Hiring Developers

At Brandnew IO we make a lot of effort to ensure we find the best and most motivated people to work with. This pursuit to discover the most talented and capable individuals spans across all teams, including the developers’ team. As technical lead, it is my task to screen potential candidates on the basis of both technical and non-technical skills to make sure they fit into brand-new way of doing things. Interestingly, it is quite easy to find skilled people. Being a developer myself, I attend meet-ups and conferences that allow me to directly talk to people in their language. The real challenge actually lies in finding people who are willing to work with you and who are as excited about the product as much as you are.

Making a competitive offer

With the current spike in the numbers of startups it can be a real challenge to compete for the best talent. Even if you have a direct connection to people, chances are they are working for companies much more established than your own with much more resources, allowing them to offer salaries you won’t be able to match initially.

We at Brandnew IO are big believers in hiring employees who work remotely for our tech team, as not only does it allow us to hire fantastic people from outside of Berlin but it also gives Berliners the chance to gain a lot of freedom and independence in the way that they work. Currently our developers travel across the EU, changing cities and countries as they please and choosing to work from co-working spaces or the privacy of their own homes. We have seen great success with this method and in return we see engagement rates and involvement that exceed anything I’ve encountered before. The freedom involved in this working style is what enables us to compete with top of the range salaries.

Ensuring people are the right fit

We are strongly focusing on how people fit into our company culture. As most of the team works remotely and I travel often for the same reason, it is essential that I can easily delegate and depend on my co-workers, meaning that trust is critical. What most companies attempting to work with remote employees don’t realize, is that this ‘trust’ works both ways. The company must assume that employee will do his/her best to achieve his tasks and there is no need for sophisticated micromanagement or tracking of every single detail. We are big believers in deliverables and accountability versus arse-hours (8h a day in the office). As such there are no constraints on how people work — the only requirement is to follow up on our communication channels, which at the moment are:

• Daily standup
• Emails
• Slack Channels

We are still experimenting with this, however I can already see how great this policy of almost total freedom and full trust works. Additionally most of our programmers love the idea that they are welcomed at the office at any time. Some of them travel quite regularly to visit us and spend time together, working and partying. I feel that relationships built in this way are much deeper and stronger than if we would just saw each other 8h every workday.

Although this approach may seem risky and unnatural to those used to working with a traditional work model, it has proven to be very beneficial for us. Our team has been successfully built on a basis of strong mutual trust and motivation to get the job done according to highest quality standards, even though we are working in different locations and environments.

Thanks for reading and checkout our awesome team at: www.brandnew.io/team