Essentry - C# Recruiting

Essentry is a fast growing PropTech startup based in Berlin. They became a client of Dzemo through a network and innovation center called Factory Berlin that we both belong to. Edgar Bongkishiy our managing director was contacted by the Head of Operations of Essentry through the jobs channel at Factory Berlin for a collaboration in November 2019 and since then we have been working with Essentry virtually as their external HR department.

Case

So Essentry as a company of talented individuals was struggling with staffing their teams with talented engineers. They had the interviewing processes internally nailed down to a T, but were struggling to find the right engineers to interview for the C# engineer position.

Most companies struggle with the same problem - sourcing efficiently, while reaching thousands of potential candidates. In fact, this is one of the main reasons for long times-to-hire at companies, because of the need to have reached out to hundreds or thousands of candidates before hiring.

Case Overview

Problem

• Finding the right engineers to interview for the C# engineer position

Solution

• Defining the candidate requirements
• Creating a video to showcase the employer brand
• A peer into the MD’s personal network
• Sharing the job description on social networks (LinkedIn, Xing, Slack channels)
• Another peer into the MD’s personal network

In November 2019, when Essentry came to us, to hire for a relatively difficult position to fill and dictated the following requirements for an ideal candidate:

• Excellent command of C#, .NET Framework, UWP and related technologies
• Willingness to relocate to Berlin, where the main office of Essentry is found
• A valid working visa for Germany
• Good understanding on how to implement external hardware with their SDKs
• Good knowledge of JavaScript, Typescript, React, React Native
• Fluency in German and/or English

Solution Deep Dive

We met up with the CTO and Lead Engineer of Essentry and did a video of their product and working environment. We used this video to present to potential candidates, which proved to be extremely helpful, since potential new colleagues and engineers could see and basically feel members of their future team at Essentry.

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 from the UK, Germany, Ukraine, India, Russia, interview for the position at this stage.

At the end the engineer hired by Essentry for this position came through the good old personal network that we had built over the years. So we started by trying to find an engineer in our internal network, then we started searching externally by using LinkedIn, Xing, Slack channels and other sources in vain. Only when we came back and really dug deep into our internal network did we find the right candidate.

That shows how powerful a solid internal network of engineers is. Never to be underestimated even with the presence of automated sourcing.

Stats

100%Remote work with initial meeting in Berlin160hSpent on work over the period of 16 weeks3500Profiles were searched and 1000 contacted

Countless candidates who were contacted showed interest in the position

28Interviews conductedMany interested candidates were not deemed qualified. Due to our expertise as engineers too, we are able to filter this quickly

14Candidates suggested to client11Candidates accepted for interviews2Reached the final interview round

Candidate hired.Time to hire: 16 weeks

Challenge

There were three main challenges searching for the right type of engineer for Essentry:

1. There was a major change request from Essentry around 4 weeks after we had started searching for the C# engineer, which caused us to basically start searching again from scratch again. We presented Essentry a lot of C# engineers who were experts in web-based C# programming, but after viewing and accessing the candidates for like 4 weeks, Essentry decided to only hire C# engineers versed in Desktop software development. Lesson learned: Ask as many relevant questions during the job description phase as necessary to prevent change requests once sourcing has started.
2. We counted too much on job posts at LinkedIn, Xing and similar platforms to reach out to potential candidates. After spending many weeks assessing candidates who applied through these platforms, we realised we were not going to get the high quality candidates we or Essentry was looking for. We don’t rely on job postings anymore and in fact, have totally deleted this aspect of recruiting from our hiring process. We now reach out to candidates via direct short messages. If they are interested we present them with a more detailed job description.
3. We did not automate the sourcing of candidates for this position. Manual sourcing is an extremely tedious process. We now automate our sourcing 100%.

Technology Stack

Conclusion

One major lesson we learned hiring an extremely talented engineer for Essentry is to avoid change requests once sourcing has started. So this means try to understand the job requirements down to the last detail at the very beginning. Also we now set the secondary requirements of the client for a particular role as our obligatory and primary requirements. Example: if a client tells us “the new engineer could work remotely, but we would love him to be based in Berlin”, we interpret that as “the new engineer should be based in Berlin” and tune our search accordingly. Reason being, these little compromises are often reasons why some candidates are not being hired by a client, because the client often subconsciously hopes for the best case.

Another major lesson we picked up here is, the power of an internal network of good engineers/candidates can not be underestimated as a recruiting company. If we had consulted our internal network in detail, before sourcing externally, that could have saved us weeks of work.

In November 2019, we needed 16 weeks to hire an engineer for a permanent role at Essentry, mainly because we had not automated our sourcing process. Since then we’ve streamlined and automated sourcing, so much so that we are able to hire engineers at a speed of between 2 - 6 weeks for companies today. Big improvement :)

About Essentry

Essentry is a PropTech startup in Berlin that makes facilities safer and more secure. They built an automated visitor management system and deliver it as a service to companies which use it in their buildings to manage the in- and outflux of visitors and employees. They thereby manufacture biometric technology as a hardware and software, powered and made in Germany.