Another great news. A new project, a new functionality, a very happy user who shows his satisfaction by expanding our services… Thanks to our Team. How big! They have succeeded, but they are at the top. All with too much work. We are almost afraid to grow up, but we have to. So we need to expand our capacity to respond to this trust.
We have to… oh no! We have to HIRE.
Where is my white blackbird?
In general, our perception when we look for people to expand our teams is that the so-called "job market" of professionals with the profile we demand is collapsed. We want to move forward, but those of RecruitmentThey don't join us, they can't find the stars that the team needs. Because of course, «we just want cracks. "
Most of the time, due to the urgency of the situation, we post job offers or “Job Posts”Like automatons, without giving the parties time to communicate. And in the end, we do not provide candidates with anything that sets us apart from what they read or receive every day. We offer you a project devoid of essence, of values. Something that leaves little mark and goes unnoticed.
In addition, we usually raise the search by pursuing "ideal" candidates. White blackbirds that fit like a glove in our team, and also bring great personal and professional potential. But experience tells us that there is no ideal candidate that accumulates the “n” characteristics we are looking for. We should look rather a person that SUME in our teams and projects.
That is why it is important to stop thinking about us, and start thinking about the person that we are going to incorporate with us, empathizing with their experience in the process, with a genuine dialogue and mutual discovery.
A candidate-centric process
If someone is thinking of a change, is it better if they can imagine it first?
That is why it is essential to know the moment of the project in which we are, why it can be attractive, think about the challenges that the future person to hire will face, and even tell them how their day to day will be.
Let's avoid serial, depersonalized personnel selections, and marked solely by the hiring milestone. Let us promote a fluid dialogue between all parties, without bias, highlighting the why and the answers as an important part of the process. At the end of the day, someone is going to dedicate their time to us, and will make their decisions based on expectations. It is very important that these expectations are understood, matured, and fulfilled.
Selection strategy
First of all, we must be clear about what our strategy will be in the selection process.
Imagine that great news that we mentioned at the beginning, which requires us to grow the capacity of our team. It is a project that must start on certain dates and that, surely, assumes a commitment to advance towards other specific dates. We are more or less clear which roles we want to expand in our team, and we must work with little time margin. We call these types of needs Petitions for Incorporation.
But let's not forget that the selection process consists of choosing who will be part of our teams in the future. Therefore, if we have medium-term forecasts to expand the capacities in the project and we are interested in connecting with interesting people, but not with a specific date of incorporation, we can start with Discovery Requests.
In these types of requests, it is less likely to fall into a selection process that scares the candidate. With more time, and more control over the exchange of information between candidate and company, the quality of the selection process increases.
However, in both cases, we must take great care how we approach the selection process, and what information we send to the candidate. Coordination between the Selection team and the Project / Operations team is essential for the technical dialogue to support the corporate one. It is a complex communication process, from which any intermediation that does not add value must be eliminated, with the aim that all parties are clear about the needs of the company and what type of person we need.
The Kick Off Meeting Recruitment
Before we start looking, it is essential to establish initial meetings of the Selection process, a kind of “Kick Off Meeting Recruitment”Where the Selection and Operations team work aligned, focused on the candidate to be selected, understanding, observing, defining, devising, prototyping and testing a specific request.
In this meeting we will not only try to have a brief description of the request, but we will also have to answer key questions such as:
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- why would a person want to work in this new opportunity,
- what impact the person we are seeking to hire has on the team's objectives,
- what are the measurement parameters that will indicate the success of the selection process,
- what will be the characteristics that will disqualify someone, avoiding personal biases,
- what is the content of the project,
- what will be the goals or objectives of the future employee in their first 30, 60, and even 90 days.
These meetings initials provide a lot of value in the selection process, since they deal with differentiating aspects such as these, which mark the fine line between the success or failure of the process?
The job offer
Okay, and now how do we count it?
Breaking with traditional job offers
Let's create differentiating job positions that summarize what we are looking for and how we are looking for it in a clear, simple and direct way (a clear example is in Manfred, and our friend David bonilla).
The more information we can provide to our future employees, the easier it will be for them to imagine themselves in their new Panel project. People change jobs when we want to grow, therefore we must show them how they will grow with us.
To attract the attention of the candidate we want, we must briefly describe how our Values are, our Culture, what our Company is like “from the inside”, what we are passionate about, who we are behind Panel, what MOTIVATES us to follow in Panel ...
For example, we can show what a typical work day would be like (including coffee?) And how we teach, learn, manage and evolve as a Team and as a Company.
Let's forget the endless lists of requirements and remember that telling someone what would ADD to our company is better than "trying to agglomerate innumerable requirements impossible to combine" in a single human. We all prefer to hear a true story, even told in the first person. Let us ask our teams to authorize us to include their LinkedIn profiles in the offers, publish videos, project links. Anything goes!
There goes a list with "other requirements" to make our job offer:
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- About Us
- What do we do in the project / in the company?
- What are we looking to add to the project / company, what will your challenges be?
- Why will you fit in with us (company culture)?
- How are the company's teams?
- What will your day to day look like?
- Why would you want to work here?
- How are you going to impact the project? What awaits you in 30/60/90 days?
- What are you going to learn?
- Linkedin profiles of the people you are going to work with
- Project links
- Videos, videos, videos.
Finally, it could be very interesting to build a repository to host small messages (beans) or "fresh air ideas" built in a coherent way, with the help of the Operations teams, in which the Selection team could be supported in maintaining an interesting and attractive dialogue with our candidates.
Looking for candidates ...
Let's remember: we must be experimental, optimistic and… creative!
Although it is true that our usual sources for the search for future employees are Linkedin Recruitment and Tecnoempleo, we can expand the search in specialized groups such as Telegram, Meetup groups or Github.
A very simple option is to ask people from our own company or team how they found their current position, where they looked when they wanted to change companies or in which specialized technology groups they are registered.
Also applying booleans on Google, and… in general… looking around!
Regarding the contact via e-mail, Justyna adamczjk, Head of People by Sketch He sums it up very well: "If you are going to contact someone who is not expecting you, do not tell him about yourself, tell him about him."
Contact by email or Inmail in the case of tools such as Linkedin Recruiter is always a challenge, and we must comply with some basic principles:
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- It must be person to person, concrete and fresh.
- Let's be honest with the people we contact.
- Let's try to move the potential candidate into action, but in a very respectful way (eg "let me know if you think this is a good time for you").
Let us also remember that the Selection process does not end in the hiring of a candidate, we must respond to all the people who dedicated their time to us and were interested in our projects. With them we generate expectations and it is important that they are met. Feedback is essential.
Tell stories…. By Tutatis !!
Finally, we want to emphasize that any communication with our candidates must tell a story. And the stories that are best understood are those of our equals. Like in the movies. We identify with those we empathize with.
Having people on teams tell their own stories, for example in an interview, will help candidates trust you a lot more, understand why they will want to work on your team, what will make their job attractive or what their employees will expect of them. classmates. And most importantly, what makes you unique?
"People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." (Simon Synek)
Ultimately, our goal must be to reach people who share our culture. If we hire people who can do a job, they will work for money, but if we hire people who share our values, then they will work with all their effort and desire, ADDING on our team.
This article has been co-written by lorraine castle, Panel Personnel Selection Manager,
y Javier Lopez-Camacho, Director of Quality Assurance and co-founder of Panel.
They both work closely looking for TALENT to ADD into their teams 😉
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