Recruitment process for Engineers at DNA Technology

We treat employees as people invited to co-build the company with us, however fluffy it sounds. Hence, we would like the recruitment process to be balanced: a candidate has enough time to meet us and we have enough time to meet the candidate. Just like in any healthy relationship.

Context

tldr; if you’re just interested in how our recruitment process looks like, scroll down :)

At DNA, everything we do we believe smart way is the only way to solve problems together. That is why, we specialise in building teams that specialise in building digital products. We don’t consider ourselves as a software house or an outsourcing agency. Perhaps, the most accurate term about us would be: a technology partner.

What have we achieved so far with such a mindset? We are proud that thanks to our work we helped among others:

• neurodivergents (people with autism spectrum) to grow as human beings regardless of their ability to function,
• people to have more convenient access to blood tests which leads to faster diagnosis of their health state (we’ve already saved several lives!),
• students to become financially independent by making gig economy more accessible to them,
• people to save money or pay off debts by taking advantage of cognitive science (check what we’ve been doing together with a great company Dreams).

To achieve such outcomes, it requires attracting the right people and creating the right conditions for them. Some assumptions we make everyday when building DNA:

• You may hear it frequently from leaders at DNA that they would like to attract people smarter than themselves. Leaders at DNA feel responsible for creating an environment in which self-motivated people build teams that are able to create great things. Interested? Check this video (but please ignore the military context).
• The source of productivity comes from a team having clearly defined autonomy and responsibility, not from micro-managing people.
• We believe that diversity and psychological safety at work matter — we get proofs of that everyday. Interested? Check this article.
• Usually, the problems we are trying to solve are complex (not complicated). Frequently, it means that we follow the Agile process and build our organisation according to the DevOps model. Interested? Check this book.

Recruitment process

The recruitment process for engineers is divided into 4 steps:

1. Introductory call (frequently in English, up to 1 hour, at time convenient to you, with a person responsible for your growth at DNA)— we would like you to get to know us better and vice versa. Please expect questions about what is important to you at work. We will refer to your answers explaining to you if you can find it at our company. You will have an opportunity to ask us any question you feel is important to you.
2. Programming task (usually programming language of your choice, up to 4–5 hours, no supervision, at the time convenient to you) — if we agree that there is an initial match between us (our values are aligned), we would like to ask you to do a programming task. To be precise, to implement a certain business problem. We respect your time, so we wouldn’t like you to spend on this assignment more than 4–5 hours. Most probably, implementing everything takes more time but it is not a speed coding contest and we do not expect the full solution from you. What we expect, though, is that you will give us a chance to see what decisions you make knowing the time constraints, how you think as an engineer and, obviously, what code you produce. When you share your solution with us, two Engineers will look at it. Usually, we get back to you with feedback within 1 business day. If the feedback is good from our side and you are also satisfied with it, we move forward to step #3… Again, please remember that during step #2 the feedback you will receive from us is an indicator for you what matters to us in ‘engineering’.
3. Teamwork exercise (frequently in English, up to 2 hours, in the office or remotely, usually during business hours, participants: you, 2 Engineers, Head of Engineering or Agile Coach)- we sit together at a (virtual) table and one of the people from DNA shares a startup idea. We start designing the solution from as many perspectives as we think it’s crucial. There’s plenty of opportunities to have really deep discussions about, for example, architecture, coding, design, infrastructure, security etc. It is a simulation of us working together as a team. It is perfectly fine if we disagree about implementation details as the goal of the meeting is to see what it is like to work together, not to reach a perfect pre-defined solution.
4. We get back to you with feedback regarding the meeting. If both parties are willing to work together, there’s the last task ahead of us: agreeing on cooperation terms. :)

The overwhelming majority of candidates give us feedback that they do really appreciate this recruitment process. What they mention specifically is that they are given an opportunity to learn about DNA comprehensively. Moreover, they say that they are treated as a human being and not as a robot expected to know an API by heart. I guess it is the consequence of the culture we’ve been trying to build at DNA. The recruitment process is just aligned with this culture.

// Tomek, Head of Engineering