The Engineering Hiring Crisis: What Every HR Leader Gets Wrong with Alex Rashkovan
This episode is sponsored by 'Deel.
Hire, manage and pay – anyone, anywhere: https://www.deel.com/nickdayhr/
In this episode of the HR L&D Podcast, Nick Day is joined by Alex Rashkovan, Chairman of Filuet and CEO & Co-Founder of Atalef, to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing HR leaders today: hiring engineers when you are not a tech company.
Drawing on more than two decades of building and scaling operational and technology-enabled businesses across the globe, Alex breaks down why CV-first hiring fails for technical roles, what evidence-early screening actually looks like in practice, and how companies can move from guesswork to skills-based hiring that identifies real capability and team fit.
This conversation explores how to turn vague requests like "we need a senior developer" into clear role profiles with measurable success criteria, why a 30-minute real-work assessment gives a cleaner signal than three interviews, how AI is reshaping both the work engineers do and the way companies evaluate talent, and what it really means to hire for your company's DNA.
A must-listen for HR leaders, talent professionals, L&D teams, and anyone responsible for hiring technical talent in non-tech organisations.
Connect with Alex: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-rashkovan/
Atalef: https://atalef.ai/
Nick Day's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickday/
Find your ideal candidate with our job vacancy system: https://jgarecruitment.ck.page/919cf6b9ea
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(00:00) Preview
(01:16) Introduction and Guest Welcome
(03:14) What Human Resources Really Means
(05:51) Defining the Right Engineer vs the Best Engineer
(08:50) Why CVs Are the New Fax Machine
(11:18) The COVID Hiring Failure That Changed Everything
(15:11) Evidence-Based Screening and the Role Definition Gold Mine
(17:58) Why Companies Struggle to Find Engineers
(22:04) Turning Vague Requests Into Real Success Criteria
(26:33) Why Synthetic Coding Tests Are Losing Integrity
(29:12) The Birth of Atalef and Solving the First Mile of Tech Hiring
(39:10) Hiring for Your Company's DNA and Work Style Match
(42:26) The HR L&D Vault
(48:12) The Future of Hiring and Walking Away From CVs
