A few weeks ago, the IT recruitment world quaked when Reaktor published the PeaceMaker (beta) recruiting site. There was all the hustle’n’bustle about who’s on the list and who’s not. Was Bilot on that list? Nope. Was I surprised? Not really.
When Bilot was established and growing fast we didn’t need to think that much of advertising to candidates. Bilot had (and has) a good story and usually someone knew someone who should be working with us. In those days, we decided not to take part in the Great Place to Work or other types of competitions. We trusted that by doing a good work with customers and being awesome colleagues we could attract the people who also want to do good work with the customers and be an awesome colleague. It worked pretty well. It wasn’t easy, but Bilot was getting approximately 20-30 new people on board per year.
However, the setup changes a lot when you want to get to new areas and find different skills. How to attract people that never heard from the company?
How to reveal the real thing?
You really need to get creative to kick in to the new circles. A common way is to get people’s attention via their new best friend, social media. If you’re not there you don’t exist. But with just plain ads it is difficult to bring all the goodness that is inside and not to be lost in to the stream of similarities.
With an ad you can achieve a lot but it never replaces the real thing. That is when company culture kicks in. You have to be an employer that your people can genuinely recommend to others. If you have awesome people like we do, they make recruiters lives a lot easier. They make it personal and genuine and e.g. publish an invite for a new colleague to share an Oreo like Matias and Markus did.
Truly, all we have is the people that really makes us stand out.
Looking for a unicorn
Reaktor’s idea (as they say) was to share peace into the wild west of IT recruitment, but it also raised up disagreements. To me it raised the question, why we rather fight and not co-operate? My guess is because there is lack of skills and doers in the IT field. Instead of fighting from the same people, companies should act to get more new people to learn those needed skills.
Take more juniors on board, take the time to teach and trust them. Train the people who are already working in the IT field but their knowledge is starting to get old.
Instead of waiting for the perfect unicorn candidate to meet the need, could we have used that recruiting time to training one?
More collaboration and sharing good experiences would be needed in this area too.
At Bilot we fall easily to the same trap. We are taking baby steps by training juniors and people who are re-educating themselves. So far the results have been promising. Our first Junior Academy was a success and now we are planning to launch it again in the beginning of next year.
Be or not to be on the list
To get back to the original topic – Should Bilot be on that list among the companies that people who work at Reaktor would have chosen us if Reaktor wouldn’t exist? We shouldn’t be on that list. We should be on that list of companies where people want to work even Reaktor does exist. Is there a list like that?
Here’s few reasons why you could enjoy working at Bilot:
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- We do cool custom solutions to our great, influential customers in Finland and global market
- We use the newest technologies in business like Microservices, Azure, React…you name it! Really, as an architect you make the decision based on customer needs.
- We invest on developing our employees skills
- We want to be a great place to work, give opportunity to influence, support learning and good work life balance that people are able to enjoy their work, year after another
And yes, we have Oreos and other cookies, and above all, people who wants to work with you.
If you feel us, stop looking and connect with us here.
Peace & Love
