to that is to offer highly desirable engineers. Our founding group is a set of high school friends, currently all juniors at Caltech, CMU, and MIT. In our first batch, we have numerous groups with high Putnam scores, high ranking competitive programmers, and 2+ FAANG internships. There w…
I think its a cool idea, but unless this is aimed at large tech companies (which maybe it is, I can't tell), I can't see the value here. I know you are from highly sought after school but to be honest the working industry of software engineering is very little like your college experience.
You are not going to be hired as new grads to be writing proofs using turing machines. You are going to be thrown into the grinder of (most likely) web application development & software engineering (which you may have taken a class on, but is nothing like the actual experience). Working as a professional software engineer requires so many things not taught in school that the only way to learn this stuff is through experience.
I am not trying to sound like a old bastard but you are over-valuing your hand. Competitive programming, FAANG internships, are all great but its not the same as actually having a job. The hiring shortage is mainly senior engineers and if you were offering an app for senior engineers to find a job together I could see that really paying off, but for new grads I don't see the employers going for it.
Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, that is one of the primary concerns on the employer side we've heard. It is easier to hire new grads for sure. Our solution to that is to offer highly desirable engineers. Our founding group is a set of high school friends, currently all juniors at Caltech, CMU, and MIT. In our first batch, we have numerous groups with high Putnam scores, high ranking competitive programmers, and 2+ FAANG internships. There w…
I think its a cool idea, but unless this is aimed at large tech companies (which maybe it is, I can't tell), I can't see the value here. I know you are from highly sought after school but to be honest the working industry of software engineering is very little like your college experience. You are not going to be hired as new grads to be writing proofs using turing machines. You are going to be thrown into the grinde…
Thank you for the advice. Addressing the first part, yes, we are aiming at large tech companies. This is mostly because we need companies that actually need to hire large numbers of people since groups of 4 > individuals.
Of couse we thought about addressing senior engineers as well, much like Stripe's original hiring program, but we determined that there were too many problems regarding that for now.
Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads
#9To any team of students considering applying for this, please let me suggest an alternative:
Don't waste your time working for the kind of company that would choose to hire through such a program.
Instead, build something together that you think would make a positive difference in the world.
Don't squander your lives selling advertisements or developing weapons or "increasing the efficiency of the markets". Don't sell out. Do something meaningful, damn it.
Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s true that if you can say “you can hire from {top N colleges like MIT}” then this would be attractive. Trouble is, this won’t scale beyond the top 10: the ones which get far more recruiter reachouts than students. The other thing that could be a sell is retention. Retaining new grads beyond a year or two is notoriously difficult. If you’d have data or proof that this approach significantly increases retention and…
Thanks for your input! I agree with all your points. Right now, we're just doing things that don't scale and hoping it works out. A year after the first two batches graduate, hopefully we have enough data points to workout tangible benefits.
If you take away “universities where everyone wants to hire from but very few can”, I am personally dubious of what else there is left.
Also you might want to look to understand what went wrong at Triplebyte which wanted to provide a one interview-only experience for experienced candidates but it never worked. Companies still did their interviews. The company also had to pivot their business model from this and explained in detail why they did it [1]
Triplebyte was targeting a very valuable and hard-to-hire group of experienced engineers. You are targeting the easiest to hire group. Consider what will make you succeed as a business where Triplebyte could not, even though they solved for a much bigger pain point for hiring managers.