Hiring Great People: how we improved our recruiting process to build and grow a great agile team

Getting the right people will help create a great team, and will let it grow healthy. Moreover, it will keep it rooted in your company culture, and sustaining that same culture in turn.
Nevertheless, too often recruiting is overlooked or completely delegated to HR or external recruiting agencies.

In this session I’ll share our experience in building our actual recruitment process, how we got to this recruitment workflow, what lessons we’ve learned and what are the key elements of a recruitment process. I’ll also examine some differences compared to a more “traditional” way of selecting and assessing people.

Transcript

1. HIRING GREAT PEOPLE how we improved our recruiting process to build and grow a great agile team! beta
2. PIETRO DI BELLO Agile Coach Señor Coder Love pizza and ice-creams Works at XPeppers in a great team! @pierodibello @xpeppers
3. “THROUGH GREAT HIRING, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO TRANSFORM YOUR ORGANIZATION” Sean Landis - “Agile Hiring”
4. GREAT COMPANIES ALWAYS HAVE THOUGHTFUL AND ADVANCED HIRING PROCESSES
5. MANY COMPANIES TEND TO EITHER OVERLOOK OR UNDERESTIMATE HIRING
6. WARNING SIGNS THAT THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS IS UNDERESTIMATED IN YOUR COMPANY
7. don’t know what your hiring process is not involved in the hiring decisions involvement is irrelevant skill level of the teams is not where it should be new colleagues do not fit
8. few new applications tons of applications, too many just out of target candidate doesn’t accept the offer your company doesn’t grow at all or is growing too damn fast
9. THE THREE PILLARS OF HIRING ★ sourcing ★ assessing ★ onboarding
10. SOURCING CANDIDATES a proper job description online job sites external recruiters social media sponsor events open-source projects university affiliations and internship programs How to make to good people apply? And BTW discourage the wrong candidate from applying? Techniques you’ll use to attract suitable candidates
11. ASSESSING CANDIDATES review résumé testing skills in-person interviews and auditions take the decision Is this person the right one for our team and our company? This is where you get to know the candidate!
12. ONBOARDING NEW EMPLOYEES bootcamp study path tutoring peer reviews How can the new employees reach a good level of proficiency and integration in the team in the shortest time possible? The first period of employment of a newcomers, from the first day on
13. A CLASSIC RECRUITMENT WORKFLOW
14. A MORE MATURE RECRUITMENT WORKFLOW 1. screen the résumé 2. phone interview 3. in-person interviews and audition 4. hire decision 5. make an offer
15. OUR ACTUAL RECRUITMENT PROCESS… 1. screen the résumé 2. solve unattended test 3. in-person interview 4. audition 5. hire decision 6. make an offer
16. …AND HOW WE HANDLE IT
17. HIRING PRINCIPLES I LEARNED
18. REFLECT ON YOUR RECRUITMENT PROCESS
19. DON’T FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR RECRUITMENT PROCESS
20. METRICS METRICS EVERYWHERE Collect metrics from your recruitment board to improve your process. For example, in the résumé screening step you can measure: résumé quality: how many résumés are filter out? résumé filtering quality: how many résumés we accepted then fail to pass the next hiring step?
21. INVOLVE ALL THE TEAM
22. VALUE SOCIAL SKILLS OVER JUST TECHNICAL SKILLS
23. …CULTURAL FIT “Cultural fit will trump all technical skills. Every time. It doesn’t matter how technically great a person is. If a candidate’s cultural preferences do not match your organization, that person will not fit.” ! Johanna Rothman, “Hiring Geeks That Fit”
24. KNOW YOUR ORGANIZATION, KNOW YOUR TEAM
25. VALUE DIVERSITY
26. HIRE GREAT PEOPLE :-D
27. RESPECT THE CANDIDATE
28. USE HIRING CHECKLISTS AND DRIVING QUESTIONS
29. REBOOT YOUR TEAM WITH INTERNS AND GRADUATES
30. WAIT FOR GOOD CANDIDATES
31. COME UP WITH YOUR OPINION BEFORE EVEN ASKING OTHERS THEIRS
32. BEWARE OF CARGO- CULTING
33. SO…. REBOOT YOUR RECRUITMENT PROCESS!
34. 1. Describe the workflow of your recruitment process: try visualizing all the steps and the flow of the candidates. Discuss with your team and your HR department. 2. What is working and what is not in your current recruitment process? Use the workflow diagram drawn in the previous exercise to highlight unrealized improvement opportunities 3. How the current recruitment process is supporting the growth of your team / your company? 4. How the current recruitment process is helping your team / your company become what it is still not?
35. RECOMMENDED READINGS “Agile Hiring” by Sean Landis “Hiring Geeks That Fit” by Johanna Rothman
36. THANK YOU!
37. FEEDBACK?