Digitell.me is a young and dynamic startup developing online survey technology and based in Cologne. A manager director at the company was already associated with the Dzemo managing director before asking for recruiting support from Dzemo.
Case
This freelancer was being sought after to customize an already existing survey tool based on LimeSurvey. The engineer had to bring along excellent skills in the Yii framework, a rarely used framework in the world of PHP.
The sought after engineer could be able to work remotely, which is a major plus, when engaging in such searches. Especially considering the fact that Germany is short of about 100 IT specialists, as can be constantly read from well-informed sources like Statista.
Apart from profound knowledge in PHP and Yii, the ideal candidate also had to bring along the following skillset:
- Profound knowledge in frontend implementation - HTML, CSS (SASS/LESS) , JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap
- Experience in basic DevOps technologies like nginx, Git, Linux, Docker, etc
- Excellent knowledge of the English or German language
Solution
Due to our previous experience as engineers working with other engineers from Eastern European countries like Russia and Ukraine, searching in these countries was our direct starting point.
We posted the job description as an advert on LinkedIn and got some very good candidates which were unfortunately never a fit. The most diverse types of candidates were from the UK, Germany, Ukraine, India, Russia, whom we interviewed for the position at this stage.
This proved to be a masterstroke, because we were able to find a fitting engineer based in Ukraine in a very short time.
Status
100%Remote work14hSpent on work over the period of 1 week50Profiles were searched and 30 contacted
Almost all candidates contacted immediately showed interest in the position
6Interviews conductedAs usual, some of the interested candidates were not deemed qualified. Due to our expertise as engineers too, we are able to filter this quickly
2Candidates suggested to client 1Candidates accepted for interviews 1 Reached the final interview round
Candidate hired. Time to hire: 1 week
Challenge
The main challenge for this hiring came at the fall-off prevention period, during which the client was engaging Dzemo to be involved in the project management of the software implementation, since we are also engineers at Dzemo.
We ended up spending quite a reasonable amount of time assessing the estimations of the project for which the hired engineer was working on. Also unusual effort was put in directing the client to create UX designs that are implementable by engineers.
We have learned to stick to just recruiting in future projects, so as to be more efficient in our overall delivery.
Technology Stack
Conclusion
The hired Freelancer for Digitell.me ended up working for a period of about six months, instead of just 2 months as initially planned. Considering the time-to-hire of just 1 week, we can definitely say from this experience that hiring Freelancers is more lucrative from a recruiter’s perspective, than hiring permanent employees.
Freelancers have an unfair reputation of not being engaging to a project, but from this and previous experiences, we can definitely debunk this prejudice. Our hired engineer performed with a high intensity and sense of responsibility - treating the piece of software as if it was his, thereby delivering great results. Most freelancers we also personally know mostly perform more than permanent employees, because of the pressure and their reliability on a project which could end any time.
About Digitell.me
Digitell.me is one of those startups which have a very bright future in front of them, because of a solid founding team and a very tangible business idea. They build survey software and help companies become successful by continuously measuring their consumer, employee and market experiences.
