746 applications, four hires, and an interview framework that held.

The situation

A newly appointed CTO arrived with a three-step transformation programme: moving from a legacy manual architecture to cloud-based microservices, establishing robust engineering processes, and hiring the people to execute and evangelise both.

The plan was to promote from within, off-board a consultancy, hire their own talent and get a leadership group in place.

The job postings that came with it produced a sudden influx of applications, and the internal HR team was overwhelmed by the volume.

The challenge

The approach

1. 01

   Discovery and brief taking

   • ·Sat down with HR, the CTO and the hiring team, and took each of the four briefs separately.
   • ·Assessed how applications were being processed and where the bottlenecks were.
   • ·Agreed what had to be filled by when.
2. 02

   Framework and enablement

   • ·Created a talent engagement pack.
   • ·Confirmed the interview panel and framework, and built interview packs.
   • ·Trained hiring managers on structured and remote interviewing.
   • ·Wrote the pitch that went out with the roles.
3. 03

   Route to market and shortlisting

   • ·Went to market on all four roles at once, and shortlisted against each brief.
   • ·Held weekly updates with the hiring team.
4. 04

   Offers, negotiation and closing

   • ·Kept feedback moving so candidates did not drift during a long process, and kept the hiring team honest about what candidates expected.
   • ·Ran the offers through to signature.

The result

• Four roles filled: Engineering Manager, C# Engineer, DevOps Engineer and Project Manager.
• A screening and interview framework the hiring group actually used.
• Application volume handled without losing qualified candidates in it.