Our job ads will never die

Wiredcraft has been bursting at the seams this past year; in fact, we doubled in size (from 16 to 33) and even expanded to Berlin. Hopefully, you’ve noticed our Twitter feed filling up with a lot friendly faces joining our company. We’ve worked really hard to tighten up our HR processes in the face of this incredible growth and part of this was improving our hiring workflow, so that we could make sure to get the best candidates in a timely fashion.

Our hiring process is a little different than most companies. We use GitHub for everything, including how we hire, and this is how we write and track issues. This means that your application is not reviewed by an HR manager and simply closed out or ignored; our applicants are reviewed by our team and the tickets are completely open for anyone to comment on and participate in the hiring process. We have a whole repo dedicated to recruitment and synced it up with a Slack channel to boot.

Step-By-Step

This is typically how our hiring process works. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule and we occasionally will have an extra interview or skip the task, but only if the situation calls for such a deviation. We also try to move the process along as fast as possible. You know what they say: “If you’re not first, you’re last.” A quote from a dumb movie, sure, but perfectly true in the talent game: no one likes waiting, whether they’re prospective hires or clients needing more work from us. We’re always working to improve our recruitment process, so apologies to those unfortunate souls who suffered with us while ironed out the kinks.

Being Unusual

50 applicants a month, 10 interviews a month, 1 offer a month.

We know it’s unusual, but we prefer to keep our job applications open for our core positions (developer, designer, etc.) year-round. This is different from the norm and might not be for everyone, but Wiredcraft isn’t your run-of-the-mill company. We don’t leave our job ads up because we’re too lazy to take them offline (it’s as easy as flipping a switch); we think both the applicant and the company can profit from us posting evergreen job ads.

Why do we do it this way?

As we said, this choice has twofold benefits: for us and for the applicants. First, let’s examine how Wiredcraft is better off using this practice, as that will shed light on how it benefits our applicants:

• Obviously, we can only hire and grow in a sustainable way, so we build up a backlog of interesting candidates to contact once we have the opportunity to hire again.
• A body in motion stays in motion. We want to keep evolving and improving, so it’s useful to compare ourselves against the fresh talent in the world. This gives helps us track two important trends: we can use recruitment to develop ourselves internally, by comparing our team’s skills to the applicants’ and improving our processes, recruitment and all, through experience and seeing what people write in the applications building a long-term overview of how applicants evolve over time (we can’t be outdone by those youngsters)
• A huge part of Wiredcraft’s company identity involves striving to be helpful. If we have good applicants and can’t hire them, but we know of some folks in need of fresh blood, we’ll gladly provide a connection, which builds up some good karma for us.

On the flip side of the coin, applicants will reap some benefits, too:

• Everyone knows that having a network is important, especially if you’re searching for a job. We always welcome cool and smart people to hang out with us at our events, grab coffee or lunch, or simply chat about their job hunt.
• Even if we’re not actively hiring, quality prospects can still jump into our recruitment, usually at the top. The next time we have an opening, we’ll certainly ping them first about joining the team.
• We have lots of friends in tech all over the world. If one of our friends is looking to hire for a position, we’re happy to connect applicants and companies.

The most important thing for applicants in the reconnect position is to provide them with personalized (whenever possible) and clear feedback and not just ignore them. Let them know that you’ll reach out to them in the future, offer comments on their work, and give them the opportunity to opt out of the holding pattern.

Why take the time to personalize a reconnect letter?

Sending reconnect letters chews up our time and we’re testing out some automation to make the process run faster for everyone. Here’s why we make sure talented folks know we’re interested, even if hiring them isn’t in the cards right now:

• It takes time to fill out our online application form. It’s imperative that we show respect for the applicant’s time and input.
• Treat others as you want to be treated (The Golden Rule)
• It’s much more professional than a cookie-cutter bot email or total silence (We all know how much that sucks)
• Ideally, we want to leave candidates with a positive feeling about the experience (we’re not jerks) and stay on good terms with good profiles because business needs change fast, so we never know when we’ll need a specific profile
• We’d like to maintain a pool of qualified applications for when we’re ready to grow again

With an increasing number of great applicants coming in, we find ourselves reviewing our hiring processes and working really hard to build and maintain relationships with smart, creative and interesting people, whether they’re designers, developers, marketers, or someone with superpowers.

Does your company have a creative hiring process? What’s the most unique hiring process you’ve had? Are you smart, creative and interesting? Well, what are you waiting for? Check out our job ads or chat with us on Twitter (@wiredcraft). You might find yourself becoming the newest addition to Team Wiredcraft.