Getting the right people will help create a great team, and will let it grow healthy. Moreover, it will keep it rooted in your company culture, and sustaining that same culture in turn. Nevertheless, too often recruiting is overlooked or completely delegated to HR or external recruiting agencies. In this session I’ll share our experience in building our actual recruitment process, how we got to this recruitment workflow, what lessons we’ve learned and what are the key elements of a recruitment process. I’ll also examine some differences compared to a more “traditional” way of selecting and assessing people.

1. HIRING GREAT
PEOPLE
how we improved our
recruiting process to build and
grow a great agile team!
beta

2. PIETRO DI BELLO
Agile Coach
Señor Coder
Love pizza and ice-creams
Works at XPeppers in a great team!
@pierodibello
@xpeppers

3. “THROUGH GREAT HIRING,
YOU WILL BE ABLE TO
TRANSFORM YOUR
ORGANIZATION”
Sean Landis - “Agile Hiring”

4. GREAT COMPANIES
ALWAYS HAVE
THOUGHTFUL AND
ADVANCED HIRING
PROCESSES

5. MANY COMPANIES TEND
TO EITHER OVERLOOK OR
UNDERESTIMATE HIRING

6. WARNING SIGNS THAT THE
RECRUITMENT PROCESS IS
UNDERESTIMATED IN YOUR
COMPANY

7. don’t know what your hiring process is
not involved in the hiring decisions
involvement is irrelevant
skill level of the teams is not where it should be
new colleagues do not fit

8. few new applications
tons of applications, too many just out of target
candidate doesn’t accept the offer
your company doesn’t grow at all or is growing too damn fast

9. THE THREE PILLARS OF HIRING
★
sourcing
★
assessing
★
onboarding

10. SOURCING CANDIDATES
a proper job description
online job sites
external recruiters
social media
sponsor events
open-source projects
university affiliations and internship programs
How to make to good people apply?
And BTW discourage the wrong candidate from applying?
Techniques you’ll use to attract suitable candidates

11. ASSESSING CANDIDATES
review résumé
testing skills
in-person interviews and auditions
take the decision
Is this person the right one for our team and our company?
This is where you get to know the candidate!

12. ONBOARDING NEW EMPLOYEES
bootcamp
study path
tutoring
peer reviews
How can the new employees reach a good level of proficiency and
integration in the team in the shortest time possible?
The first period of employment of a newcomers, from the first day on

13. A CLASSIC
RECRUITMENT
WORKFLOW

14. A MORE MATURE
RECRUITMENT WORKFLOW
1. screen the résumé
2. phone interview
3. in-person interviews and audition
4. hire decision
5. make an offer

15. OUR ACTUAL RECRUITMENT
PROCESS…
1. screen the résumé
2. solve unattended test
3. in-person interview
4. audition
5. hire decision
6. make an offer

16. …AND HOW WE HANDLE IT

17. HIRING
PRINCIPLES I
LEARNED

18. REFLECT ON
YOUR
RECRUITMENT
PROCESS

19. DON’T FALL IN LOVE WITH
YOUR RECRUITMENT
PROCESS

20. METRICS METRICS
EVERYWHERE
Collect metrics from your recruitment board to improve your process.
For example, in the résumé screening step you can measure:
résumé quality: how many résumés are filter out?
résumé filtering quality: how many résumés we accepted then fail to
pass the next hiring step?

21. INVOLVE ALL
THE TEAM

22. VALUE SOCIAL
SKILLS OVER
JUST TECHNICAL
SKILLS

23. …CULTURAL FIT
“Cultural fit will trump all technical skills. Every
time. It doesn’t matter how technically great a
person is. If a candidate’s cultural preferences
do not match your organization, that person
will not fit.”
!
Johanna Rothman, “Hiring Geeks That Fit”

24. KNOW YOUR
ORGANIZATION,
KNOW YOUR
TEAM

25. VALUE DIVERSITY

26. HIRE GREAT
PEOPLE :-D

27. RESPECT THE
CANDIDATE

28. USE HIRING
CHECKLISTS AND
DRIVING
QUESTIONS

29. REBOOT YOUR
TEAM WITH
INTERNS AND
GRADUATES

30. WAIT FOR
GOOD
CANDIDATES

31. COME UP WITH
YOUR OPINION
BEFORE EVEN
ASKING OTHERS
THEIRS

32. BEWARE OF
CARGO-
CULTING

33. SO….
REBOOT YOUR
RECRUITMENT
PROCESS!

34. 1. Describe the workflow of your recruitment process: try visualizing all
the steps and the flow of the candidates. Discuss with your team
and your HR department.
2. What is working and what is not in your current recruitment
process? Use the workflow diagram drawn in the previous exercise
to highlight unrealized improvement opportunities
3. How the current recruitment process is supporting the growth of
your team / your company?
4. How the current recruitment process is helping your team / your
company become what it is still not?

35. RECOMMENDED
READINGS
“Agile Hiring” by Sean Landis
“Hiring Geeks That Fit” by Johanna Rothman

36. THANK YOU!

37. FEEDBACK?