Who is Our Client?
Our client is an established product company with 17 years of experience in the industry. Over nearly two decades, the company has built a solid reputation as a key player in the Communication-as-a-Service (CaaS) sector, delivering innovative solutions to facilitate seamless communication across diverse platforms.
What is the Challenge?
The company recently undertook a significant technical transformation to modernize its backend infrastructure. Previously built on Node.js, the backend has been completely rewritten using Golang to improve performance, scalability, and reliability. This shift has created a pressing need to bolster the development team to fully leverage the capabilities of the updated technology stack.
What is the Opportunity?
The company is embarking on an ambitious recruitment drive to expand its engineering team to support this transition. They are looking to hire 10 highly skilled Full-Stack Engineers proficient in Golang and React. These new team members will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the company’s products, contributing to cutting-edge solutions at the intersection of backend and front-end development.
What Does This Challenge Mean for the Recruitment Team?
The technological shift to Golang presents a unique opportunity- and challenge- for the recruitment team. While Golang is still considered a relatively new programming language, it has been steadily gaining traction in the developer community. Many professionals with backgrounds in PHP, Ruby, or Java are transitioning to Golang, drawn by its simplicity, performance, and suitability for modern software architectures.
This growing interest in Golang aligns with an industry-wide trend of companies moving from monolithic to microservices architectures, further fueling the demand for Golang expertise. As a result, the number of job openings requiring Golang has surged, making it a competitive space for sourcing talent.
However, the specific combination of Golang and React poses a significant recruitment challenge. While each technology is powerful on its own, finding candidates proficient in both is rare. This scarcity required our team to think creatively and strategically about sourcing strategies. It took time and careful planning to identify where such profiles might exist, leveraging a mix of innovative approaches to locate and engage suitable candidates.
Our Recruitment Approach: From Understanding to Execution
To successfully tackle the challenge of sourcing highly specialized Full Stack Engineers with expertise in Golang and React, we adopted a structured and collaborative approach. Here’s a detailed breakdown of our process:
Step 1: Understanding the Client’s Needs We began by thoroughly familiarizing ourselves with the Ideal Candidate Profile (ICP). This involved conducting an in-depth introductory meeting with the client, lasting approximately 30 to 45 minutes. During this session, we covered a broad range of topics:
Company Overview: Understanding the company’s mission, vision, and cultural nuances.
Current Challenges: Exploring the technical and organizational hurdles the company is facing.
Role-Specific Details: Diving into the specific requirements and expectations for the Full Stack Engineer positions.
This meeting set the foundation for aligning our recruitment strategy with the client’s unique needs.
Step 2: Initial Candidate Calibration Armed with insights from the introductory meeting, we initiated the search process. Our team identified and presented five potential candidates whose profiles closely matched the ICP. This initial shortlist served as a calibration tool, allowing the client to provide feedback and refine the search criteria.
Step 3: Observing the Technical Evaluation Once one of the shortlisted candidates was invited to a technical interview, we requested to join the session as observers. By being part of the interview, we gained valuable insights into the technical expectations and evaluation criteria.
This step was pivotal in helping us understand the nuances of the role, such as:
Specific technical challenges candidates would face in the position.
The client’s approach to assessing both technical skills and problem-solving capabilities.
Step 4: Refining the Search With a clearer picture of the technical requirements and the client’s expectations, we fine-tuned our search strategy. This allowed us to identify the ideal talent pools and pinpoint “donors”.
Step 5: Expanding Outreach for Greater Reach
To maximize the chances of finding highly qualified candidates, we adopted a multi-channel and geographically diverse approach to job advertising. Here's how we broadened our reach:
Diversifying Job Posting Platforms Recognizing that relying on a single job portal could limit visibility, we strategically published job advertisements across multiple platforms. This ensured that the positions reached a broader audience of potential candidates.
Targeting Various Locations Our efforts focused primarily on European countries, where we identified a strong talent pool of developers with the required expertise in Golang and React. This regional focus allowed us to tap into markets with a higher likelihood of matching the client’s requirements.
Exploring Developer Communities Beyond traditional job boards, we conducted a thorough investigation into niche communities where developers actively engage. During this research, we discovered Slack channels with over 25,000 Golang developers exchanging ideas and discussing opportunities. By promoting the job openings in these channels, we were able to directly reach a concentrated audience of highly skilled professionals.
The Outcome
Each step of this process, from initial understanding to deep technical engagement, helped us optimize the recruitment journey and deliver exceptional results. We managed to find 2 Engineers in a short period of time.
Our Hiring Metrics: A Snapshot of Success
Recruiting highly specialized professionals, such as Senior Full-Stack Engineers with expertise in both Golang and React, requires a meticulous approach. Here’s a detailed look at the key metrics from our hiring process:
Position: Senior Full-Stack Engineer (Golang/React)
Experience Requirements:
3+ years of experience with Golang
2+ years of experience with React
Hiring Metrics for Tree Roles:
First Hire:
Time to Fill: 63 days (total duration from the job opening to offer acceptance)
Time to Hire: 82 days (time from the candidate's first interaction to the start date)
Second Hire:
Time to Fill: 160 days
Time to Hire: 81 days
Third Hire:
Time to Fill: 178 days
Time to Hire: 67 days
Insights:
These metrics reflect the complexities of sourcing talent for niche roles requiring expertise in two in-demand technologies. Despite the challenges, our team maintained a consistent timeline for filling the positions, ensuring alignment with the client’s technical and cultural expectations.
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