When we look back at ProntoPro's growth, we tend to look at the numbers produced by the company over the last years. But we know we should not forget what probably is the most important factor behind that growth: the company's staff.

At the end of the day, people are the ones doing the hard work in order to achieve those numbers. So we believe that the success of our company strongly depends on how we handle recruitment. We learned it the hard way. If we want to grow fast and steady, we need a perfect combination of talents. And recruitment is of utmost importance to achieve that.

Ok, but how do we make sure to recruit the right people? Well, of course recruiting is an uncertain world, but we noticed that checking the following points significantly increases our likelihood to hire great talents. 🤓

Now, let's go through them one by one.

The talent research is aligned with the company's quirks and needs

Should we look for senior talent? Should he/she be a leader? Should he/she be strong on technical skills, or on human skills, or on both? Should the talent have a broad knowledge of our technology stack or should he/she be an expert on a part of it?

These questions should definitely get an answer if we want to hire the right talent. But answering them means knowing what the company's quirks and needs are.

Also, we noticed that only looking at the current situation could be risky. That is why we also prefer to keep into consideration the mid/long term company's vision. That helps us make sure that the talent we are looking for is compatible with the future company's plans.

The job role is well-defined

We think that having a clear idea about the role's responsibilities, KPIs, and salary is a must if we want to hire the right talent for the role. Luckily, we have a growth framework that helps us with that. 💪

Candidates know everything about the role and our talent pipeline

We believe that when candidates feel comfortable during the interview, it is easier for them to show us their true potential. That is actually a win-win because seeing candidates performing at their best during the interview helps us assess them in the best way.

To achieve that, we try to make the job description as exhaustive as we can. That is why we list some useful information about the company, the teams' structure, the workflow, the role, and the talent pipeline. You can check our job description for engineers as an example.

Finally, at each step of the pipeline, we make sure to onboard candidates properly, leave them room for questions, and get back to them with a detailed feedback also in case of rejection.

Candidates are a good fit

Our talent pipeline is designed to assess if candidates fit our company from the personal, technical, and cultural point of view. It is made of the following six steps and it usually takes 2-3 weeks for a candidate to go from the first step to the hire.

1. 👋 First contact

If candidates successfully pass our CV screening process or our recruiters decide to make the first move, we will organize a call with them. This first interview generally focuses on getting acquainted and figuring out if they are motivated and actually interested in ProntoPro.

2. 🔎 Technical interview

If candidates successfully pass the first contact, we fix them a technical interview with an Engineering Lead. The interview is generally a 45 minutes call and focuses on exploring their past experiences and their technical knowledge. In this step, we also assess if candidates' features match what we are looking for in that specific moment. More often than not, a second Engineer joins this step as a silent listener to provide a second opinion about the candidate's performance and feedback about how the interviewer conducted the interview.

3. 🧑‍💻 Coding homework

If candidates successfully pass the technical interview, they are invited to complete a little coding task. This assignment is important to understand your coding level, passion, curiosity, and initiative. We will assess their work and send them back a code review. It is pretty important to us that candidates always receive a review; it does not matter if they pass the step or if they do not.

4. 👀 Code review discussion

If candidates successfully pass the coding homework step, they are invited to a code review discussion with an Engineering Lead. The discussion usually lasts up to 60 minutes and mainly focuses on assessing their technical skills. Also in this step, a second Engineer often joins as a silent listener to provide a second opinion about the candidate's performance and feedback about how the interviewer conducted the interview.

5. 🚀 Bar-raising

If candidates successfully pass the code review discussion, they are invited to a short interview with a bar raiser. A bar raiser is a skilled evaluator who already holds a job with ProntoPro and plays a crucial role in the company's hiring process. This step lasts 30 minutes and aims to understand if they are a good fit with ProntoPro’s principles and values. We generally use the STAR technique to conduct this phase. Usually, the Department Head joins this step as a silent listener to provide a second opinion about the candidate's performance and feedback about how the interviewer conducted the interview.

6. 🤝 Job offer

If candidates successfully pass the bar-raising step, we organize a call to share with them our overall feedback about the pipeline and a job offer with the position’s salary, benefits, start date, and other terms and conditions of employment.

Conclusions

We learned that talent pipelines should not be copied and pasted, because they work better if they are tailored to the company's culture and needs. However, we hope you found this article inspiring and useful for improving the talent pipeline in your organization.

Do you have tips, doubts, or curiosities about the way we handle ours? Please, reach out on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you.

Also, if you an Engineer and want to try out our talent pipeline, feel free to check out our career page. We are always looking for talented Engineers like you. 🙃