Kumari Trishya

We at HackerEarth love pair programming. Before you call out for being biased though, hear us out. Over the years we have spent perfecting our interview platform FaceCode, we have heard from many hiring managers that using a pair programming interview tool is one of the best ways to assess a candidate’s coding abilities in real time.

Let’s look at what these managers have told us:

• With modern pair programming interview tools, employers must be well-informed about the coders’ unique skills set, ability to collaborate, solve problems, and strong analytical thinking
• Interviewers must be able to deduce the coders’ agility in coding, the complexity of the code used, proficiency in using features such as CodeEditor, auto-suggest, and much more
• A modern interview approach must evaluate how well coders handle ambiguity. It must highlight their attitude toward the challenge and aptitude for learning
• The interviewer learns about the interviewee’s skills and personality, while the interviewee learns about whom they will be working with and what a typical workday looks like

What is pair programming?

Pair programming is a collaborative coding technique where two programmers work together at one workstation. One, the “driver,” writes code while the other, the “navigator,” reviews each line of code as it is typed in. The roles switch frequently to keep both partners engaged. This approach not only improves code quality by facilitating immediate feedback and error correction but also enhances learning and knowledge sharing between the pair. It’s particularly effective in tackling complex problems and learning new technologies. Companies often use pair programming to foster a collaborative environment and develop a more cohesive team dynamic, ultimately leading to more robust and error-free software.

What is a pair programming interview?

A pair programming interview is a style of interviewing candidates where the interviewer and candidate share a coding platform to solve a programming problem together. With pair programming, you can test 3 skills in developers: problem-solving, teamwork, and communication skills.

It can be a great way to identify talented developers. That’s not to say pair programming interviews (a.k.a pair coding interviews) can not go wrong.

DISCLAIMER: No known coders have been harmed during pair programming interviews. Also, breath mints are just good to carry along for any scenario. Just saying.

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Laughs aside, the main reason why pair programming interviews go south is that the rules of engagement are not specified; or followed. As a wise man said, a football game without rules is just a brawl. So, let’s list down some of the oft-repeated mistakes in a pair coding interview and how one can avoid them.

Pair Programming Interview Mistakes

Mistake 1: Not agreeing on rules beforehand

Pair programming has a simple structure. There’s a DRIVER and a NAVIGATOR. Simply put, the driver writes code while the other, the observer or navigator, reviews each line of code as it is typed in.

There are many ways this driver-navigator relationship can work:

• Ping-Pong pairing: In this Developer A starts the process by writing a failing test or the ‘PING’. Developer B then writes the implementation to make it pass i.e. the ‘PONG’. Each set is then followed by refactoring the code together.

• Strong-style pairing: In this, the navigator is usually the person who has more experience with the setup or task at hand, while the driver has lesser experience (with the language, the tool, the codebase, or because they are fresh out of college). The experienced person usually ends up being in the navigator role and guides the driver.

• Pair development: Pair development is not a ‘style’ of pair programming per se. It’s more of a methodology. While the above two styles can be used for developing code in real time, pair development can be used to create a user story or feature. This goes beyond just coding and allows the pair to handle many different tasks as a team.

So, before you invite a candidate over for a code pair interview, ensure you know which style you are going to use and lay down the rules clearly. If you are switching roles between driver and navigator, make sure that the rules of discussion and expectations are clear from the get-go.

Mistake 2: Lack of proper conflict resolution mechanisms

It is important to settle conflicts well as a pair, and one way of doing it is to agree at the outset on which role has the final say. Between the driver and the navigator, one role needs to have the ‘casting vote’.

That said, this mechanism should not deter either of the pair from asking questions, or raising red flags. The goal of the pair programming role is to provide the candidate with something close to a ‘real-world experience’, i.e. they work on actual problems that your team solves in their workday. At the same time, the interviewer gets a first-hand glimpse at the candidate’s problem solving skills, and ability to collaborate.

Don’t forget this in an attempt to be ‘right’ during your pair programming routine. Agreeing to a mutually suitable arrangement at the outset aligns expectations and provides a fairly straightforward method of conflict resolution.

Mistake 3: Thinking there is just one ‘right’ answer

There are 11287398173 ways to write FizzBuzz. Remember this when you are in the middle of your next pair programming interview.

As interviewers, a very easy mistake to make is to believe that there is just one right way to approach a problem. Experienced hiring managers know that while it is perfectly alright to usually have an answer in mind to a given question, it is also important to listen and see what the interviewee’s answer is.

Most of the time, you’ll find that the candidate’s approach is different from yours. If you keep an open mind, you might even be surprised by their creativity! Rigidity in thought is a no-no for any interviewer; this typically demonstrates that they are not open to new ideas and only serves to alienate candidates.

This is also important for interviewees. Many times, candidates get trapped in the rabbit hole of ‘pleasing’ the interviewer. They look for solutions that they think will appease the interviewer. It is important to be aware of this behavior. Use the opportunity to showcase your skill-set, instead of behaving like a mind reader and trying to say and do things that will impress the manager. Ask clarifying questions, understand the boundary conditions or the corner cases, and then do your own thing!

Mistake 4: Not communicating enough

Okay, we get it. Not everyone likes chatter when they are coding. Some coders like music, others like radio silence.

The whole purpose of a pair-programming interview is to communicate. Let’s rephrase that a bit. The sole purpose of a pair-programming interview is to communicate effectively with your partner and build something collaboratively.

Interviewers need to set the tone here. Please tell your candidates clearly what kind of communication you expect from them. Do you want them to finish their coding and then walk you through their code, or do you want a play-by-play commentary? While doing so, please be cognizant of the fact that you do not come across as intimidating, and allow the candidate the flexibility to understand and solve the problem in their own time and space.

Interviewees would do better to ditch the YOLO approach on this one and use the session to show their planning and communication skills.

Benefits of pair programming interviews

Pair programming interviews offer a number of benefits to both employers and candidates.

Benefits for employers:

Assess real-time problem-solving skills: Pair programming interviews allow employers to see how candidates approach and solve problems in a real-time setting. This is much more informative than traditional whiteboard interviews, which can be more artificial and less indicative of a candidate’s actual coding skills.

Evaluate communication and teamwork skills: Pair programming interviews also allow employers to evaluate candidates’ communication and teamwork skills. This is important because tech workers often need to be able to work effectively with others on complex projects.

Identify potential culture fits: Pair programming interviews can also help employers to identify potential culture fits. By observing how candidates interact with each other and with the interviewer, employers can get a better sense of whether candidates would be a good fit for the company culture.

Benefits for candidates:

More skill-oriented process: Pair programming interviews give candidates a more realistic opportunity to demonstrate their skills. Candidates are able to work with the interviewer to solve a problem, and they are able to ask questions and get feedback as they go. This can help candidates to perform better than they might in a traditional whiteboard interview.

Better understanding of the company culture: Pair programming interviews also give candidates a better understanding of the company culture. By interacting with the interviewer and seeing how the interviewer works, candidates can get a sense of how the company values collaboration and teamwork.

Opportunity to network with potential colleagues: Pair programming interviews can also be an opportunity for candidates to network with potential colleagues. By working with the interviewer, candidates can learn more about the company’s projects and technologies. Candidates can also make a good impression on the interviewer and other potential colleagues.

Tips to conduct a pair programming interview

Ensuring your pair programming interviews are effective requires a balanced approach:

Set clear expectations: Before the session, clearly communicate the objectives, tools to be used, and the problem’s scope.

Use real-world scenarios: Instead of abstract problems, use challenges that reflect real tasks your team faces. This provides valuable insights into the candidate’s practical skills.

Ensure role clarity: Specify who is the “driver” (the one writing the code) and the “observer” (the one reviewing and suggesting) and switch roles midway to ensure a balanced assessment.

Prepare a list of pair programming interview questions: Create a list of pair programming interview questions to check the candidate’s ability to design code

Maintain respectful communication: Encourage open dialogue. The candidate should feel comfortable asking questions, suggesting alternatives, or admitting when they don’t know something.

Embrace silence: Allow the candidate to think. Not every moment needs to be filled with talk.

Provide tools and documentation: Ensure the candidate has access to necessary tools and can refer to documentation if needed. This mirrors real-world conditions.

Focus on the Journey, NOT just the Solution: Remember, the goal is to understand how the candidate thinks and collaborates. A perfect solution isn’t the only indicator of a good fit.

Conclude with feedback: Dedicate the last few minutes to provide feedback. Highlight what went well and areas of improvement. This can be incredibly valuable for both the candidate and your company’s reputation.

When done right, pair programming can yield awesome results!

These are just some of the things we have learned from our discussions with hiring managers and candidates. We hope that they help you in your next interview. Another important aspect of a good pair programming interview is using the right tool, and HackerEarth’s FaceCode can help you with that. The key to having a good technical code pair interview is creating a familiar environment for the candidates, so they can relax and focus on the task at hand. FaceCode, with its built-in code editor and easy-to-access question library, allows you to do that easily.

We hope you ace your next pair programming interview – whether you are an interviewer or a candidate. Good luck!

Hiring in the post-pandemic world is harder than ever. As recruiters, you would have already heard about the Great Resignation, and how tight the job market is. Given that this climate is unlikely to change anytime soon, recruiters still need a surefire way to sift through the clutter and find the right candidates. In such times, maybe it’s not a bad idea to go back to the drawing board and redefine ‘who’ you are looking for. Why? Because knowing your audience is a critical factor in any recruiting strategy, especially when it comes to tech. And we all know that the audience has changed in many ways since the Big C happened to our world. Also, writing down goals has been shown to be intrinsically linked with higher success rates, making you anywhere from 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to accomplish said goals. So, if you are looking to hire the best and the brightest, writing it down in words (or candidate personas) could actually help you hire better. All on board? Let’s begin!

What is candidate persona?

A candidate persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal job candidate. It’s developed based on a combination of data and research, encapsulating the skills, experiences, motivations, and attributes of a person who’d be a perfect fit for a specific role within your organization. Much like customer personas help marketers identify their target audience, candidate personas aid recruiters in streamlining their hiring process, ensuring that their efforts are directed towards attracting, identifying, and engaging the most suitable talent for the role.

By understanding and defining a candidate persona, companies can craft more effective job descriptions, target their recruitment advertising more accurately, and enhance the overall hiring experience to appeal to their ideal candidates.

Characteristics to include when creating candidate personas

Demographics: This includes details like age, gender, educational background, and experience level. While these aren’t definitive indicators of a candidate’s fit, they can offer general guidance about where to find potential candidates or what life stage they might be in.

Skillset: Detail the technical and soft skills that the ideal candidate would possess. This not only includes job-specific skills but also transferable skills that might be beneficial to the role.

Professional background: Outline the industries, roles, or companies where the candidate might have previously worked. This provides context to their experience and familiarity with certain work environments.

Motivations: Understand what drives the candidate—whether it’s career growth, work-life balance, a passion for a particular kind of project, or values alignment with a company’s mission.

Career goals: Highlight the aspirations or long-term objectives that the ideal candidate might have, helping to align the role’s potential with their personal and professional growth.

Cultural fit: Describe the cultural attributes or company values that resonate with the ideal candidate. This could relate to collaborative tendencies, innovation, work ethics, or other cultural facets.

Challenges & pain points: Identify common challenges or issues that might dissuade them from joining or staying in a role. This could be things like limited growth opportunities, lack of challenging projects, or a preference for remote work.

Preferred communication channels: Recognize where your ideal candidates spend their time, whether it’s on professional networks like LinkedIn, job boards, industry-specific forums, or even at offline events.

Personality traits: Delve into the softer aspects, like whether they are self-starters, how they handle feedback, their preferred work environment, or their teamwork style.

Step by Step Guide To Creating Candidate Personas

Step 1: Understanding Developer Candidate Personas

Marketing and sales divisions have been using personas to define their ideal buyer for a very long time, especially in strategies like B2B lead generation. This approach helps them understand their audience better and tailor their messaging for maximum impact. Developer personas are an off-shoot of this oft-used strategy; with a few tweaks and changes to make it engineering-friendly. Building developer candidate personas lets recruiters visualize a fictional representation of the ideal candidate for each role. Creating personas lets recruiters get into the mindset of the candidate and tailor the hiring process from the applicant’s viewpoint. This has a direct effect on enhancing the candidate experience. Mostly though, creating developer personas is a great way to understand the ‘why’, ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘where’ of tech hiring.

Sidebar The credit for creating ‘personas’ to identify customers rests with Alan Cooper, a noted software developer. He created ‘user personas’ to predict how different users would interact with software. Angus Jenkinson, a professor of integrated marketing, then took the concept and applied it to marketing. His technique was adopted by OglivyWorldWide and became the gold standard for defining buyer personas as we know them now.

Step 2: Why We Need Candidate Personas

Designing and understanding developer candidate personas helps you do the following:

Create tailor-made JDs: As noted above, once you understand your candidate’s mindset, it becomes easier to tailor your hiring process to attract the right talent. Beginning with the job description.

Optimize recruitment marketing and sourcing: Understanding who you are targeting for a given role will give you better insight into where you can source them. You can curate your recruitment marketing strategies better in this instance.

Integrate diversity hiring initiatives into the process: Building developer personas also helps you identify gaps in diversity hiring, and allows you to build relevant initiatives into your process.

Improve recruitment metrics: Data says that recruiters spend a minimum of 13 hours per week sourcing for a single role. When you have your developer personas mapped out, you can significantly reduce the time spent in sourcing. Over time, you will also see a marked improvement in other recruitment metrics like Time To Hire, Quality of Hire, Offer Acceptance Rate, and so on.

Read More: How Engineering Managers Can Help Recruiters Hire Better

Step 3: Creating A Developer Candidate Persona

The research While you may think you know what a tech role entails, have you ever sat down and done any research to understand what exactly it is your team needs in the next hire to boost performance? Begin by sitting down with relevant stakeholders and learn the details of the role you are hiring for. Understand what a workday looks like for this specific employee, and then add it to your JD. Remember to ask questions about the following:

• • Who is our ideal candidate?
  • Where does this person operate?
  • Why would they want to work for our organization?
  • What kind of experience are we hiring for?
  • What will this employee’s typical workday look like?
  • Are there any specific skills this candidate should have? In addition, what are the core skills and the adjacent skills required for this role?
  • Are there any geographical limitations for hiring?
  • Is it necessary that this candidate have an online presence? If yes, then where should I be looking?
  • Is there a list of competitor employers?

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The skill set It is very important to understand the skill set required for any tech role. We said it above, but it begs repetition. There are some core skills that every developer must possess. Problem-solving, critical thinking, communication skills, and proficiency in the core languages like JAVA and C++ come to mind. There are adjacent skills which a developer can easily pick up on the job, provided they are adaptable and happy to learn new things. Mastering ten different languages is a prime example. It is NOT necessary that your ‘ideal candidate’ be a pro at everything. Your JD should NOT be a dump of requirements that no human can possibly fulfill. Instead, break it down into Must-Haves and Can-Learns and use this to define your personas.

The behavior When hiring someone for a role, recruiters often look at the longevity of the candidate in their company. This can be predicted (to a certain extent) by charting an ideal employee’s behavior traits. Some of these might overlap with the research you did earlier, but it’s never bad to be doubly sure! When adding these subjective elements to your developer persona, ask these questions:

• • What motivated them to apply for this role?
  • Do they have goals this role will help fulfill?
  • How do they best communicate with others?
  • What kind of work environment is best for their work style?
  • What’s most important to them (i.e., salary and benefits)?
  • What’s less important to them (something that often varies by generation)?
  • What do they want from their employer (their strengths, brand recognition)?

The PERSONA Yes! After all that research and brainstorming, it is now time to build your candidate’s persona. Below is a template for defining your candidate persona. You may not be able to answer all of these questions, but the more you answer the better you can adjust your recruiting campaigns and efforts. Click Here For Free Template

And There You Have It!

Once you get the first few personas down, creating additional personas for each new opening will become second nature. You can even get creative with the process. The more candidate personas you are able to define, the easier it will become to navigate the tech recruiting landscape. Personas help not just in terms of bettering your sourcing efforts, but also in shaping other top-of-funnel recruiting activities like advertising, employer branding, awareness, and candidate engagement. We use this persona-creating technique for all our in-house hires, and we can vouch for its effectiveness! We hope this guide helps you create developer candidate personas for your tech team, too. Happy hiring.

Hire IQ by HackerEarth is a new initiative in which we speak with recruiters, talent acquisition managers, and hiring managers from across the globe, and ask them pertinent questions on the issues that ail the tech recruiting world. For this first edition, we spoke with Charles Rue, Head of Talent Acquisition (EMEA), at IHS Markit. Diversity and inclusion are topics close to Charles’ and his work is a reflection of his efforts to make the tech world a bigger better place for coders of all backgrounds. So, it was a given that the topic of choice for this conversation would be related to DE&I.

Read on!

HackerEarth: Please tell us a bit about yourself and your journey in the hiring world.

Charles: After a previous life in management consulting, I started my career in recruitment in Japan, which is a great training ground for a recruiter as it is a market where professionals tend to be loyal to their employer, and are therefore extremely difficult to dislodge, especially for roles at foreign firms. After heading the Financial Services practice there for nine years, I relocated to Hong Kong where I successively set up a new desk for an executive search firm, opened the local office for a global recruitment firm specialized in Financial Services, and finally joined the recruitment function of a large global bank via their RPO partner. There, I gained considerable experience in large scale, complex recruitment campaigns, in areas such as Retail and Corporate Banking, Asset Management, Insurance and the full spectrum of Digital Transformation.

This last experience gave me the opportunity to later on join IHS Markit, a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, and head their EMEA recruitment function.

HackerEarth: As a talent acquisition leader, when did you start to understand the importance of creating diverse teams? Are there any real-life examples you can share with us?

Charles: At an early stage in my career, I was aware that diverse teams can tackle challenges much more effectively due to the richness of perspectives, especially in complex, changing environments. The real battle was convincing my clients when I was working on the agency side because their candidate assessment methods were not robustly documented or consistent. Assessment bias was rife, and what was expected from external recruitment agencies was essentially reinforcement, where interviewers and decision makers with already developed opinions were selectively incorporating information that supported their own views. Later, when I was in-house, it was easier to influence stakeholders.

I recall a specific example where our recruitment teams focused on restoring the gender balance of a financial services sales team. During the following year, work environment indicators went up, positive client feedback was more numerous, collaboration increased, and revenue went up. That small-scale example helped develop awareness among the leadership team.

HackerEarth: IHS Markit has been in the industry for a long while. Could you shed some light on how the hiring policies have changed/evolved at the company vis-a-vis DE&I?

Charles: Openness has been at the center of IHS Markit company culture. While Diversity, Equity and Inclusion have underpinned our corporate strategy and the way we want to hire and develop our people, we certainly have developed a more structured approach in recent years. For example, we have enhanced our list of D&I partners to help us better understand and connect with under-represented candidate pools.

Our recruiting tool combines artificial intelligence and neuroscience to assist in removing unconscious bias during screening. On top of that, we have developed our own internal interviewing framework called the IHS Markit Way to help ensure consistent interview questions and that everyone is being assessed against the same unbiased criteria by a diverse panel. Finally, on the Early Careers front, we have added D&I organizations SEO London and Wall Street Bound as our main candidate sourcing partners during our 2020-2021 Intern and Graduate recruiting campaign.

Also Read: How To Increase Your Diversity Hiring ROI

HackerEarth: What do you think are the top 3 mistakes that companies new to diversity hiring make when formulating policies?

Charles: There are quite a few pitfalls when looking at improving diversity in the workforce. The first one is not getting genuine support from the top leadership team. That’s paramount. Hiring Managers will sense quickly if the company’s diversity goals are hollow or if there are real consequences for not supporting diversity in every hiring decision. Leaders must be 100% committed to the company’s diversity objectives, and keep communicating about their commitment internally and externally.

The second pitfall is missing the data. Diversity data is the very first step before a situation can be understood, and corresponding diversity goals can be set. Not collecting the right data, and compiling the data in effective dashboards is like shooting in the dark. It will frustrate teams and slow down adoption. A third pitfall is not asking help from diversity professionals. I think it is a common mistake as most HR and Recruitment functions tend to think that tweaking policies and buying assessment tools will single-handedly drive a more diverse workforce.

This approach is totally missing the cornerstone of an effective diversity strategy: diversity attraction, which can be translated into ‘how to transform a company to make it really inclusive?’, and ‘how to connect with underrepresented populations, and develop the right role proposition that will lead to an application?’ This is where specialized organizations can provide guidance on inclusiveness, and also leverage their extensive network within underrepresented populations.

HackerEarth: A question that we love asking everybody: Skills vs. Diversity – which one would you choose and why?

Charles: I genuinely don’t think we should have to make this choice. We should aim for both. If we can’t find both in a given market, companies should then go for diversity and then develop programs that will create skills internally. This is what we are doing at IHS Markit through our Early Careers recruitment programs.

We partner with specialized organizations and make sure our hiring outcomes fully support our diversity goals. Candidates for Internships and Graduate positions are assessed using consistent methods, against four role profiles. We select candidates who exhibit specific attributes and show growth potential. Our cohorts are nurtured so that required skills can be grown, while all the time we never had to negotiate on diversity.

HackerEarth: Have you come across D&I initiatives from various companies that have wowed you, and why do you think they work? (Examples can be AirBnB’s WeAccept campaign, or Salesforce’s equality groups).

Charles: BlackRock has created many positive D&I initiatives including the organization of their MOSAIC employee network, or the use of a Rare Contextual Recruitment System for early career recruitment in the United Kingdom. The latter recognizes that not every candidate’s achievements look the same on paper. Using the Rare Contextual Recruitment System allows BlackRock to see beyond an online application to better understand the circumstances in which each applicant’s achievements have been gained.

From BlackRock’s perspective, this process enables the firm to identify the best talent from all backgrounds. Deutsche Bank also has done interesting things in the area of gender diversity. Deutsche has won an award for its global sponsorship program ATLAS, which helps women progress to senior positions.

HackerEarth: Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Twitter decided to start publishing an annual diversity hiring report in 2014. That was the first time that tech companies publicly acknowledged the diversity gap in their workplaces and vowed to change hiring practices.

Seven years later, there is only a marginal increase in diversity numbers at these companies. In your opinion, what are these companies:

1. Doing well
2. Doing wrong and how can they better it

Charles: Clearly the situation has not improved much. I’ve read recently that the proportion of US technical employees (coders, engineers, and data scientists) at some of these firms who are black or Latinx hasn’t risen since 2014. It seems however that the proportion of women has progressed, though no company is close to parity yet.

On the ‘plus’ side, all of these firms have made large investments into various education programs to encourage more women and minorities to consider tech, to help address a legacy of underrepresentation. On the ‘minus’ side however, all of these firms are growing, and are in need of much more under-represented candidates than they used to be, while attrition for these very same under-represented populations is clearly much higher than average.

Basically, despite all their investments, tech companies still haven’t addressed biases in their cultures, promotion criteria, and the broader issue of inclusion and belonging. These items will need to be on their agenda if they want to make an impact on their own D&I goals.

Further Reading

If you like this post, then try our 'Ten-step Guide To Diversity Hiring'

HackerEarth: There is a lot of talk about data-driven recruiting. When it comes to diversity hiring, what are the metrics you think talent acquisition managers should live or die by?

Charles: Purely from a talent acquisition perspective, there should really be three diversity metrics:

• the first one measuring whether proportions of job applicants are reflective of the local population’s diversity mix (gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background, sexual orientation, etc.),
• the second measuring whether the same diversity mix is eventually hired locally,
• and the third measuring whether retention levels are consistent across populations, including women, minorities or under-represented ethnicities.

All three metrics should be measured at country level, across role levels, and department, so that data aggregation does not hide a local diversity issue. These three metrics will uncover attraction gaps and hiring/promotion bias, and should lead to a more accountable diversity strategy.

HackerEarth: Let’s end this with a tip (or two) for recruiters/talent acquisition managers who would like to amp up diversity hiring in their companies..

Charles: First, talk to your firm’s top leadership team and secure their commitment to taking responsibility for building an inclusive hiring process. Leaders should communicate their commitment to the principles of Diversity to the rest of the firm.

Second, work with your HR Analytics team and start measuring team diversity ratios before setting achievable targets.

Third, take concrete action by writing inclusive Job Adverts (the Gender Decoder tool is free!), advertising job adverts on diversity friendly job boards, actively reaching out on LinkedIn to underrepresented candidates, and by assessing candidates using objective and consistent methods.

Fourth, talk to professional D&I organizations that will help you refine and structure your approach. They have seen it all, and will help save a lot of time.

About Charles Rue:

Charles brings with him a decade and a half of recruitment experience at notable companies like HSBC, Eames

Consulting, and the Michael Page Group. He has been with IHS Markit since 2019 and is a champion of diversity and inclusion in the tech space.

Charles has more than 16 years of recruitment experience in the EMEA and APAC region, developing an expertise in volume (Experienced and Graduate) and senior to executive level permanent hiring in the Banking, Data, Digital, Insurance, Fintech, Asset Management and Payment Solutions sectors. Prior to joining IHS Markit, Charles was responsible for the delivery of large recruitment volumes for HSBC in Hong Kong.

Charles has been involved in a broad range of recruitment performance improvement projects and D&I initiatives in various setups, from external recruitment agencies, to RPO and in-house environments.