Soumya Chittigala

Welcome to the second episode of #NetflixandHire where we learn some great ways on how you can get your recruiting metrics right!

For this, we’ve chosen a TV show we LOVE and we can all learn from—The Crown.

Why? Because Queen Elizabeth sums it right—“In an increasingly complex world, we all need certainty.”

P.S. If you haven’t already gone through our previous episode, here you go! – Episode 1: How to drive inclusive hiring in tech ft. Orange Is the New Black

Source: Pop Culture Times

The show delivers an important message on how, as a leader, you are responsible not only for the well-being of yourself but everyone else around you, and that it never hurts to be informed. Through the seasons, you realize that as a constitutional monarch, Queen Elizabeth, though not having any political power, is always in a position to advise the Government. You can also see how she strives to be informed—by hiring a private tutor and staying on top of official documents—just so she can keep things in check.

Now, being a tech recruiter is no less than being a monarch. You’re tasked with connecting with the right developers, bringing in the right talent, and making sure your kingdom, (ahem) organization, flourishes. But can you be so sure of doing these things without the right metrics? We think not! In fact, the Recruitment Operations benchmark report by Yello vouches for the same.

The key takeaway—Recruitment operations is all about streamlining hiring processes, cutting costs, and driving greater efficiency.

Source: Yello

Now, let’s look at how you can measure and tackle each of the above metrics, ‘The Crown’ style:

1) Reducing your time-to-hire

“There is one thing I’ve learned in 52 years of public service is that there is no problem so complex, nor crisis so grave that it cannot be satisfactorily resolved within 20 minutes.” —Winston Churchill

Source: Pinterest

Did you know that 52% of the recruiters take more than 3 hours to actually make a hire! Hence time-to-hire is the first recruiting metric that we will cover.

Honestly, if Churchill could solve political emergencies in a matter of minutes, we could surely solve the time-to-hire problem with a little help.

The 2 biggest pitfalls that recruiters face when it comes to closing positions are:

• Screening candidates
• Scheduling interviews

How can you screen developers and schedule interviews better?

Use personality tests

From Minna’s 16 developer profiles to Hackernoon’s 9, developers exhibit a myriad of profiles. Different projects need different behaviors and value profiles apart from skills. Hence, it’s important to get to know prospective employees and their work ethic to understand if they would be the right fit for your organization.Here are some questions from Alistair Doulin’s programmer personality test that you could use.

Use skill-based assessments

Using skill-based assessments to test technical competencies is a great way of making sure that you only have the right candidates in the interview stage. It gives both recruiters and hiring managers enough bandwidth to concentrate better on testing candidates in the later stages of the interview. It is no wonder that skill-assessments can bring down your time-to-hire by 50%.

Create a take-home coding test for free

Use live video interviews

An easy and time-tested method for scheduling interviews better is to use a live video interview tool. Some cool benefits of using such a tool:

• Scheduling interviews gets a lot simpler when assessing remote developers.
• You can watch candidates as they code and evaluate them for job readiness.
• With access to interview history, you always have data on hand to make the right hiring decision.

Did you know that by adding a live video interview tool in your hiring process, you can bring down your average time to hire to 10 days!

2) Decreasing your cost-per-hire

Season 3 sees Prince Charles’s investiture as the Prince of Wales and the demands of the royal family for the deployment of 15,000 troops, 21 gun salutes, and a battery of Royal Field Artillery among other things. However, the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, understands that a penny saved is a penny earned and he advises Charles to “Go and study there and address the country in Native Welsh” to make a more meaningful impact on the people of Wales.

Source: The Digital Weekly

It’s time we took a leaf out of Wilson’s book and saved some money by cutting down unnecessary hiring costs.

How can you reduce your hiring cost?

Did you know that recruiters spend 35% of their annual recruiting budget on external agencies to hire 10 technologists! No wonder this recruiting metric is really important to recruiters. Here are some ways on how you can reduce your hiring costs by minimizing your dependency on external agencies:

Leverage social media to build a developer brand

Prospective employees would like to know all the cool things that your company has been up to and see the kind of work culture in store for them. Setting up live Q&A sessions, building a talent pipeline using your company’s Linkedin profile and attracting Gen Z developers through Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest could be some ways in which you can gauge their interest.

Attend local meetups

Look for local developer meetups and conferences. You can find a lot of free events in your locality on Meetup. Shortlist for events that align with your recruiting goals. You could make some connections a couple of days before the event so you know whom to spend time with on the day of the event.

Make your tech team your brand advocate

Your tech team is first-hand proof of what you stand for as a developer brand. Hence, it is very important that your developers are your strongest advocates. Try incorporating a referral program and encourage developers to share their experiences working with you to ensure a greater recall.

3) Boosting your retention rate

“Keep one eye on the future. The distant future” – King George VI

The series portrays King George VI as the monarch who rose to the occasion at the expense of his physical and mental health. You can clearly see his preparedness when he urges Churchill to let Elizabeth undertake the commonwealth tour to ease her into her future role as Queen in order to keep the monarchy standing in the case of his demise.

Source: Business Insider

It’s time we channeled our inner King George and thought about the future of our workforce. Is all that sweat and blood that went into recruiting your dream tech team going to waste? This brings us to our 3rd recruiting metric: retention. Taking some steps to retain your tech team for the long run is the only way forward.

How to increase retention in your tech team?

We had recently written this detailed article on how to ensure your tech talent pool is poaching proof. Here’s the gist:

1. Provide autonomy and purpose to your developers
2. Develop a community internally
3. Provide perks and privileges your developers can’t say no to
4. Have an open discussion with your employees in the incentive process
5. Provide creative freedom and growth opportunities

There you have it—our royal advice on how to get your tech recruiting metrics right this year. Let us know if any of these have solutions have helped better your hiring process in the comments below. See you soon in the next episode! Until then, #NetflixandHire 😎

Welcome to #NetflixandHire where we learn some great tech hiring lessons from popular TV shows. This episode is focused on inclusive hiring. Over the course of the next 4 episodes, you’ll learn 4 ways in which you can successfully screen and hire developers in 2020. Buckle up, here we go!

2018 and 2019 brought about a surge of revelations in workplace equality with the #MeToo movement, the gender pay gap disclosure, Silicon Valley’s struggle with diversity and unconscious bias, among others. Things seem to be gearing up in 2020. Companies are now working toward drastically driving inclusive hiring in the workplace.

We thought this would be a great topic to cover in our maiden episode of #NetflixandHire and what better show to learn about inclusion than Orange is the New Black!

This comedy-drama takes place in a women’s prison, and thanks to its plots, it puts a diverse set of women at the forefront. The show ended up being one of the most-watched original series on Netflix. No wonder it won an Emmy, a Golden Globe, the GLAAD awards, and the Peabody awards.

Img source

Diversity in tech is not just about gender. It is your responsibility to ensure that hiring takes place regardless of age, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Here are 3 lessons we can learn from Orange Is the New Black to make this happen:

1. Strength lies in differences and not in similarities

The show embraces ethnicity like no other. Remember the fiery Russian Red, the entire Black cast ..Poussey, Taystee, etc., and the Hispanic gang of Maritza, Daya, and the others? The beauty of the series is it never overshadows one story over the other. Each character is given the screen space they deserve and issues of race and caste are discussed head-on.

Img source

Inclusive hiring is no different! As a recruiter, you hold the onus of promoting diversity by ensuring a fair hiring process. You need to reassure future employees that you have their best interests at heart. Also, at an organizational level, you prepare your current employees on how to appropriately interact with different people. Overall, you need to create a welcoming workplace.

Here are some initiatives by companies we absolutely admire for being flag bearers of tech inclusion:

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Since 2015, the company has proactively sought out candidates from outside traditional developer pipelines such as Stanford and MIT. It has also focused on recruiting tech talent from all women’s coding camps such as Hackbright and programs that focus on training black and Latino programmers such as Code2040.

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Intel has made the largest-ever commitment to invest in technology companies led by women, underrepresented minorities (African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans), startups led by entrepreneurs with disabilities, US-based entrepreneurs from the LGBTQ community, and US military veterans. Through September 2019, the Intel Capital Diversity Initiative has invested $381 million in companies led by diverse teams.

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Buffer uses its blog as a medium to explore issues in tech which affect underrepresented groups. The company also regularly modifies its job descriptions to include language and images that support inclusive hiring. They also sponsor awesome initiatives such as POCIT‘s Beer and Boardgames event and #wocintech‘s awesome photos.

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2. Freedom of expression

The first character that comes to our mind when we talk about freedom of expression with respect to the show is Suzanne, aka ‘Crazy Eyes’. Suzanne is portrayed as an intelligent woman, but someone who lacks social skills and is prone to spiral into emotional outbursts when agitated due to mental illness. The show is special because it never takes away from a character’s uniqueness, even if it’s someone like Suzanne. It lets her express emotions the way she wants to, be it in the form of writing a book or reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Img source

Isn’t that the whole essence of inclusive hiring? Letting candidates express their skills the way they want to help both ways —you get to see the most genuine side of candidates without putting the candidate under pressure.

But are we actually providing candidates with the means to give it their all in the tech hiring process? We think not. Take the example of a whiteboard interview in which candidates are asked to solve a coding problem in real-time. The important thing to consider is that a whiteboard is not a code editor. Candidates can’t actually run the code to see if it works, let alone benchmark it.

We suggest you opt for an anonymous coding assessment instead. This is a take-home coding test that candidates can take in an environment of their choice. It also gives candidates a chance to take the test by masking all personal identifiers. This helps eliminate bias and assures that candidates will be judged fairly. Also, since all candidates face the same set of questions, it is less likely to introduce biases that could filter out good candidates.

Create a take-home coding test for free

3. Inclusive hiring is more than just a checkbox

Are you hiring just to complete a mandate? Or does your definition of diversity hiring only mean hiring more women? It’s about time we understood that diversity is much more than that. It is the range of differences that make people unique, both seen and unseen, and this is where we get to the third lesson that we’ve learned from Orange Is the New Black—Sophia Burset’s story.

Img source

Though the show is about women inmates, it never leaves out people based on how they identify themselves. Sophia, a transgender inmate, is given equal screen presence as anyone else and delivers a moving and hilarious performance. In fact, after the show aired, she became the first transgender person on the cover of the TIME magazine in 2014 and has used her story to empower others.

Sophia is not the only one. The show served as a platform for several people from the LGBTQ+ community to share their stories and bring more visibility to the group.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could do something similar in tech hiring?

Here are some initiatives we can all be inspired by:

‍Lesbians Who Tech is a community of over 15,000 queer women, with a mission to increase visibility in tech. It has partnered with the White House LGBT Tech and Innovation Summit to empower participants by connecting them with the Federal government information, resources, and opportunities. Additionally, it conducts three annual conferences, facilitating coding scholarships and hiring opportunities. It runs a cool new mentorship initiative called ‘Bring a Lesbian to Work Day’, a one-day shadow program with a mission to match a queer woman with a mentor.

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Out in Tech encourages underprivileged LGBTQ+ to pursue tech internships and post-secondary training by giving access to careers held by their heterosexual counterparts. The community actively works with companies to change workplace dynamics by helping evaluate diversity and inclusion.

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Microsoft Pride is Microsoft’s initiative for pushing the LGBTQ+ inclusion forward. It was one of the first corporations to include “sexual orientation in their corporate nondiscrimination policy” and “offer employee benefits to same-sex domestic partners.” It also urges employees to be more vocal about the actions that they are taking. By the way, you can download some cool LGBTQ+ buttons from their website.

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Started by Angelica Ross after being shut out of the professional world, TransTech Social Enterprises seeks to empower, educate, and employ transgender and non-gender conforming people in tech. It offers tech workshops, peer coach training, study buddies, and graphic design and web development apprenticeships. It also offers job placements through its in-house design studio and remote learning opportunities.

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We hope 2020 kicks off a culture-first decade with inclusivity being at the center of it all. Here’s to a vibrant and diversity-fuelled hiring process in the months to come. See you soon in the next episode!

2020 looks like it’s going to be a phenomenal year for the recruitment industry. As a tech assessment company, we’re lucky to be able to regularly swap ideas with HR leaders, visit conferences, and read up on industry experts’ findings. Based on our findings on the latest hiring trends, here’s the scoop:

1. An increase in employee referrals and referral programs

82% of employers rated employee referrals above all other sources for generating the best return on investment (ROI) – source: careerbuilder

There is a reason why they say that two heads are better than one. Your team is first-hand proof of what you stand for as an employer brand. Hence, it is very important that they are your strongest advocates. This recruiting trend is one of the main reasons why we will see an increased focus on collaborative hiring in the upcoming year.

Here is a 5 step guide to building the perfect employee referral program:

1. 1. Determine the goal – Have a clear vision of what your referral program should accomplish. Is it to boost diversity? Is it to increase your remote workforce? Once you have this broad goal set, get more specific—check how you can increase the percentage of referrals or how to improve the quality of referrals.
   2. Create an easy, employee-friendly process – The less work an employee has to do to refer a candidate, the more successful the program will be.
   3. Train your workforce – Train your workforce on the following:
      • How to use the referral system
      • An understanding of what your company is looking for in a referred candidate
      • What employees can expect when they refer a candidate
   4. Don’t forget to say kudos – Recognize employees who are referring candidates. At HackerEarth, we run a cool referral program for our employees. Perks include handsome referral bonuses and a chance to win some awesome tech gadgets.
   5. Measure your efforts – Some useful metrics to track your referral program are:
      • What % of your hires have come from referrals
      • The % of qualified referrals (referrals who meet the mark)
      • How engaged is your workforce in the referral program
      • What is the quality of hires from the referral program

2. A shift from resume-based hiring to non-conventional hiring

Did you know that Google receives close to 2 million job applications in a year and recruiters spend an average of 6 seconds looking at a candidate’s resume– source: The Ladders

Resumes are passé and recruiters are using new hiring tactics like never before. Here are some non-conventional hiring tips for shortlisting candidates:

• Administer a personality test earlier in the hiring process – Good developers, for example, are known to exhibit traits that mark high performance such as teamwork, analytical thinking, and judgment. Looking out for such traits in the initial stages of evaluation can help you shortlist candidates who could be the right fit for the role.
• Gamify your hiring process – Using Artificial Intelligence in the hiring process helps measure specific elements like technical skills, vocabulary, facial expressions, and question response speed. These factors can also help reveal clues about an applicant’s education, intelligence, personality, and emotional stability. For example, Unilever makes use of Pymetrics to recruit and sort job applicants.

“Recruitment is part of a broader trend of using gamification in the workplace. Gamification uses game mechanics and experience design to engage users and solve real-world problems, by tapping into human psychology and rewarding positive behaviors in the workplace. Traditional recruitment processes can be intimidating and stressful for candidates and adding elements of games can make the experience more enjoyable as well as bringing out deeper aspects of the candidate’s psychology and behavioral styles.” – Kerstin Oberprieler, Gamification Expert

• Use skill-based assessments – Looking to test and filter candidates on job competency? One great way of doing this is to incorporate skill-based assessments in your hiring process. In fact, one should not only be looking at skill-based assessments for screening, but the entire hiring process should be based on skills.

Conduct accurate coding assessments with HackerEarth. Find out more.

3. A boom in Gen Z hiring

Did you know that 61 million Gen Zers will enter the US workforce in the coming years– source: CNBC

Gen Zers will form a major chunk of the workforce in the coming years. This makes it very important for recruiters to understand their needs and wants. Both millennials and Gen Zers come with their own skill sets yet both could not be more different from one another. With the oldest of Gen Zers being in the age group of 23 to 25, most recruiters can’t use the same tactics which work for millennials.

To solve this puzzle, recruiters need to understand why recruiting Gen Z is so different, what they care and don’t care about the work/workplace, and how to effectively recruit and retain this talent. You can find some great hacks on this hiring trend of recruiting Gen Zers in this webinar.

4. Embracing remote work

Did you know that in the past two years alone, there’s been a 78% increase in LinkedIn job posts advertising flexible work arrangements? – source: Remote year

Every distributed team looks different, but they all have one thing in common: they’re the future of work. Since distributed teams are set to become the norm, it’s key that you adapt and update your management skills for this new mode of work.



To be on point with this hiring trend, here are some strategies to get you into a remote management mindset for great results with remote teams:

1. Think remote-first -Start with how to manage teams remotely—maybe through a tool like Trello or with daily stand-ups via Zoom—and then see how this fits into the in-office group.
2. Use the same communication channels - Make sure you’re using the same processes with your in-office and remote workers. Slack is a great solution for communication. It is immediate and leaves a digital paper trail so that deadlines and expectations are clearly agreed upon.
3. Collaborate using digital management tools - There are great digital tools out there to boost collaboration. Tools like Slack, Asana, or Basecamp can promote easy and instant communication so that your team stays connected and nimble.
4. Create social spaces online - In addition to getting work done, you should also build relationships within your distributed team. This will make your team members feel more unified as not feeling part of the team can be a big challenge for working remotely. Some ideas include channels or boards for sharing photos of your weekend plans, social events such as virtual happy hours, or even a Friday email sharing stories from the week.
5. Celebrate success in public - When remote workers feel “out of the loop,” it’s usually because they don’t see how they’re positively impacting the team or company. One way to solve this isolation is to communicate success stories across the company. Send a weekly email of successes or use a Slack channel to give regular shout outs to good work. Your workers will feel appreciated and more engaged in their job.

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Conduct remote coding interviews effortlessly with FaceCode.

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5. Looking beyond the conventional skill set

Did you know that 84% of recruiters say culture fit is a prominent factor in the hiring process - source: cubiks



Competition for top talent is at an all time high with recruiters finding it challenging to hire candidates who fit both culturally and skill-wise. Most organizations are now looking beyond industry standards and are hiring candidates who are eager to learn.



According to the balance careers, here’s how you can create your own cross-training program for candidates:

1. Look within your own function for opportunities to cross-train on assignments.
2. Establish a formal job rotation across your organization.
3. Offer incentives for certifying on a variety of positions, functions, systems or products.
4. Measure employee feedback on their interest in and satisfaction with the cross-training work. Ask for their ideas on improving the initiative. Consider generating a dynamic QR code and integrating it to gather employee feedback on your cross-training program. Analyze the data to identify areas for improvement and optimize the program for better outcomes. This can lead to a more successful and productive workforce.

There you have it, our selection of hiring trends to look out for in 2020. This isn’t an exhaustive list but we hope it gives a direction to your hiring plans for the upcoming year. Happy hiring!



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3. 6 steps to create a detailed recruiting budget

A recruiter reached out to me with this message a few months ago-

The highlighted part in the mail is what struck me. It made me rethink if I was really making an impact in my current role.

Seems familiar?

In recruitment, talent poaching (if it works out) could mean nirvana for your competitor but a nightmare for you. Though your employee’s loyalty is an admirable quality, recruiters need to be cognizant of the fact that most professionals are always on the lookout for better opportunities.

This trend is most evident among technologists. Thanks to the tech talent crunch, tech recruiters most times end up getting the raw end of the deal. Proof: we ran a recent survey for technologists and 88% said they are actively or passively looking for opportunities.

Also, several court decisions are quickly changing the landscape of competition laws in the United States. Take the mecca of tech, Silicon Valley, for example. Recent California court rulings have invalidated common employee non-solicit provisions. These cases have big implications, both for seasoned organizations looking to preserve their talent pool as well as startups looking to attract the best talent from competitors. Clearly it’s open season for poaching talent in the Silicon Valley

And it’s not just California. This is evident all across the country with even biggies like JP Morgan quoting that they are poaching Google tech whizzes for their new equity trading bot.

Did you know that an average organization in the United States spends 24 days on the interview process alone? It’s great to invest the time and effort to bring in the right candidate but what if your competition hires that same employee a year later?

Though talent poaching is difficult to avoid in today’s tech landscape, there are ways you can prevent it from happening.

Here’s how you can outsmart your competitors from poaching your all-star tech team-

First, let’s look at why technologists shift jobs. A Glassdoor survey asked 1,400 software engineers this critical question: What are the top reasons you would leave your job?

These are the top 5 –

Now let’s look at the following out-of-the-box ideas to address them:

Salary and Compensation

Did you know that the companies with the highest employee morale and productivity pay a mix of salary and incentives? Though compensating technologists with a handsome salary almost, always works, there are some cool ways you can do this without a raise.

Provide autonomy and purpose

Most employees want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and one way of letting this happen is to help them see the kind of impact they are making to the business or product line. Developers should be given a chance to make decisions, make mistakes, and learn from them. The biggest gratification any developer can get is knowing that their code is changing the world.

Developer autonomy at Etsy – the online arts and crafts marketplace

Etsy employs a service-oriented architecture with a continuous delivery process and a feedback loop of 21 minutes. This means engineers need to deploy code every 25 minutes, which, in turn means developers have all the freedom to keep the wheels turning.

Source – Optimizing for developer happiness

What are they doing right?

1. Etsy follows the philosophy, ‘Easy deploys=developer happiness’. The have internal processes that keep developers happy and also ensure great product quality
2. They let developers own their work from day 1. It’s not uncommon for interns at Etsy to push code through on their first day
3. Lastly, they emphasize that employees should experiment and it’s okay to make mistakes. Instead, they make sure developers take home some actionable retrospectives

Read more on the autonomy given to developers at Etsy

Develop a community

Get to know your developers as people.When you show genuine interest in your employees, they’ll do their best not to let you down. One great way to bond is to build a community so developers feel connected to each other and not just the business. Some ways you can build a community at work are as follows:

1. Spur friendly intra-team competitions: Who wouldn’t want to win great goodies over some cool team-bonding activities? Coding contests and hackathons can help foster a healthy competition and build new friendships
2. Use tools to build a community: Use tools to provide developers with honest and timely feedback, but also assure them that someone’s got their back when things go wrong. An IRC or other communication channel can help keep the dialogue going
   
3. Create a developer community investment program: Develop programs and initiatives that ensure that coders get what they need to keep learning and keep connected. For example, Twilio has developed Twilio champions— an initiative designed to engage programmers who could be future Twilio employees

A poster of the latest internal hackathon at HackerEarth

Provide perks and privileges

Work-life quality is extremely important to some developers. Providing privileges like flexible schedules and work-from-home days as well as perks like opportunities to spend time on passion projects ensure that they find their workdays pleasurable and rewarding. This in turn boosts productivity, which can directly impact your organization’s bottom line

Perks and privileges at Basecamp

Basecamp develops web-based project management and CRM tools. Apart from being featured as one of the top paying companies for developers, Basecamp’s key focus is to keep employees happy and healthy. Few ways Basecamp keeps their developers happy are:

1. 4 day summer work weeks: From May 1st to August 31st, Basecamp employees work 4 days a week (from Monday to Thursday) for 8 hours each day, also called as summer hours
2. $100/month fitness allowance: They pay $100 per month for whatever fitness activity their employees enroll for,be it gym membership, yoga studio membership, or any other fitness class
3. One-month sabbatical every 3 years: Every 3 years, employees are eligible to take a 1 month long sabbatical
4. Work wherever you want: Basecamp allows its employees to work from anywhere in the world
5. Paid parental leave: When an employee at Basecamp welcomes a baby, the company encourages them to take up to 16 weeks maternity leave and up to 6 weeks of paternity leave at 100% paid salary

Here is the full list of the perks and privileges at Basecamp that you can provide developers at your organization too.

Engage your employees in the incentive process

What if the perks and privileges you offer do not motivate your employees? It is good to have an open discussion on the kind of perks developers enjoy. You can collect this information over a survey or a feedback discussion.

Once you have this info, you can set about making clear goals for them to achieve. This way, they are driven to deliver their best and it directly communicates the value for employee contributions.

Transparency at Buffer

If possible, you could go the Buffer way and keep things transparent for your employees. Most times, developers move either because they aren’t paid enough and their peers earn more in other organizations. Buffer is one of the most transparent companies out there to the extent that you can find out exactly how much anyone on the Buffer team earns.

And it’s not only the salary that they are transparent about. From the books they’re reading to their Equity formula, they have them all open for public access. View Buffer’s transparency dashboard here.

A snapshot of Buffer’s Diversity Dashboard

Career growth opportunities

Employees are your company’s most important assets. Investing in a developers growth could lead to increased job satisfaction levels and better retention. According to a report by Training Magazine, companies in the US spend an average of $4.5 Billion on training and development programs for employees. Make sure you are not missing out on doing this.

According to Monster, here’s a list of programs offered by companies with some awesome training and development programs:

1. Seattle Genetics – Tuition reimbursement, onsite training courses for job-related skills, and access to job-related conferences and seminars
2. SAS – Emerging leadership programs for professional training and development, career mentoring, and a career resource center
3. Amazon – An intensive, month-long training and leadership program prior to hire. A “Virtual Contact Center” trains employees to work from home
4. Randstad US – Training programs in the areas of certification, new manager skills, manager effectiveness, leadership development, communication and presentation skills, and mentoring and coaching programs
5. Paychex – Customized new-hire training programs for sales and service employees. The new-hire programs are a combination of virtual learning at an employee’s home base and instructor-led learning at a state-of-the-art training facility in Rochester, New York
6. CyberCoders – Through the Associate Recruiter Incubator Program, CyberCoders takes educated, highly driven, competitive individuals and teaches them to apply technology to a diverse marketplace
7. Schneider Electric – Schneider Electric University offers dedicated academies for executive development, leadership, customer education, energy and solutions, sales excellence, and functional skills

Type of work

Developers look for work that challenges them. It is not surprising that 58% of them said they would switch jobs if they do not like the work. Do the following to make sure your developers love coming to work every single day:

Provide creative freedom

It is important to give developers the space to operate. Imagine how you would feel to work on the same tasks that are not challenging enough, day after day? You either end up getting complacent or bored or both, and that is when you start thinking of working elsewhere.

Denying developers a chance to follow an instinct that they are hired for could be counter-productive. Since they thrive on solving complex problems, providing them with creative freedom can help your developers contribute much more every single day.

Creative freedom at Valve

Valve is a video game developer, publisher, and distribution company which has developed video games like Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, and many others.

This is Valve’s take on creative freedom – “When you’re an entertainment company that’s spent the last decade going out of its way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people on Earth, telling them to sit at a desk and do what they’re told obliterates 99 percent of their value.”

An illustration from the Valve Employee handbook to show the variety of roles employees handle in the first 6 months

Here’s what Valve does to ensure creative freedom for its developers: –

1. A chance to pick their own projects – Since Valve is a flat organization, people don’t join projects because they are told to. Instead, they decide what to work on after asking all the right questions
2. Developers are not hired to fill a specific job description – Employees are encouraged to look around for the most valuable work they could be doing. They are allowed to choose what is interesting and rewarding and what leverages their individual strengths the most
3. Developers are encouraged to participate in decision-making – There’s no secret decision-making cabal. No matter what project, developers are already invited. All they have to do is either start working on it or start talking to the people who are already working on it and find out how to be valuable

• Empower developers to be masters at what they do

When a developer doesn’t know how to tackle a problem, it is not only a setback to your business but also acts as a source of discouragement. Proactively empowering your employees to be masters in their field will not only give them a much needed confidence boost but also enable peer learning.

At HackerEarth, our developers make use of our tech assessment platform to evaluate themselves. Here’s how we do it:

1. The platform allows you to create skill-based tests. So if our team of Data Scientists want to evaluate themselves, the HR team creates an ML assessment and the questions are auto-generated from the tool itself
2. Once the test is created, candidates are invited to finish it within the stipulated time frame
3. On submitting the test, a performance report is auto-generated which is then used by the team to see where they are lacking and what they can do better

The HR team then works with the developers to see what courses they could sign up for to help them be the best at what they do. Our developers also use free websites such as Coursera, MIT OpenCourseWare, PVTuts, and FreeCodeChamp to upskill themselves.

Company culture

Developers love working for companies that embrace their individuality. Our own developers range from being nerdy and quirky to downright eccentric. Most developers tend to stick on to a particular organization when they feel valued and recognized. A great company culture is equally important to a business because developers are most likely to enjoy their time at the workplace when they fit in with the culture.

These are 8 powerful signs of a great company culture:

• There are people lining up to be a part of your organization
• There is low attrition rate
• Your employees have fun at what they do
• Your employees have a sense of job security
• When your employees feel it’s more than ‘just a job’
• There is open communication
• When your team embraces new ideas all the time
• Your employees are energized and there are no Monday blues

Engineering culture at Netflix

This company which has epitomized binge-watching is also known for its amazing engineering culture. Freedom and responsibility are at the core of Netflix’s business strategy and believes that its culture helps it achieve excellence.

These are the 7 aspects of Netflix’s culture:

1. Values are what we value
2. High performance
3. Freedom and responsibility
4. Context, not control.
5. Highly aligned, loosely coupled
6. Pay top of the market
7. Promotions and development

Netflix staff at Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos, California (Photo: GLENN CHAPMAN/AFP/Getty Images)

In fact, I could write an entire article about the fascinating insights on Netflix’s culture but for now you can check Netflix’s slideshow for more info.

Location and commute

Remote work is one of the benefits that most developers look for in a job. Most companies are adapting to a remote-first work culture which means you can build your development team around a workflow that embraces the concept of remote work, whether or not your employees are remote.

Remote working at GitLab

GitLab provides a full DevOps tool for the entire software development cycle— from project planning and source code management to CI/CD, monitoring, and security. GitLab calls itself a remote-first company and gives its employees a lot of freedom in the way they work.

Here are GitLab’s tips on working remotely:

• Facilitating internal communication

• • Daily video calls – Everyone gets on a daily team video call and are free to add subjects they would like to discuss with the entire team
  • Local meetups – Team members in the same location are encouraged to organize their own meetups
  • Slack channels – The company uses Slack as a channel for informal communication
  • Visiting grants – GitLab assists with travel expenses for upto $150 per team member per person they visit
  • CEO House – Team members can get together in Utrecht, Netherlands, at the CEO’s AirBnB, free of charge

The CEO’s house in Utrecht, Netherlands

• Coffee chats – Everyone in GitLab is encouraged to dedicate a few hours a week to have social calls with anyone in the company. They also have a ‘Random Room’ video chat option which gives employees the chance to have 1×1 calls with specific teammates
• Co-working calls – These are working sessions scheduled on Zoom where team members can work through challenging tasks with a co-worker

Read more about GitLab’s remote stories

You could move one step further and even make your entire hiring process remote. Read more in our remote hiring E-book.

I hope this list helps you retain your tech team for a long long time, and the next time you think of the word ‘poach’ is only at breakfast :).

Jokes apart, I would really like to know if you’ve tried any of these at work. Feel free to share your experiences and drop me a mail on soumya.c@hackerearth.com. Have a great day!

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