In today’s fast-paced world of high-demand tech candidates, companies have fewer good candidates to choose from than in the past. On top of this talent shortage, the interview process often fails to tell companies what they need to know about candidates. Candidate vetting isn’t always as thorough as it could be (“We just need someone on stat!”). And candidates don’t always know what they’re signing up for when they join a new team (“The company seems pretty decent …”).
Not surprisingly, team members and the clients they serve are sometimes taken by surprise when a new team member doesn’t really seem to fit in.
A Successful DevOps Culture Doesn’t Happen by Accident
In the rapidly changing world of DevOps, it’s all too easy to hire the wrong people. It’s challenging to hire people with the right technical skills, willingness to adopt new ways of thinking, desire to collaborate and ability to communicate clearly both in person and in writing. A successful DevOps culture doesn’t happen by accident.
At Liatrio, our DevOps hiring team embraces DevOps core values: Culture, Automation, Measurement and Sharing (CAMS). That means hiring decisions aren’t made hastily. We don’t check boxes. In fact, we hire only 5-10% of the people who want to work with us. We take the hiring of our DevOps engineers and consultants very seriously for good reason: our credibility and success on complex DevOps Transformation engagements depend on our people. Our team has to work together to understand our clients’ challenges and provide strategic solutions – there’s no room for weak players, lone wolves or brilliant jerks.
Real-World Interviewing and Hiring Strategies
From our perspective, what makes a great employee? It’s someone who trusts in the process, listens well, communicates openly, thrives on continual learning and remains open to new ways of thinking. By finding people who clearly meet expectations and help us strengthen our already successful DevOps culture, we’ve uncovered new opportunities to collaborate, done away with duplicate work and built a powerful sense of team-wide client engagement.
All of which is another way of saying we hire amazing people because we screen and interview them with intention. In the posts that follow, we’ll describe the following six phases of our hiring process:
It’s also important to note that our best hires have appreciated and actually enjoyed this six-phase process. The ones who’ve grumbled or complained about it have usually turned out to be a poor fit.
Starting with our next post, we’ll show how we put candidates to the test to determine if they’re right for our team. Along the way, we’ll share real-world interviewing and hiring strategies and lessons learned that may prove valuable not just in the DevOps world but in any industry.
