Staff Augmentation helps companies grow their delivery capabilities and reach their business goals. To accomplish this, the recruitment process needs to be as straightforward and lean as possible, in order to ensure that the selection and onboarding of the right talent is done in a fast and seamless way. But what makes a candidate the “right one”?
Michael Jordan once said: “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships”. And experience has taught me that indeed, teams are everything when you are in a game for the long haul.
As the lead of a team of recruiters, I’ve often stopped to reflect on the main aspects that need ponderation when we’re faced with a big group of candidates. Should we strive to be the best, technically, and relegate other aspects? Or should our priority be a strong team that might lack some expertise?
Here are 3 key aspects that are present in search for the best talent to build high performing teams:
- Technical skills
It’s not surprising that this is a key aspect. After all, a good company prides itself on the quality of the work they deliver. Mastery and specialization are important, and so is the selection of the technology itself.
Here, it’s important to look for highly trained professionals in in-demand areas that are able to deliver top value by employing state-of-the-art resources.
At the beginning of the recruitment process, applicants must be sorted according to their skillset and their pertinence to our search. This can be achieved manually -an extremely repetitive process- or by using state-of-the-art tools such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence that quickly sort out the most adequate profiles for the role.
There are several online tools that help evaluate the technical skills of the candidates prior to having a proper technical interview with them. The latter keeps being the most important event for technical screening, since the interviewer can go as deep as needed to understand not only the proficiency of the candidate for specific languages/frameworks, but also how he/she addresses complex or unknown technical scenarios.
- Soft skills
While technical aspects are important, teams that want to knock it out of the park know the relevance of soft skills, particularly in 100% remote scenarios. It’s especially important to evaluate the presence of skills such as communication, problem-solving, leadership and creativity, amongst others.
Communication skills have a direct impact on group dynamics and interactions with clients, while problem-solving brings along a mindset that looks to clear the path, in a sense. This is especially important when dealing with clients in a tech setting.
Leadership will be an important element in team settings, especially when we’re recruiting long-term positions with the potential to grow and consolidate. And creativity is, as Einstein once said, just intelligence having fun! Any team would be lucky to have a creative individual that can put that skill to good use, business-wise.
- Cultural fit
At Arion, we embrace
differences while finding common ground.
As someone said once, the culture of a company is the “operating system” over which teams run. Having a set of shared guiding principles is key to making a team shine. This, of course, must coexist with the innate diversity of our talent. At Arion, we embrace differences while finding common ground.
Sharing values such as integrity, honesty and respect, can go a long way in making remote teams close-knit. Assessing the cultural fit of each candidate is also a key aspect of the recruiting process. You can see more about our culture here.
At Arionkoder we believe our main asset is our people. And even though you’ve probably heard that line before, we know this is what sets us apart. We choose to build our teams with these considerations in mind because it helps us achieve a bigger positive impact in the world: that’s our fundamental purpose. We believe engaged, aligned, empathetic teams can deliver amazing results in this sense. This unity helps us create better quality results that are also timely and intentional.
We’re ready to delve into your newest project! Discover how we can help you reach your goals. Reach me at adrian@arionkoder.com and let’s discover how we can work together!