Scarcity in Senior Developers Local Talent Pools has Companies Look to External Tech Recruitment Partners and Hiring Events – With the Great Resignation and a scarcity of local tech talents, companies are finding it harder than ever to find qualified candidates to fill expanding dev teams within a reasonable timeframe. To cut down hiring time, companies have turned to virtual hiring events – much like in-person hiring fairs pre-Covid, but attended entirely online from the comfort of your home office.
When it comes to hiring software engineers, the process can take anywhere from a few weeks to months – depending on the role, skills required, and the seniority of the role. The complexity of tech roles often adds to the hiring timeframe – sifting through the applications, searching for technical skill sets that match your role, scheduling interviews, and conducting technical assessments.
Virtual Events Helped Customer.io’s Cut Down Hiring Time
A common scenario that hiring managers find themselves in is that they go through the hiring process with a candidate and when they are at the last stage, there are new applicants who enter the process and could be a good fit for the role. Hiring managers then have to start over again from the beginning stage with the new applicant, and the overall time to hire lengthens.
How to Cut Down Hiring Time: Customer.io’s experience
Like many high-growth companies, Customer.io is no exception to facing challenges around sourcing qualified developers. They also encounter the issue of prolonged hiring lead times when having to evaluate candidates at different stages of the recruitment process, due to receiving candidate applications at staggered times.
(Image credit: Andrea Piacquadio)
Customer.io’s business specializes in providing an automated messaging platform for tech-savvy marketers seeking control and flexibility to craft and send data-driven emails, push notifications, and SMS messages. Over 3,500 companies, including Segment, Reddit, and Notion trust sending their messaging with Customer.io.
The US software company has a 100% remote headcount at 130+, with plans to double its engineering team in the coming year. To achieve its 2022 hiring goals, Customer.io’s recruitment team needed extra firepower to source and hire the right candidates savvy in their tech stack and programming languages.
Aligned with the shared value of moving fast, Customer.io partnered with VanHack to tap into its diverse dev talent pool, source pre-vetted candidates, and make the right hires – fast.
Since signing on in March 2021, VanHack’s Growth and Talent managers have been working closely with Customer.io’s recruitment team to hire experienced engineers. The team has seen proven success with VanHack’s Women in Tech and Senior Developer Virtual Hiring Fairs to meet and hire qualified candidates.
From the past year alone, Customer.io has made 5 successful hires through VanHack’s virtual hiring events. Each has gone on to make significant strides in their roles. Most recently, one of Customer.io’s latest VanHack hires, Aman, was recognized as Employee (Ami) of the Week for her enthusiasm and contributions to the mobile team.
In this conversation, Ilya Brotzky, CEO of VanHack, and Natalie Leon, Customer.io’s Technical Recruiter chat through hiring processes, building diverse teams, and successes with VanHack’s Virtual Hiring Events.
A Snippet From The Conversation: Transcript
Ilya:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another VanHack talent success case. My name is Ilya, and today I’m very excited to be joined by Natalie, a technical recruiter at Customer.io. Welcome, Natalie. Great to have you here.
Natalie:
Great. Thanks for having me.
Ilya:
Our pleasure. And we’re excited to be doing this session with you and just generally talking about Customer.io and how you’ve hired some candidates from us. So let’s just jump right into it. Could you tell us a little bit about your professional background, and Customer.io in general?
Natalie:
I work as a technical recruiter in Customer.io. I’ve been working for a few years as a technical recruiter for specifically remote teams.
Today over 3,500 businesses use Customer.io to manage, send and track performance for emails, SMS, and push notifications using behavioral data. We are a 100% remote company and in 2021, we just hired around 20 people. But for the engineering team only, more than 20 [in 2022]. This year we’re hoping to actually double the number of our team members in the engineering team. I would say we’re very much in a growth phase right now.
Ilya:
That’s exciting. Must mean the business is growing well, congratulations. How was hiring for tech positions before VanHack? What was the process like?
Natalie:
For tech recruiting, I would say the process is a bit challenging because there’s a lot of demand for senior candidates, but not many people.
[For Customer.io], it’s very important to go really fast with them through the process. What I specifically like about VanHack is having virtual hiring fairs where you can quickly go through conversations with candidates and see if their goals align with also what the company is looking for.
And from there, we would end up with a very interesting pool just to start the process very quickly. I also like the diversity of the pool of candidates you have. It’s definitely big compared to what you usually see whenever you post a job and you just wait for the candidates to come and don’t see a lot of diversity in that sense. That’s a big difference I see working with VanHack.
Ilya:
Tell us a little bit more. You mentioned the hiring events. That’s something that is maybe a little bit different about VanHack. How was that experience for you? Can you dive a little bit deeper into how was the beginning and then how did it go with the results?
Natalie:
Yeah, the first time that Customer.io went to [VanHack’s] virtual fair, I wasn’t there because I started with the company a little bit after that.
But my recruiting manager mentioned that they had a really great experience with VanHack and there would be an upcoming virtual fair to look into.
So I did, along with an engineering manager from our team. It was awesome because we could quickly speak with a lot of people that had very similar backgrounds to what we were looking for.
Usually you don’t have a super general virtual fair, but it’s specifically for a certain skill. I don’t remember the first one because I’ve been to a few already, but I think the last one I went was for Go engineers. These events really make it very easy to find the kind of skills that we were looking for.
Ilya:
That’s great to hear. How fast was the hiring process? Do you remember if it was 3 months, 1 month? How quickly were you able to move?
You mentioned moving fast. And is that something that you found with VanHack you were able to quickly find candidates?
Natalie:
Yeah. It was fast also because we could start with a big pool of candidates. Since we have different stages, it can take around three weeks to one month.
But we’re starting with a big pool of candidates rather than maybe seeing a candidate at the final stage.
We’re looking at other good candidates at the beginning of the stage. So, just having a big pool of candidates from the beginning makes the process a little quicker too, for them to all go at a similar pace.
Ilya:
Last question, would you recommend VanHack to other companies that are looking to scale their engineering teams?
Natalie:
Yes, definitely. I think one important thing would be going to the virtual fairs, but also going through the talent pool because you also have people that are maybe not looking at that specific moment. Perhaps they’ve been in the role for a long time, but you can still have their information there and get in contact with them.
Also, the team at VanHack helps reach out to candidates directly. I think that speeds up the process when we have someone from your team also contacting them and making sure that they can see our proposals or our invite to interview. So yeah, definitely. I recommend it very much.
Ilya:
Thanks so much, Natalie. It was a pleasure speaking with you and if you’re watching this and looking to hire some great developers quickly, just go to vanhack.com and we’ll help you out there.
Natalie, have a fantastic evening in London and we’ll talk soon.
Natalie:
You too. Thank you.
For employers looking to make their next great tech hire, learn more about our upcoming Virtual Hiring Fairs:
- Virtual Hiring Fair for Senior Developers: February 22-24, 2022. Sign up here.
- Women In Tech Hiring Fair: April 5-7, 2022. Sign up here.
Check out the diverse talent on VanHack’s platform today. Visit the employer’s page and sign up to access full candidate profiles.
