Bad hires are expensive. Great hires are transformative. We help you design hiring processes that reliably identify engineers who will thrive in your environment and contribute from day one.
A single great engineer creates more value than several average ones. A single bad hire destroys more value than their salary, through slowed velocity, lowered standards, and management overhead required to address the situation. Technical hiring consulting helps you consistently identify and attract the great engineers who accelerate your team.
Most technical hiring processes are poorly designed. They test puzzle-solving ability rather than on-the-job performance, rely on resume proxies rather than demonstrated capability, and introduce biases that exclude qualified candidates from non-traditional backgrounds. Better processes are not harder to run. They just require thoughtful design.
At Arthiq, we have built our own engineering team through the same practices we recommend to clients. We know what it takes to attract talented engineers to a startup, evaluate their skills fairly, and create an environment where they do their best work. This practitioner perspective shapes every aspect of our hiring consulting.
We design end-to-end hiring processes tailored to your company stage, team culture, and the roles you need to fill. The process starts with clear role definition: what will this person actually do in their first ninety days? This specificity prevents the common problem of hiring for vague qualities like "strong engineer" and instead evaluates candidates against concrete job requirements.
Our recommended process typically includes a phone screen that assesses communication, motivation, and basic technical fit; a practical assessment that simulates actual job tasks; a technical deep-dive that explores architecture thinking and problem-solving approach; and a culture and values interview that evaluates team fit and growth potential.
We design each stage to be predictive of on-the-job success. Practical assessments use real-world problems relevant to your domain. Architecture discussions evaluate how candidates think about trade-offs, not whether they know a specific design pattern. Culture interviews assess values alignment without penalizing diversity of background or perspective.
The technical assessment is the most important and most frequently botched part of the hiring process. Whiteboard coding, algorithmic puzzles, and trivia questions are poor predictors of job performance and disproportionately disadvantage candidates from non-traditional backgrounds. We design assessments that predict how candidates will actually perform on your team.
Our preferred assessment methods include take-home projects that reflect real work, kept short enough to be respectful of candidate time; pair programming sessions where candidates work alongside your team members on a realistic task; and system design discussions where candidates walk through how they would architect a solution to a problem relevant to your product.
We also design evaluation rubrics that ensure consistent, fair assessment across candidates. Each evaluator scores against specific criteria with defined expectations for each level. This structured approach reduces bias and produces more reliable hiring decisions.
Great engineers have options. To attract them, you must be able to articulate what makes your company a compelling place to work. We help you craft engineering employer branding that communicates your technical challenges, your culture, your growth opportunities, and your mission.
We advise on sourcing strategies beyond traditional job boards. Technical blog posts, open-source contributions, conference talks, and community engagement build visibility with passive candidates who are not actively job-hunting but might be attracted by the right opportunity. We help you develop these channels systematically.
We also design competitive compensation packages that attract talent within your budget. This includes base salary benchmarking, equity compensation structuring, and non-monetary benefits that engineers value: flexible work arrangements, learning budgets, conference attendance, and equipment allowances.
Hiring does not end when the offer is signed. Effective onboarding determines how quickly new engineers become productive contributors. We design onboarding programs that get new hires shipping code in their first week and fully productive within their first month.
Our onboarding framework includes pre-day-one preparation that ensures equipment, accounts, and documentation are ready; a structured first week with clear objectives, meetings with key team members, and a well-defined starter task; a thirty-day plan that progressively increases scope and autonomy; and an assigned buddy or mentor who provides daily support during the ramp-up period.
We also design onboarding for engineering managers and technical leads, who need to understand organizational context, team dynamics, and strategic priorities in addition to the codebase. Senior hires who are not properly onboarded often struggle to make an impact, frustrating both the hire and the organization.
Great products require great teams. We help you design hiring processes that reliably identify engineers who will thrive in your environment and accelerate your product.