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Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk

blog.petesoder.com

1–10 of 26 posts

Re: Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk

#2
This is a good writeup.

In general, this type of mindset is important, especially for company founders. It's not so much "PR" or "sales" or "marketing", but more about understanding what's important to the target audience, and explaining why what you're offering is a good fit for what they want.

VCs, business partners, employees, customers...they all have a different perspective on the world, and it's hard to be successful in business if you're unable to get your message across.

Re: Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk

#3
Great post. I think this isn't discussed enough (which just benefits those companies who have nailed it). This ties into one of my prime lessons of tech management: always be recruiting. To do that well, you have to start with an awesome idea/company and then hone your message to get the best people working with you.

Re: Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk

#4

Great post. I think this isn't discussed enough (which just benefits those companies who have nailed it). This ties into one of my prime lessons of tech management: always be recruiting. To do that well, you have to start with an awesome idea/company and then hone your message to get the best people working with you.

Yeah - great point. Recruiting is so hard these days that most people don't get enough leads in the top of the funnel in order to really see enough quality candidates get through the screening process.

Establishing an engineering story (and telling it well) allows you to add more interested engineers to the top of the funnel. It's a longer term strategy, but I think it's required based on present market dynamics.

Re: Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk

#5

This is a good writeup. In general, this type of mindset is important, especially for company founders. It's not so much "PR" or "sales" or "marketing", but more about understanding what's important to the target audience, and explaining why what you're offering is a good fit for what they want. VCs, business partners, employees, customers...they all have a different perspective on the world, and it's hard to be succ…

Thanks. It's been a ton of fun learning to teach story-telling to engineers/CTOs. Every good developer cares about an interesting engineering challenge, but nailing the quick story around it can be slightly challenging sometimes.

Re: Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk

#7
It sounds like like you're trying to encourage more meaningful connections between engineers and recruiters. That's a good thing, but the term PR is a turn off even used as an analogy.

Even if engineers are the mark rather than the intended audience, those roles often overlap so your message should appeal to both.

That said I think your content is on the right track. Maybe title it something like “here’s how to encourage more meaningful connections between engineers and recruiters”...

Re: Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk

#8
Great post. It's a real issue for many startups I talk to that wonder why they're having a hard time recruiting tech talent and haven't spent the time to build a brand and relationship with engineers. If you happen to have a consumer brand, that's great (Apple, Google, etc) but the most important thing is to create an engineering brand that tells the story of what kind of shop you're going to be to work for and why people should work for you instead of one of a huge number of other startups.

Re: Why PR for Your Engineering Team is not Crazy Talk

#10

It sounds like like you're trying to encourage more meaningful connections between engineers and recruiters. That's a good thing, but the term PR is a turn off even used as an analogy. Even if engineers are the mark rather than the intended audience, those roles often overlap so your message should appeal to both. That said I think your content is on the right track. Maybe title it something like “here’s how to encou…

Good feedback, thank you.

Although I'm not sure it's about creating meaningful connections between engineers and "recruiters," Although I guess it depends who the recruiter is in the company. Sometimes it's the CTO or engineering manager - but sometimes the initial story-telling (aka company pitch) is delegated to a traditional recruiter (which normally isn't as effective with engineers).

I'd prefer to see traditional recruiters go the way of the Tyrannosaurus.

If you want to hire the best team as an engineering manager it's typically best not to delegate the job to someone else.

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