Hiring Makers Academy graduates
We recently hired Makers Academy graduates at Redgate for the first time. We learned a lot from it, so we decided to share our experience.
Careers Fair
The first step was to prepare the pitch for the Careers Fair. Because we’re based in Cambridge, we knew we’d have to persuade the graduates to relocate (or commute) from London. Also, our technology stack is different than what students learn during the course: another aspect that could put off candidates. We felt these two concerns were substantial enough to be worth the first half of our 5-minute pitch. For the second half, we focused on our excellent benefits package and on what’s like to work in a team at Redgate.
After the companies had made their pitches, the networking part of the fair began. It took a good few minutes for a graduate to come and talk to us, but then conversations flowed nicely. We spoke to seven people, and we wrote down their names, which proved useful later in the process.
We got seven applicants (out of which five had spoken to us at the fair) the following week, and we invited them to visit the office and meet some people from Redgate.
Pre-interview
We wanted the visit to be short — it would be much easier to organise, and it wouldn’t feel tedious. So we decided to have a one-hour session, followed by lunch and a tour of the office.
For the one-hour session, we wanted to get the Makers to talk to as many people from Redgate as possible, so we thought we’d try the speed networking format.
Speed networking
For the speed networking session, we invited people from different parts of the business: four software engineers, two tech/team leads, one UX designer, our Head of Product Engineering and one person from the People Team. We arranged the room so that each person (or pair of people) from Redgate had their own table. Each graduate then had seven minutes at each table before having to move on to the next.
The feedback on the format, from both sides, was mostly positive. Graduates liked having the chance to ask many questions and that a variety of people from Redgate attended. However, some Redgaters felt seven minutes wasn’t quite enough to get to the interesting part of conversations.
Lunch
After the morning session, we invited the graduates for lunch in the SQL Servery — our nerdily-named canteen. This was an excellent opportunity to have more relaxed and informal conversations. (Admittedly, we also wanted them to have a taste of our fantastic, free meals.)
Tour
After lunch, some people stuck around to help give the candidates a tour of Redgate’s office. Because we were too many, we ended up splitting into three groups.
Closing
After the tour, the groups met in the atrium (not precisely synchronised) for the closing. We handed the graduates Redgate goodie bags — which contained, among other things, a copy of TDD — and offered to reimburse their travel costs. We all shook hands and said our goodbyes.
There was some feedback that having a Q&A session at the end of the visit would’ve been helpful, so we might try that next time.
Interviews
Due to time constraints, we’d only be able to interview three people in the week after the pre-interview. We weren’t sure what criteria to use for selecting three among the six people who attended (we had one last-minute dropout), so we figure we’d do an exercise: we asked the Redgaters who took part in the speed networking session to pick their top three candidates. We knew the chances of us drawing any conclusions from this exercise were slim, but the results were surprisingly revealing.
Although we worried that basing ourselves on these results would lead to too subjective a decision, we proceeded to book interviews with the “top three”.
Technical interview
For the technical interview, we decided to experiment with some variations of our regular process. Firstly, we wanted the candidates to sense what it’s like to work in one of our teams, so we decided to do the technical interviews in the team area, as opposed to an interview room. Secondly, we were keen that they were interviewed by a member of the team they’d likely end up joining. Finally, we decided to have a single interviewer, as opposed to a pair, to avoid putting too much pressure on the candidate.
Unfortunately, this experiment didn’t work as well as expected. With two of the candidates, we felt we didn’t have enough information on their technical skills at the end of the interview to make a decision. Also, because there was only one interviewer, we couldn’t resort to a second opinion. Thankfully, both candidates agreed to follow-up on the interview.
For one candidate, we asked them to do a coding assessment in C# over the weekend. We created a Slack channel with them and the rest of the team so that they could ask questions along the way.
For the other candidate, we invited them to do a remote pairing session in C#. We sent them a one-month Code School gift subscription, in case they wanted to learn a bit of C# beforehand (although that wasn’t required).
Cultural fit interview
We had the cultural fit interviews on the same day as the technical interview, to speed up the process and avoid unnecessary train journeys from London. The candidates were interviewed by the tech/team lead of the teams they’d end up joining and another person from the business, much like our regular process.
Outcome
One candidate dropped out because they got an offer elsewhere, and we made a job offer to the other two. Sadly, one candidate didn’t want to relocate to Cambridge, and they felt the commute wouldn’t work for them in conjunction with the salary we were able to offer. Luckily, the other candidate accepted our offer!
Actually, we ended up hiring another Maker who reached out to us for a follow-up on the pre-interview, but that’s subject for another article.
The hires
Redgate’s transparent interview process for Makers gave me a great insight into the company, their culture and got me excited about being part of their team.
Redgate’s recruitment process really stood out for me. I had interacted with many companies before, but Redgate definitely knows how to deal with people in the best way.
Hiring Makers Academy graduates for the first time was challenging, but it was worth it. We’ve collected lots of feedback throughout the process, which will help us improve for next time. We’ll be doing this again in the future, so watch this space!
