Talents

Growing Talent

We grow talent. We believe that growing talent at NECOLT is the best investment we can make. This is in line with a few other interesting findings:

• Candidates with previous experience often come with a set of practices that is very different from our own. A lot of companies here do not focus a lot on software process improvement, so employees don’t have a chance to learn great engineering practices. So even experienced candidates learn a lot in our company;
• Fresh talents grow very quickly in our team because our methods are very well defined and team members are ready to help;
• Growing talent inside the company creates a very positive internal vibe. Our current team members enjoy that huge mental reward that comes when you see how a new team member is thriving.

We use no external or internal HR staffing solutions. Potential candidates reach us organically. Most of our great candidates come to us via:

• Recommendations from our employees and other engineers that know our company;
• Ruby Academy that we have been running at Vilnius University since 2009 thanks to our founder Saulius Grigaitis, who is also associate professor at Vilnius University;
• Internship programs via universities.

Hiring Process

We have a lightweight and highly efficient hiring process, which helps us determine the answers to the following:

• Does the candidate have sufficient knowledge base (i.e. solid understanding of OOP and design patterns);
• Does the candidate have the potential and desire required to progress up to our level (we are looking for candidates that can outgrow our current level);
• Does the candidate have written and spoken English skills (direct communication with our English-speaking clients is part of the process);
• Is the candidate willing to grow at NECOLT for an extended period? We prefer to maintain low employee turnover;
• Do we feel that the candidate’s values are in line with ours; it’s essential that new hires become a seamless part of the team.

The process looks like this:

1. We do a quick initial candidate review based on the information the candidate sent;
2. We ask the candidate to provide extra information - code samples, a list of interesting previously implemented projects, etc.;
3. We invite the candidate to our office for a coding interview;
4. We sign an NDA and work agreement with a set trial period;
5. The new hire begins the trial period by performing pair programming for a few weeks with an experienced developer;
6. The candidate introduces solo coding gradually after a few initial weeks;
7. The candidate becomes a permanent team member and makes contributions with the help of the team lead and other team members.

The candidate only moves on to the next step if she/he has achieved significant results in the previous steps.