A secret to success at a growing company like Arcules can be stated simply: Get the right people in the door to get the right product out the door. Then repeat. Over, and over, and over again. Companies that hire successfully — and we like to consider ourselves among them — are looking for much more than technical skills, and it takes a constantly evolving and flexible wp-contentroach to recruit the right people.
Applying an agile process in recruiting allows us to both weed out the “brilliant assholes” of the development world, and also create the adaptable learning organization we feel is needed for success. This is a philosophy we are constantly refining and adapting.
Our candidates may find our recruiting somewhat unorthodox. We employ some strategies and exercises not typically found in the interview process, but have proven to be invaluable in finding the right match for our unique culture. This is hardly meant to deter a candidate, or make them wholly uncomfortable (though, as you’ll see, emotion can factor into the process). It is, however, a critical part of our agile recruiting process, which we have found very successful in helping us get the right product to the customer by finding the right people to build it.
Here’s a glimpse into our process:
- Feedback flags: For the duration of the interview process, we aim to give the candidate real-time feedback on their responses and progress to emulate real-life scenarios as much as possible. It allows us to get a true picture of their reaction to change, flexibility to adapt and ability to recover from conflict. How they respond to feedback allows us to see “red flags” or “green flags” in their responses, either physical or verbal, that we believe might indicate future behavior. Does the candidate flinch when told their solution isn’t quite right? That could be a red flag. Can a candidate recover from a bungled answer and identify where they went wrong? That’s a better sign. Bottom line, we have found a candidate’s reaction to feedback — whether positive or negative — is highly indicative of how they will interact with our team.
- Evaluating emotional intelligence: The way a potential candidate will function as part of a team goes well beyond their technical skillset. As such, we leverage personality tests and design thinking sessions to evaluate emotional intelligence in the recruiting process; and have found them to be very valuable in our quest to hire the right people. We believe it takes a unique psychology to succeed in Arcules’ agile culture — you can read more about how our teams fail forward and our leaders take a step back here — and these wp-contentroaches help us bring those traits to light.
- Mistakes as motivation: No candidate is flawless during an interview process, just as no employee is perfect all the time. We’ve found the best candidates can admit their mistakes, recognize their failures and create a strategy to do better next time. We also look for people who don’t always turn a failure in to a positive — sometimes, a mistake is a mistake and it must be learned from. Admitting flawed reasoning, even during the interview, is much better than trying to spin it.
These are mere glimpses at our multi-stage hiring process at Arcules — our agile attitude means the process might look different as we evolve and learn. We believe this attitude permeates our people, our processes, and our business, and is a big part of what truly sets us apart.
Think you have what it takes to join the Arcules team? Why not browse our open positions?
