Let’s face it: the tech job market in Europe these days is like a Wild West rodeo.
Many well-established software companies are throwing their hats into the ring, making it challenging for smaller businesses to stand out. Candidates are inundated with job openings and headhunting messages. Moreover, companies are continually trying to one-up each other with their laid-back company culture, unlimited benefits, and over-the-top offers. Thanks to investors and funding rounds, many companies can offer seemingly endless lists of perks and benefits – talk about unicorns and rainbows! All of this can make it challenging for self-funded companies to distinguish themselves from the pack and shine.
Being a candidate is no cakewalk either. With the rapid pace of technology, companies expect more and more from their potential hires, making it challenging to keep up. The recruitment process can be lengthy, with multiple rounds of interviews, psychological tests, home assessments, live assessments, and more. After investing all that time and effort, you may still receive a rejection email with no feedback. All of that can really feel like a punch in the gut! All of this can be incredibly frustrating and demotivating.
Ultimately, it’s all about finding the right match. While GraphAware may not offer in-office massages or pet insurance for your furry companions, we firmly believe that our clear vision, unique company culture, focus on teamwork, transparent communication, mission-critical product, and dedication to our clients make GraphAware a special place to work. Moreover, we strive to make the recruitment process as smooth and tailored as possible, with a view to finding the best possible fit for each candidate.
So, let’s dive into how we hire at GraphAware, and what you can expect from us as a candidate.
Our Approach
As a recruiter at GraphAware, I truly appreciate our willingness to invest in helpful tools and software, such as an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), that aid in keeping everything organised and facilitate collaboration with hiring teams and managers, resulting in increased efficiency. This, in turn, allows candidates to receive quick responses and valuable feedback, which we believe is fundamental to creating a positive recruitment experience.
We are not fans of traditional interviews that are stiff and overly formal at GraphAware. Rather, we prefer to have meetings where our aim is to establish a connection, not just evaluate qualifications. Through meaningful two-way discussions, we can gain a better understanding of the candidate’s personality, work style, and fit with our company values. We also strive to be transparent and straightforward, laying all our cards on the table so that by the end of the process, you can make an informed decision about whether this is the right opportunity for you as well.
These are the typical steps in our recruitment process:
Step 1: Complete an Online Questionnaire
While CVs and LinkedIn profiles can be helpful, they may not provide the full picture of a candidate’s abilities or preferences. Therefore, we use tailored questionnaires to assess the probability of a match and avoid wasting candidates’ time on unnecessary meetings. We aim to ensure that every candidate we invite for a meeting has the potential to succeed in the role. We strive to provide a fair and unbiased assessment of each candidate’s abilities.
Step 2: Meet the People Experience (PX) Team
Our PX meetings usually last around 45 minutes, providing us with a deeper insight into the candidate’s motivations, values, and career aspirations. These meetings also offer the candidate the chance to ask questions, get an impression of the work environment, and experience the company culture firsthand.
Step 3: Showcase Your Work
For technical roles, we love to see candidates’ past projects that they are proud of and ask them to share those with us in a suitable form. We also believe that by contributing to open-source projects, you demonstrate that coding isn’t just a job for you – it’s a hobby too. You show that you care about coding enough to do it in your free time and that you are interested in collaborating with others on projects that you find interesting. Which we appreciate! And so, if you worked on projects which demonstrate your technical abilities and are relevant to the opening, after the hiring team’s favorable review, you will be invited to meet the team right away.
We however realize that not everyone has the time to contribute or has worked on projects which can be shared with others. In such cases, there’s the option of completing a GraphAware Technical Assessment (TA). This is a great opportunity to show off your mad tech skills and knowledge.
We know TAs can be, in some cases and with some companies, a bit of a hassle, but we promise with us, it’s truly worth it. It’s a chance for you to showcase your technical skills and impress us with your expertise. We believe that TAs can be a fun and exciting challenge, and we encourage our candidates to enjoy the process. The best part? We promise to give you honest and valuable feedback so that you can learn from the experience and broaden your technical knowledge.
Non-technical positions don’t require a TA, but additional or longer team meetings may be scheduled to evaluate the candidate’s experience and fit with the role.
Step 4: Meet the Team/Hiring Manager
At this step, you will meet your potential colleagues and managers during one or two meetings.
We believe in hiring for value-fit and culture-add rather than just culture fit. We use established hiring methods to identify the specific traits and qualities we are looking for in a candidate. And we use scorecards carefully prepared by the hiring managers. These provide consistency and a structure for the meetings which helps to ensure that we cover all the essential aspects and make a fair assessment of all candidates we meet.
Assuming everything goes well, we reach the final stage of our recruitment process – the offer stage. It’s the moment we have all been eagerly anticipating, the grand finale, and the cherry on top of any job search!
At GraphAware, we pride ourselves on providing constructive feedback and high-fives to all our candidates. In return, we also welcome both praise and criticism. It brings us great pride when candidates who were not ultimately selected still provide us with appreciative feedback on their experience with us. Please find below some of our favourite comments.
That is how we are currently approaching our hiring process at GraphAware. We continue to learn, explore and update our methods. It is like playing a never-ending game of Jenga; just when we think we have everything figured out, a new block gets added to the stack. We are always looking for ways to improve, and we welcome any feedback or ideas from our fellow recruiters and past and potential candidates. Let’s start a discussion and work together to come up with a better approach, leaving the Wild West of recruitment behind and entering a new era!
Give us feedback or contact us.
Are you intrigued by our hiring process? Want to join our team and be part of something special? Check out our career page for exciting opportunities!
