Choosing the right people to join your team can be compared to assembling a team for a space mission.
You want to have only reliable people with you on such a risky, bumpy and long journey, don’t you? So we became obsessed with the idea to hire the best people.**
What works for us?
We are proud to have built a team of amazing software engineers we can go to the cosmos with🚀.
So how to hire programmers for your team and what about hiring developers for startups for example?
Nearly 500 candidates are processed by our team on a monthly basis. In addition to these, our acceptance rate towards our offers is nearly up to 70%. The key to hiring remote dedicated developers actually varies. It depends on your requirement, budget, and vision of the software.
Stay with us until the end of this material and a great NASAsecret on how to hire developers for your next mission will reveal itself.
Pre-launch
The pre-launch or the pre-recruitment is a step in the remote hiring process that is considered the most important as it defines the job, budget allocation for the job, the requirements for the applicant, and the method of the job posting itself.
What makes a good job post?
A highly convertible job post should be brief, transparent, and straight to the point. It should contain more information on the job opening to enlighten the candidate and keep praising the company. In short, it’s not about you, it’s about your future team.
Tell a person what will change in their life, how the work you do will influence their life, inspire them but be honest. Don’t promise the flight to the Moon if you are planning just a regular flight from Bratislava to London.
Must-have - a recruiter must ensure that the job post mentions the salary range, the team, the tasks required, and the company's mission. The write-up should be conversational and is better to contain a series of frequently asked questions with answers.
1st pre-screening interview
This is a time saver for both: you and the people who applied. Obviously, you cannot take anyone into space, and at the same time - not everybody gets how serious the mission can be from the job post.
The interview should be brief, friendly and cover a series of questions designed to help you understand more about a prospect before conducting a more in-depth interview or introducing them to the mission commander.
The pre-screening questions need to have more information from the candidate on their career goals, work preferences, abilities, expertise, and other aspects.
Here are some tips on conducting a good pre-screening interview:
- Get to know the CV and highlight what do you want to ask based on the info you got
- Keep the interview short to last for a maximum of 30 minutes
- Do a background check on the previous job or relevant past experiences or maybe you have friends/hobbies in common you can use as an ice breaker (maybe both of you visited Barcelona last year, or studied the same subject)
- Ask the candidate for their knowledge about the company to evaluate their level of interest
- Confirm the salary expectations if it is within the salary range
The 2nd tech interview__
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It’s better to be flying with specialists who actually know how to fix the issue they are assigned to while you are in outer space. It’s high time to evaluate tech expertise.
This is the part of the hiring process where the applicant will be asked to meet with a tech lead to examine the tech knowledge.
The purpose of the technical interview is to:
- assess problem-solving abilities
- measure team and corporate fit, discuss and code together.
- concentrate on activities relevant to your organization, such as those that your development team is presently working on.
3rd cultural interview
Now it’s time to evaluate if you actually can stand spending all your time in space with this particular person.
 \n The third is usually the final interview, where the agreement in terms and contract is discussed.
Also, this part of the hiring process is where the human resource department conducts a more informal and comfortable interview to check if the person resonates with the company's values. A way to check is to create a conversation about why this person has left their previous company and ask how she or he will respond to some conflict situations.
Sending the final offer
Congrats! You found your match to the Moon and back! In that case, you can already make a move to consider offering the job during the 3rd interview as it's better to make an official offer on the call than in the email.
If you are sending an email with an offer - add a personal letter or a couple of words. If you are offering to someone very experienced, assume you are one of 10 companies who will send the same offer. Ask team leads or the CEO/CTO to include something personal if possible.
Mention in the offer the team or at least the manager that will be working with the new hire.
The template we follow:
Onboarding New Hires quick facts from us
Benefits of implementing an effective-boarding program:
- 50% increase in employee retention, people don’t freak out and stress
- 54% increase in productivity levels, people know what to do
- 34% faster learning curve of proficiency from new employees, meaning you are getting closer to your mission
The most important action items to onboarding are:
- Schedule onboarding checkup in 2 weeks after the 1st working day to check on the person.
- Prepare an online user-friendly onboarding guide about tech things (how to write an email to the help desk or ask for a refund) and add some fun.
- Send swag if possible, it’s a very nice gesture to make a person feel a part of the team.
- Ask teammates to reach out, can be totally informal, maybe even a short call can answer a lot of questions newcomers usually are too shy to ask
- Arrange a meeting with co-founders/C level for a batch of newcomers, where they can get to know the organization’s future missions and what planets they want to conquer :)
Additional materials - guide, offer, welcome pack
Presentations, brochures, or even physical gifts make remote hiring more human. After the 1st pre-screen interview we always send a recruitment guide with handpicked information about the company.
Polish your offer template too, what are your benefits over other companies who will try to hire this candidate too. Keep it short, full of graphics, and fun.
A welcome pack is also crucial. Ask your managers or logistics company to ship some swag and gifts for a person’s first day.
Here are some companies providing nice company-branded gifts:
Final Tips
Whether you are going on a space mission or building a new product, the outcome depends highly on the people you are working with. Dedicated software development teams are behind every digital product. The hiring process and building a software development team is never easy and you need to invest a lot of time to polish it to perfection.
Hiring quality talent takes time and effort. The remote era has changed how we hire, and either you stay on top of the game, or lose.
LAUNCH now!
Also published here:https://ralabs.org/blog/remote-hiring-process-2022/