How do you choose your next employer? In Android developer's trade, the recruitment process is something that you may commit to fairly frequent.
There are many things to consider when making this choice. And you better make a good one because it will define a big chunk of your daily life.
Of course, everyone will have different priorities and will focus on different aspects. These are my subjective reasons and experiences on why I chose Untitled Kingdom.
Phone screening
First of all — the phone screening part. Usually, it’s a talk with someone from the HR department to tell you about the position, get verbal confirmation about your experience and make sure you can use the English language in an acceptable manner.
From the get-go, the process in Untitled Kingdom looked a bit different - I was speaking with the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). It was a pleasant surprise. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with delegating this work to the HR department. But if your first contact with the company is with someone who is personally responsible for the team and work on this position, for me, it shows a different level of commitment to finding the right person.
The core of the talk followed the more standard formula as I described it above, but still with some subtle positive differences. It showed that my caller truly wanted to know what kind of a person I am. I even got some valuable tips on the topic of growing as a software developer in my local community.
Recruitment task
Next step was to do recruitment task. I know that some people are not fans of such a solutions, but I like it. Mainly because you can show your skills without the pressure of face to face meeting. That's assuming that the task itself is constructed well.
Fortunately, this one was. The difficulty was just on point, and there was a lot of room for how you wanted to solve it. Most importantly, the task itself was close to work that we do on a daily basis in our field.
On-site talk
The meeting was divided into two sections. First, there was a soft skills assessment and after this pair programming session with team tech lead.
On the surface, it seemed like any other standard recruitment process, but there were a lot of subtleties that made it distinct from other companies. First, there was a genuine interest in my goals and priorities in life. I could see that they wanted to determine if I would fit into this team, not only from a technical point of view. In most cases, you will have this soft skill assessment, but almost always, it feels like a person doing this just checks boxes that someone else wrote. This time was different, we went deep with these questions.
We discussed a wide range of topics, not only those ideological but also more specific ones about the company’s field of work.
Besides all the above, it was obvious that they were looking for someone proactive, someone who is open for feedback and doesn’t hesitate to give one back. I would say that feedback is one of the keywords for this recruitment, I will elaborate on this later.
Seeing that they created such an environment in the workplace is heart-warming. A place where from the beginning, you’re reminded to speak your mind openly and not to be afraid to receive same in return.
The technical part was quite a nice experience. Usually, this is the part where you can see something different in every company, one will give you codility test, another will ask only theoretical questions from the documentation.
Personally, I’m a fan of a more down to earth tasks, and this is exactly what I got here. Questions and tasks assessing not only how I would approach the problem but also if I knew my way around the Android development environment and software development process in general.
On the last part of the meeting, they diverged from your standard recruitment process. I said that feedback is one of the keywords, well, I got detailed feedback while still on the meeting. Feedback about each step of the recruitment, what my strengths and weaknesses are. To add to this, I was asked to give feedback about their process.
This struck home with me as without feedback, there is no growth. And to see someone valuing so much that you would receive one and ask for one back is quite unique.
I was asked in the past what my opinion was about recruitment, but that was always on the side, not so important for people involved. But if you deliver it in the package of one of the vital elements of the process and sincere interest in the answer, you just get something different in result.
In conclusion
I had a choice for my next company. I can gladly say that this choice wasn’t hard. It was so refreshing to see something different on the market, something more honest, open and genuine.
Before Untitled Kingdom, I was looking for 2 things:
1. Having good chemistry with the people I was going to work with
2. Technology used at work.
The latter one was not hard to determine. But meeting and talking with the team was sometimes made hard because of how the recruitment process was structured.
Gladly, not this time.
In the past, a company’s products or projects were a bit on the sidelines for me. Mainly because we just didn’t have that much of an interesting choice on the market. This time I got something different. Something I wasn’t even sure I was looking for. Projects with a meaning and a real-life value to users. Not another shopping application or recreational time killer.
I know that there will always be a place for all kind of employers, and there will always be employees fulfilled by working for them. I can quite confidently say that I finally found my place to work.
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