Putting People back into Recruitment

Wouldn’t it be great to meet the members of a company before you apply for a role; hear the CEO talk about what they are looking for; work through practical examples of their values and teamwork ethos. The last time you did that was, surely, to apply for the graduate training scheme at a large corporate?

After reading time and again that the hiring process is broken or questions about what value recruitment agents bring, Tech Talkfest decided that it was time to put people back at the centre of companies hiring great people. We took the best elements of the ‘assessment centre’ and combined them with the best way to get a job: networking! And we produced Networking to a New role with the Beans Group.

THE BEANS GROUP were looking to fill a mix of roles, so we had people with different skills to bring to the table. They mixed well together and James put them at their ease to get them talking to each other.

James has a very charismatic presentation style. His enthusiasm is infectious when he talked about where the Beans Group came from, what they’ve achieved so far and where they want to go. That gives a very clear narrative vision for what the company might be in a few years’ time, especially when you think about how far they’ve come already. That got the motivated, innovative people in the room very excited about being part of that vision.

James was clear that even if they weren’t going to apply for jobs, he wanted to make sure they took something away from the evening.

The exercises worked well to help people focus on what they wanted going forward, whether or not that’s going to be part of the Beans Group. The fact that so many of his employees were eager to come along for the event and help facilitate also speaks highly of what is clearly a strong workplace culture.

The feedback from the guests was terrific. They all appreciated the ability to talk about what they can bring to the table and help the beans group with their challenges. They didn’t have to write an amazing cover letter, just turn up, be themselves and let their abilities shine through.

Suitable candidates are not necessarily a list of qualifications, but unleashed potential or an attitude .In great companies, word of mouth and networking play an important part in filling key positions. Having a conversation is more pleasurable than sifting through reams of CVs and cover letters. It allowed James and his team to talk about the company as a whole and see first-hand, how these people could fit into the company and where.

Some of them may be successful, others may not, but they will all have met some great people and we hope, made some great contacts that could help them find their next role.

If you missed out on the event there’s still time to apply online for a number of roles – http://thebeansgroup.workable.com/ feel free to mention in the cover note you missed the opportunity and would be interested in exploring more.

Networking is the best way to recruit the best people

We think that Evan Harris has. His experience in the corporate world has given him the skills, and, with the spark of a great idea, he created the Expert network. As you know we have a passion for helping our network, so you can see why we think Evan is terrific!

Evan came up with the idea for The Expert Network after using his personal network to recruit the I.T. team for a large programme. This approach created a higher performing team than usual and saved the client external recruitment fees.

Around the same time an I.T. recruiter called him about a contract job. He wasn’t interested. But in response to the inevitable “do you know anyone else?” he suggested a former colleague. The great news is his former colleague got the job, the recruiter pocketed £40,000 in fees.

He thought that it was time for experienced professionals to collaborate more effectively in the recruitment process and beyond. Peer-to-peer models had already revolutionised so many other industries, why not recruitment?

The best people to help you build a team are those that have worked directly with and have relationships with the best people they know. Why not build the team from the expertise of those people? He launched The Expert Network connecting the individual networks of top I.T. professionals into an invite-only super network You can bring the benefit of your network to benefit everyone within and beyond your network.

You can see why we love him at Tech Talkfest!

It seems they are building a trend, according to their blog

If you want to get involved, you are going to need to reach out to your own network to get yourself invited to The Expert Network. Evan personally welcomes everyone who is invited, so it would be your opportunity to find out more about him or follow them on Twitter @TheExpertNetwork

Evan understands how much building relationships is important. Trust and privacy are what people value with the advent of social media. We all know that it is not what you know, but who you know or, more importantly, who knows you!

Hiring your technical team

When you’re hiring a technical member of your team, it’s often very easy to fixate upon a certain skill-set, certain programming languages or even a certain number of years’ experience. You might even ask for industry specific experience.

More often than not, that just means you end up with a technical team that is less than the sum of its parts.

The key thing about a new hire is to think about the problem that you’re trying to solve, and how they’re going to fit into the current/new team. The skills that they currently have probably don’t matter as much as the skills that they can learn.

If we accept Malcolm Gladwell’s  claim about expertise; then you can reasonably expect to have an expert developer based on about 5 years’ experience. Technology is always moving forwards, and the last thing you want is someone who has 5 years’ experience doing the same thing over and over again; you want someone who has 5 years’ experience doing new things in technology each year. Bear in mind; that doesn’t mean shortlisting people with all the buzzwords of the day on their CV; that doesn’t make them developers.

When you’re interviewing; you could ask some silly “gotcha” technical questions; but I don’t believe it will actually help you find the right candidate. If they can get passionate about a technology topic, and speak at length about it, then that’s a better sign of someone who will care about the job they do for you. I always start with some questions that have no right or wrong answers just to see where that takes the discussion. If you start with something like “Apart from an IDE, what tools do you think are essential to you as a developer”; and yet they look at you with a blank stare; it probably isn’t a good start.

As part of our recruitment process, we always give a download link with a set of questions that they can do in their spare time and submit back to our company. It shows us really 3 things about the developer

1. Time management – I normally give them a deadline of about a week (always including a weekend). I want to see how they behave with a deadline; some people say I can’t do it by the end of next week because they have to visit their grandmother. That’s fine, they’re managing my expectations early. You have to be quite brutal here,
2. Analytical/Research skills – I wouldn’t expect my team to develop without access to their preferred search engine of choice. None of the questions are terribly difficult and I am expecting that you’ll use StackOverflow to find an approximate solution. I am constantly amazed as to how many people just can’t make the leap from there to the solution itself.
3. Pragmatism – a few of my questions are intentionally badly worded. Projects change scope on a weekly basis, how you approach your work from the start helps you cope with changes

In the end though, I’ve been very lucky. I hardly have to do any hiring. We have exceptionally low staff churn in the technical group.