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Apiumhub is a company in constant growth, where we are always looking for ways to work with the latest technologies, best practices and be as efficient as possible. This is not only based on the technology area, but is extrapolated to the company culture, and therefore affects all areas, including Talent Acquisition.
We are going to talk about how we are defining together what the best recruitment process can be, but before we go into how we work in this field, we must be clear about certain points:
- The selection process is a bilateral process, where a candidate and a company seek to get to know each other.
- Each company must adapt its selection process, depending on resources, urgency, level of demand and brand image.
- There is no such thing as a perfect recruitment process. Recruiting people is not an exact science, and no matter how much you improve, there will always be points of risk and very subjective points of view, both for the people who define the process and for the people who participate in it.
Objectives of the Recruitment Process
Before defining the selection process, it is important to define the objectives you intend to pursue with this process. Some objectives can be achieved immediately, others will take a long time to achieve.
- Agile process
The market in which we operate is extremely competitive and people in the sector who are open to new opportunities tend to participate in several selection processes, and good professionals choose where to work. This principle is fundamental to adapt the whole process.
- Short process
In order to make a process agile, it is not only enough to move quickly from phase to phase, but it is important not to establish too many phases. Time is money and a process with many phases means time for many people.
- Offering a good candidate experience = Brand Image
Taking care of the brand image is very important, being relevant within the SW engineering community is very difficult, there are many companies that spend a lot of time and effort in marketing in order to position themselves.
We want to maintain and improve this brand image, and if we offer a bad experience in a selection process, it can be very negative.
How to achieve these goals
Agile process
In order to have an agile process that does not take several weeks, it is necessary to act fast →
Give quick feedback to the candidate and do not create a feeling of uncertainty. This allows us →
To be ahead of our competitors, and to be able to attract the best professionals before other companies. At the same time, we transmit to the candidate the inputs quickly, whether we want you with us or not, leaving an impact in the last point, the image of the company.
Short process
I think this is the most critical point, because it is very difficult to make sure that there is a good match between candidate and company in just a few steps. Despite this, we have almost always got it right, and we have rarely made mistakes. The steps we usually follow are:
- Intro meeting: Videocall with Talent Acquisition, where basically what is sought is to provide as much information as possible to the candidate, as we said, we must take into account that technological profiles choose where to work, so it is important to explain transparently what we do, how we do it, company culture and context. Explaining our strengths and weaknesses. Then, get to know the candidate’s situation, motivations, expectations, and agree between the two parties if there is a fit or not, and therefore if it is worth moving on to the next phase.
- Technical Meeting, like all phases, is another bidirectional phase, where the candidate will be able to see in detail how we work, what the technological environment, methodology, project, and colleagues would be like, as well as being able to ensure that the quality SW orientation we work with is true. On our side, we can see what is the technical knowledge of the person through technical questions, very oriented to SW engineering concepts, architecture, patterns and best practices. This is much more important to us than knowledge of specific languages or libraries. Even if the interview is technical, it is useful for both parties to verify whether the cultural fit is still correct, both in terms of the way he expresses himself and addresses us and the image that we can transmit to him during the talk. Only very rarely, if there are doubts about the technical level, do we consider doing a test.
- Final interview, with Evgeny, CEO of the company. It is an interview focused again on cultural aspects, to go over the person’s career goals, what he/she is looking for and to see if there is a fit with our Core Values. For the person who participates in the interview, I think this phase is also very productive, because it allows him/her to get to know the person who runs the company and thus better reflects the soul of the company.
Obviously, if after this phase, the candidate wants to do another interview to get to know a specific team or person or to talk to someone again, we coordinate it so that this can be done.
Good Candidate Experience = Brand Image
Following the above two points, we believe, already provides a good experience during the selection process, but in addition to this you must follow a series of principles, which all revolve around “Treat someone the way you would like to be treated”, i.e. empathy. From this rule, there is a long list of actions to be taken, but perhaps the most basic ones would be.
- Information. Inform and give visibility about the process in a transparent way.
- Sincerity. Both to manage expectations and to give feedback in a sincere manner. This is sometimes complicated when the feedback is constructive, but in my opinion, most people will thank you for being sincere and honest with them, as long as it is done in a polite and respectful way.
- Politeness. Treat them with respect and thank them for their time. Their time is as valuable or more valuable than ours.
In the end, this is not a magic formula, I believe that common sense must prevail, based on what we mentioned before, empathy. If we manage to make the person feel good, on the one hand, we will have more chances that he/she will want to join our team in case of an offer.
In case there is no offer, they may want to try again in the future and the image they will have of us will be positive 🙂
As I said at the beginning, no selection process is perfect, and it is possible that as time goes by we will change some things, but at the moment this is as far as we have got, and I think it is what works best. Personally, in my previous experience working as a HeadHunter, I have met hundreds of companies, from Unicorns, Big Techs to small companies, seeing processes of up to nine phases to processes of only one interview, and I think that with the process we have designed, we achieve a good balance between investment of time and brand image, with a fairly high percentage of success.
We hope you liked it, if so, it will be a pleasure to share more experience and information with you.
