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A Review of LightSpeed’s Hiring Process

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by

Ash Shaw
in

Through our two latest hires we learned a lot about our hiring process: what works and what doesn’t. It’s helped us to improve and we talk about it here.

We were recently searching for new developers at LightSpeed. We wanted to hire someone who would adapt to and adopt our company culture.
We posted on Working Nomads twice this year – earlier in the year we hired Fernando, a Brazilian developer. This year, we brought Martin and Virginia onto our team. But this was through promoting the link via Facebook. We made a concerted effort to share throughout a social network.
We posted to Facebook too. 18 shares made a big difference. 3 South African applications came in as a result of those shares.
Working Nomads posts remote work opportunities from innovative companies, who hire people working from anywhere around the world. There positions in many industries, including finance, legal, health care, marketing, and management – however, the most popular category is currently development.
To provide a few examples – some of the best remote development jobs that are currently available on Working Nomads include

  • Laravel Developer
  • Senior Web Developer
  • SASS/SSIS/SQL Developer
  • Software Engineer
  • Python Developer
  • Android Developer
  • Java Software Engineer
  • Full Stack C# Web Developer

What sets apart a “digital nomad” from simply a remote worker is that the digital nomad is generally one who is travelling or regularly travels, relying on cloud-based systems enabling them to work anywhere and anytime. These types of workers tend to be happier with their work, enjoying a richer lifestyle open to more possibilities than simple a remote worker, who may work everyday from home.

Working Nomads Pricing & Plans

Working Nomads is a free service for job seekers.
Working Nomads charges the following fees to businesses who would like to post a job opening;

  • 1 job: $149/ea.
  • 3 jobs: $129/ea.
  • 5 jobs: $109/ea.

Our process:
We put an assignment together to test new applicants and we’ve refined the assignment as per questions from developers who were tested on it.
What do we test?

  • Communication – it is good to ask questions, don’t work in isolation, if you are able to ask for help effectively this shows an important skill I am looking for
  • SASS skills – try to identify the mixins available and make effective use of what is available in the theme
  • Speed – find the balance between fast conversion and quality pixel perfect end product, it is your choice how long you want to spend on the project
  • WordPress – use of hooks
  • HTML – semantic W3C markup
  • Code reuse – try use the best possible what is already done on theme and core plugins, avoiding create unnecessary custom solutions
  • Build system – use build system correctly to generate the dest files – CSS, JS (NPM, Gulp).

Our two newest hires

The two newest members of the LightSpeed team came through Working Nomads, but that’s not to say that they found us there specifically. Martin and Virginia gave us some insights into their thoughts on our hiring process:

Martin

Although the job was applied for via Working Nomads, he would not have seen it had it not been for the social sharing of the listing on Facebook and the mutual connections shared by Ashley (LightSpeed’s founder) and Martin. Martin’s impressions of Working Nomads was that many of the jobs would not be applicable to him as they require at least that you are in the same or a similar time zone to the place in which the job was listed.
Through his feedback we learnt that it’s probably best to rather use your personal / professional network first to try and find the best people for the job. Perhaps with a targeted Facebook campaign – a better way to spend recruitment money before heading to a site that charges you per listing.

Virginia

Virginia actually sent an email with her resume to the company, but saw the add via ZipRecruiter. She found the hiring process quick and formal, and liked the fact that there is a previous skill test and training.
In terms of the assignment she was given, she found it challenging in a good way: it had a lot of steps that required specific knowledge and she got to learn new tools in the process.

Always improving

We’re always trying to fine-tune our processes, and the hiring process is no different. We tried to pay particular interests to what our new employees thought of the process this time and learned a lot by doing so. We know where to look in future (and where not to look), and have a clearer insight into what our testing and assessment process is like for prospective new employees. We’re always seeking to improve, making it easier for us to find new team members who’ll be a good fit for LightSpeed.

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