Looking for the "right" candidate

…Aren’t you?

Each and every organization strives for hunting and hiring the right candidate, right fit to the job opening, right fit to the organization and on the top, perfect fit to the organization’s culture. This holds true for any small, medium or large organization; but as we all know, finding the right person can be taxing and more difficult than we think.

In this blog post you’ll find out, what is our definition of this right candidate and how does our hiring process facilitate to find one.

To start with, whenever we receive the hiring request, we validate the need for the opening. That means we make sure that it is actually hurting without this position. We meet all the stakeholders and identify the need together. Once done, we take good time to bring about all the desired and preferred skills for the job-in-discussion and come up with a job description that suits and perfectly matches the opening. The same is then shared with all our employees to entertain referrals, also it is posted on numerous job portals and social mediums including Naukri, LinkedIn , our own website and the Facebook page.

We prefer candidates, who route via our website since we feel they are the ones who are equally passionate to work with us. Of course it goes without saying that they should have the desired skills to perform the job. This does not mean we do not entertain all the other applications that we receive via other sources. All the applicants who are through with the initial screening are contacted and lined up for a personal/phone interview.

The “First” interview for all the roles

Here you’ll get to speak with a potential peer or a manager. This discussion (phone/direct) will last between 45 to 60 minutes. The first round starts with the interviewer’s introduction and not yours (strange isn’t it?) We feel it is equally important to know the interviewer including the fine details like for how long she has been working with us, her set of roles and responsibilities, and her typical day at work. Also she digs down and explains the nitty-gritty of the profile we are looking for to set the right expectation. The purpose of this introduction is to serve as an ice-breaker and make the candidate comfortable for the next session of interaction.

Next the interviewer will walk through the candidate’s profile reviewing the actual work the candidate has done and talking to him about the process they followed and writing neat code; here be prepared for behavioral, hypothetical and case-based logical questions that will cover your role-related knowledge.

At the end, you will be judged for the enthusiasm you show when you are put in any made-up situation, curiosity to dig down and explore, making thorough efforts to arrive to a solution, logical abilities and most important your very attitude.

The next step – write some code!

If you are on Github, you have already earned brownie points from us. We simply go through your code and ask you to explain us your thinking wherever required.

But if you are not, we need you to appear in a practical test, which primarily involves executing a scenario from start to finish. This serves as a platform for assessing the skills and making sure that he/she meets at least the basic level.

So you will be given a test scenario, the interviewer would explain it in thorough detail with the expected outcome. You’ll be given 4 to 6 hours for this. Again you will be sitting with our team, as a part of our team and you’ll be guided at each step. The added benefit here is you get to have a look and feel of the environment we have in, since we want the candidates to experience what Digicorp would be like for them.

Review/Technical round

The Technical round is a verbal extension of the practical round whereby the interviewer tries and understand your thought process behind the execution of the case scenario given to you in the practical round. Apart from this, we also have some standard questions for the technical interview depending on the job opening.

So in all, this might take up another 30-45 minutes whereby you’ll be assessed by

Your ability to communicate your idea or thought concisely and accurately and
How closely your technical skills and values align with ours

Final round

To be hired, the candidate must be through with all the above listed rounds and it solely depends on getting a unanimous approval from all those who interviewed him/her. The common theme in all the above rounds is that, ultimately the candidate should be “Smart and get things done.”

If so, we finally extend an offer to the candidate or else we send them a rejection via email depending on our decision.

Feedback

There’s one more step involved whereby we ask for the candidate’s feedback about the interview process, telling them to rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 10 and any suggestions that they would like to give us in order to help us improve.

Digicorp Candidate Hiring Feedback