Often the recruitment process in REBORRN will be quite lengthy and exhaustive. Although it's important to hire fast, it's more critical to us to hire the right people even at the expense of time.
1ļøā£Ā Criteria
We hire for attitude and train for skills. We look for character before credentials and we hire people who fit our culture, values, and are inspired by our purpose.
Culture Fit: We look for people who are curious, doers, care about their work and others, and want to have an impact and make a difference. People who are team players: open, honest, and sincere. Long story short, we are looking for people who embrace our values. This is non-negotiable and this is why we try to assess it from the first screening we have with the candidate. Potential to Learn & Grow: What got us here won't get us where we want to be in a couple of years. That's why we need people willing to continuously learn new things, and be open to taking challenges even when they are out of their comfort zone.
Flexibility and tolerance for ambiguity: We are a startup, in a highly competitive space, in a fast-paced environment. Things will change. Things will break. We look for people that are willing to create their own job roles. That are resilient, agile and will push forward no matter what. They must be totally OK not knowing what will happen in the next year. Cause we honestly, donāt know what is coming in the future.
Brings something new to the team. A skill, POV, past experience, way of doing things. We are a diverse tribe and this diversity gives us a unique & competitive advantage. We seek people with complementary skills and not copycats of who we already are.
No room for Brilliant Jerks: A brilliant jerk may do an exceptional job delivering competency-based results but is toxic. We have zero tolerance for toxicity, politics and anything that will influence negatively our culture.
2ļøā£Ā Our Doās and Don'ts
ā
Ā Things we do:
- We practice candor even in our recruitment process. We want to be transparent not only with the brilliant aspects of REBORRN, but also its challenges. We are not everyoneās cup of tea - and that is ok. We donāt aim to hire top talent, but the right talent.
- We create a friendly interview environment and at the same time, we will not compromise for textbook answers - we will push candidates to get authentic and straightforward ones.
- We hire people who are better than us.
- We give feedback - even when a candidate doesnāt get hired.
āļø Things we avoid:
- Hire people who are similar to us (yes, there are unconscious biases here, but we try to avoid them by involving different people in the process). However, we donāt seek diversity just for the sake of it, we genuinely hire the best regardless of gender, age, nationality, background, etc.
- We follow Mark Horstmanās advice and when we are in doubt, we donāt hire.
- We donāt promise things we can not deliver.
3ļøā£Ā Our Recruitment Process
Staying true to our ways of working, we have a roadmap blueprint but also customise the process depending on the position.
We take pride in our job ads and we usually get good feedback about them. What we aim for is to convey the feeling of our culture through them, so they are informal and punchy. We also prefer storytelling instead of only listing bullet points. And, of course, they are transparent and don't describe just the bright side but also the challenges. At the end of the day, we want to ensure that our ads donāt only attract talent, but attract the right talent.
Have a look at our career page to see what our job ads look like:
Also, have a look here at how we structure them.
Many times, we will also ask candidates to answer a couple of questions when they send us their CV. These questions will not only deprive us of random applicants but will also help us screen. In the era of chatGPT, we prefer those questions to be experience-based.
Some examples could be:
- Tell us of a time when you had to deal with a challenging (internal or external) client/stakeholder.
- Could you give us an example of a large-scale transformational project that you worked on? Please elaborate on the project, challenges, outcome, and scope.
Or when we are looking for someone junior:
- Tell us a time when you failed at something and how you handled it.
We donāt want applicants to write the story of their lives, just a short paragraph that will help us understand their experience and (most importantly) mindset.
Step 2: Letās Meet Each Other
Our HR specialist will have a 30ā call with the screened candidates to understand culture fit (aka whether they seem to be aligned with our values).
Step 3: Structured Interview
Given that the first call went well, our candidates will have a more detailed structured interview with the hiring manager to deep dive into experiences, culture fit (yes, again) and potential for growth.
In most positions, we want to see our shortlisted candidates in action so we will ask them to prepare and present to us a relevant case study. We are not looking for the right answers here, but for the right mindset: how the candidate approached the challenge, how they researched, their way of thinking, communication skills, level of preparation etc.
Step 5: Team Chemistry Chit-Chat
Before we extend an offer we will arrange a chit-chat with the candidate and the rest of the team. The reason is twofold:
- We want to ensure that the team thinks this is a good addition. The tricky part here is to avoid biases (this is why we have been trained on how to acknowledge and avoid them š).
- At the same time, we want to also allow the candidate to check for chemistry from their side as well as ask anything they want regarding day-to-day challenges, culture, etc. After all, we donāt only choose the right candidate. Candidates choose us as well.
As the name suggests, this is not an interview. It is a chit-chat, so team members are not supposed to only ask questions but also answer and the mode is conversational.
šĀ We find this meeting to be really revealing for both parties.
4ļøā£Ā Our Interview Questions
Although no interview is the same, we are happy to share here some examples of the questions we like. As you may observe, most of them are behavioral based and they are connected to our values.
š¬Interview Questions DB - Template5ļøā£Ā Our Offer Letter
Now, here we want to extend an offer the candidate can not refuse.
Check out here what this offer letter consists of and a template:
