How to hire engineers

Padraig Coffey, CEO, Zartis talks about how they overcame the talent shortage to hire engineers. 

Transcript

0:00:07.3 Marie Ryan: Welcome to Hiring Talent. I'm your host, Marie Ryan. In this podcast, CEOs, HR managers and recruiters share their insights to help you find talented employees.

0:00:20.7 MR: Joining me today is the CEO of Zartis, Padraig Coffey. Hello Padraig.

0:00:25.3 Padraig Coffey: Hey, how are you doing?

0:00:26.9 MR: Good, thanks so much for joining me today. Without further ado, can you tell us a little bit about Zartis?

0:00:34.3 PC: Sure, certainly. So Zartis is a software consulting company. We're based in Ireland. We provide engineers to client companies in Germany, the UK, the United States, and Ireland would be the four main markets. From an industry perspective, we do a lot of work in renewable energy in Fintech and in education technology as well. We've been in business for 12 years now at this point. As I say, Irish-based, so head office is in Cork, and we have engineers working for us from Spain, from Portugal, from Poland to Czech Republic, and more recently we've been hiring in Latin America and also in South Africa. And typical customer engagement looks like a high-growth tech company that needs to augment its engineering department, and we provide engineers to those companies usually for long-term projects. And we also provide some expert technology consulting, so our CTO and his team of direct reports can come in and evaluate an existing as is scenario from a technology perspective, and then look at what a maybe 2B plan could look like. So that's us in a nutshell, I suppose.

0:01:52.1 MR: Great. And you mentioned you're in a lot of different locations. Why did you hire engineers overseas?

0:02:00.9 PC: That's a very good question. I suppose access to talent is a constraint for a lot of our clients, and it's been a pinch point in Ireland for a long time. I relocated to Spain for a five-year period, in 2015 I think it was. So I just moved back to Ireland within the last year. And a lot of that move, personally, was because I wanted to live abroad again, and I really enjoyed the experiences I've had living in other countries. And in doing so, I suppose with me moving to Spain, there was an opportunity for us to focus our hiring in Spain in the first instance, and that's where we did most of our engineering hiring specifically in Madrid, first of all, and then we opened up offices in Valencia, and more recently, we've continued to hire in almost every province in Spain.

0:02:56.2 PC: So that got the ball rolling in terms of international hiring. After we commenced hiring in Spain, one of our clients was asking us where else in Europe we could help them access engineering talent, so we decided to start onboarding engineers in Poland, primarily driven by the quality of engineering talent in that country. And then subsequently, we established legal entities in Portugal and Czech Republic and kept going with growth in those locations. So it's really been about access to talent. Ireland, as a market, has had a, I suppose, a tight labor market in relation to tech hiring for quite a period of time. The solution to that problem around... If you think of it in terms of, let's say, 2012 to 2015 or 2016, the solution tended to be to relocate talent from other parts of Europe. So you had a lot of folks moving from Spain and from Poland and Portugal and Croatia, and the promise was, "Move to Ireland, double your base salary, get international experience, work through English, many of the best tech companies in the world are there."

0:04:08.8 PC: So it was a really compelling sales pitch for coming to Ireland at a particular moment in time. And over time, the salary differentials between Ireland and other European countries started to erode. So salaries increased very significantly in countries like Spain and Poland and Portugal and Croatia. They didn't increase at the same rate in Ireland. And at the same time, the cost of living was ratcheting up in Ireland very significantly from about 2014 onwards. So our company, I suppose, sprung up as a kind of a solution to that problem of, "If you can't bring the people to the jobs, you might as well bring the jobs to where the people are." And we had our company infrastructure all set up in Spain to be able to facilitate companies that wanted access to new scenes of tech talent, and we've kept going from that perspective. So I guess in the situation as Zartis, some of it was driven by personal aspects, so I wanted to live in Spain, and some of it was driven by the changes in the market and changes in the professional realm.

0:05:15.8 MR: Okay, interesting. And certainly, workplaces in Ireland are becoming a lot more diverse and a lot of different people are moving from different countries here. So I'm curious to find out what the differences are between, say, Irish employees and our European counterparts.

0:05:33.6 PC: It's an interesting question. So I kinda wanna avoid getting into cultural generalizations, but there are some differences that we can certainly talk about. I would say that people are used to different things in different locations. So in Spain, people are used to having maybe more time off. So for example, there's 14 public holidays in Spain versus nine in Ireland. But on the flip side, they're used to working a longer working day, so it's not unusual for people to still be at work at 7:00 PM or 7:30 PM in many companies in Spain, whereas in Ireland, if you're still there at half five in many occasions, it's kind of an unusual thing. So I think the configuration of time off and the configuration of work-life balance is a little bit different if we consider Spain versus Ireland.

0:06:29.0 PC: Looking at Poland. That's an... It's interesting... I guess there are some cultural kind of nuances that you can consider in relation to people in different locations. But I think what's been more striking for me is that people are broadly similar wherever you go, the motivations can be very much the same, people want access to interesting meaningful work, that challenges them and stretches them out. They wanna be paid well, for that work, they want a sense of progress in terms of what they're doing. They want to be treated well. So that doesn't really change regardless of where you go. Maybe one thing I have found is Irish people can be a little bit more diplomatic than people in other places. In terms of... I've heard this characterized that we're a bit fake and about certain things that like if someone says that everything is going brilliantly, that it's going fine, and if it's going fine, it means they're about to hand in their notice. So maybe they can be a little bit of that. Maybe we are maybe by consequences of our Colonial inheritance. Maybe we're a little bit not insincere, but may be more prone to sugar coating things in Ireland and being a little bit less direct about what we want.

0:07:50.9 PC: And so I have found that with the Polish colleagues that we have, you know exactly where you stand with them, and you know what they're thinking and there's very few surprises crop up. And I would say something probably similar in Spain that the employees we have in Spain tend to be quite forthcoming if they're unhappy about something, which is good. It means you can do something to solve the problem. Historically in Ireland, some of the issues that have arisen with people have been something I've learned about when they're on their way out the door when they're leaving. They handed in their notice, they're gone and they've been upset about something for a long time. It's like, okay. It can be maybe a little bit more challenging to surface those issues in the Irish context.

0:08:36.4 PC: But, again, back to the point. I think people are broadly motivated by the same things and broadly very decent wherever you go to, one of the things that really struck me throughout my career is maybe by luck, and I've generally been surrounded regardless of what country or city I've been working in by really great people and people I've been able to learn from, and I suppose my overall sense of human nature is very positive. And because the experiences I've had have been broadly, very, very positive. And yeah, I think that people are not as different as they often think they are. And be that within a cultural context or within the cultural context, or between different cultural context, I think we're quite similar in terms of what makes us tick and what we're looking to get. What we're looking to extract from life, I would say.

0:09:30.6 MR: Do you think companies can be more direct with their employees, or how they can foster a culture where their employees can be a bit more open with them?

0:09:41.7 PC: Yeah. It's a great question. I think it comes down to people feeling safe and secure to speak their truth. I think that's a really important thing. Having made plenty of mistakes myself over the course of my career. What I have learned is not to shy away from asking people very directly and asking them twice. Like, "Are you sure that this is a project you're happy working on? Are you sure that you're enjoying your role as it's currently constituted? Are you sure this is everything's moving in the right direction?" Yeah, so I think I've learned with the particularly with Irish colleagues that there's no harm in asking a second time and just making sure that what they said, first time around is definitely what they want. So, I think that, that's an important learning for me it's been... There's a temptation of someone's telling you what you want to hear you to say, "Oh, yeah, they're happy they're grand. I can move on. I don't need to worry about this," and particularly, if you're involved in running a company or managing a team or have some sort of leadership responsibility, you're normally dealing with a list of small fires at any given moment in time.

0:10:52.5 PC: So that the incentive for you is to try and keep your list as short as possible. But if you don't solve the problem today when it's small, you might be solving a much bigger problem in two weeks or two months time. So I think certainly a learning that I've internalized is to check in with people continually and to check that things haven't changed in a way that's negative for them, so to speak. And I think that that's an important thing to bear in mind, particularly if you're dealing with Irish people.

0:11:24.4 MR: You mentioned kind of motivators for different employees. What do you think are the biggest motivators for engineers?

0:11:32.6 PC: Okay. So in order, I would say the number one most important topic for engineers would be the level of interest or satisfaction that they can derive from the project they work on. So a challenging project I think is really, really, really important, probably more so than money even though money is super important too. Like it's a really important factor. But I don't think it's the number one. I think, I have seen engineers take on projects that pay less in order to be more challenged than to have more interesting work. I think evidence of that would be the difficulty that many large Financial Services Institutions have in filling their developer roles despite the fact that they in many locations, are paying at the top of the market. Because in many instances, it might involve working with Legacy Technologies or it might involve working in a scenario where there's a lot of bureaucracy around getting changes to happen and it can be slow moving, and engineers will often prefer maybe a faster paced environment that's more dynamic, that's more agile, that's more subject to change and more iterative shall we say.

0:12:55.1 PC: So I think the number one is the nature of the challenge itself. I think money probably comes in second. I think the manner in which they are treated by their employers is super important too. So everyone wants to work with people or for people that they think have integrity. Very few people want to be like the bad guy or working for the bad guys. So I think if there's a sense from engineers that actually there is... There are motivations beyond just money on behalf of their own employer. I think that that can be quite gratifying for people. So I'd say in the order, it would be nature of the challenge or extent of that challenge, money, and then the environment in which they work from a social and people perspective. So I would say those are... Those are the key things. There's probably other things, and people are different. But in a general sense, I think, if you have a super, super interesting project and it pays somewhat well, you're not gonna have too much difficulty attracting people to work with you. If it's a maintenance project or working with legacy technologies, no matter how well you pay, it can be a struggle, it can be quite difficult to attract people to come, and then even more challenging to get them to stay.

0:14:11.9 MR: Interesting. And in terms of when you're hiring people and conducting an interview, what are the top qualities you look for?

0:14:20.5 PC: That's a great question. The number one thing we look for over and above everything else is personal integrity, because we're a consulting business, so engineers within Zartis reflect the values and the quality of the company. So if we bring people in that are going to misbehave or not hold high ethical standards in their conduct, it reflects on our brand, and it's a difficult thing to deal with. So we look for that personal integrity over and above everything else. Second on the list comes technical capability. They need to be really good at what they do. And when a company engages with a consultancy firm like Zartis, what they want is access to high quality engineers quickly. So if they don't get competent engineers from Zartis from the get-go, they're not going to come back looking for more collaboration or further services from us. So second on the list would be that technical competence.

0:15:22.8 PC: Those are really the important... Most important two. And there are other considerations, like adaptability, flexibility, willingness to learn new things, openness to new experience. Some of these, depending on the project or the area, can be quite important. But if you have high integrity and a high technical level, it's quite likely would be quite interested in bringing you in as an employee. And those are... Those are the two most important. It's probably been down to death now at this point, where people talk about, "Well, it doesn't matter if you're the best engineer in the world. If you're an asshole, you're not gonna fit in here," etcetera. It's quite true, because you can have the experience of working with really talented people who bring the wrong kind of atmosphere to a team, and you can poison the environment in an entire team. So it impacts the working lives of maybe six other people within the team and maybe six other people on the client side, so it's like, "Okay, that engineer is very good, but they're... [chuckle] They're making the lives of 12 other people less happy," so it's not worth it in the end to bring people into an organisation that are going to misbehave, that are gonna be, let's say, super selfish and only think in terms of what they want or what they need and are inconsiderate towards colleagues. So yeah, integrity one, technical capability two. After that, it doesn't really matter.

0:16:46.3 MR: Right. And in terms of assessing integrity, how do you assess that in an interview? Are there any questions that you go to, or are there specific scenarios to make it happen?

0:16:57.6 PC: That's a really, [chuckle] really, really... It's a really difficult thing, right? Because if you ask anyone if they have personal integrity, they're likely to say, "Yes, I do, and I'm very well-behaved," but I think you can... You can pick things up right the way through a hiring process. So for example, there are folks that will go through a hiring process and they'll be very respectful to, let's say, the CTO that's interviewing them, but maybe they're gonna be much less respectful towards the administrator who's coordinating the interview, for example, so that's one thing to keep an eye on. Like, are they nice to everyone, or they're only nice to people that they think are powerful and important? So that's a good... That's a good test of integrity, I think. It's like, "How have you behaved?" Have they been courteous throughout the process? Have they tended to show up on time? If they were late, did they apologize? You can pick things up, I think, explicitly asking questions. You can try and set tracks for people with behavioral interview questions, "What would you do in this scenario?" Etcetera. They'll give you a theoretical answer that maybe makes them sound good or look good.

0:18:00.7 PC: But I think in terms of where you'll get a lot of information is when you ask them about their career history, and if they're speaking in terms of, if they're grateful for the experiences they've had, they've enjoyed the projects they've worked on, they've enjoyed learning from other people, if the narrative is more around, "This project didn't work out because the leader was... Didn't know what he was doing, he was incompetent, and I didn't enjoy this role 'cause everyone was mean to me," it's like, "If everyone was mean to you, is that everyone on the team was mean, or was that... [chuckle] Was that maybe on your side?" It's a question that you can pose to yourself internally. But I think without even having to ask, some people tell you who they are and they show you how they are... They show you how they are with other people.

0:18:48.0 PC: So I think if you have your eyes open, all the information is there in front of you, and you can detect. And after a while, you become more discerning, and particularly after you've made a bunch of mistakes in this area, you start to pick up on little traits, little habits, or behaviors that you can say, "Okay, if they're not going to be nice to people during the hiring process, how are they gonna behave when they're in a project, or when something goes wrong, when maybe they're given the wrong laptop, or they were... How are they gonna behave towards their colleagues if there was a mistake on their payroll, or... " You start to gather kind of a set of impressions around people, and equally on the other side, sometimes people come in and they just have a wonderful positive energy about them, and clearly, they're smart and ambitious and hardworking and have integrity and know how to treat other people, and it's just emanating from them that they're gonna be a great hire, so I think...

0:19:44.4 PC: People who are involved in hiring and I'm less involved in hiring within Zartis than I used to be. So a lot of the hiring decisions happen without... Unless it's a leadership role. Generally, I won't be involved in the hiring process anymore. But I know that our CTO and I know that folks involved in the talent acquisition team internally, have really sharpened up their focus over the years and really gained an appreciation of what exactly they're looking for, and how to detect a good cultural fit. And that's what we're looking for in the end, because we onboard customers when we think they're gonna be a good cultural fit for us. And that's gonna be that they're open to suggestions. So they're not closed-minded. And they're not bringing a view that they're perfect, and everything is wonderful. So they're open to suggestions, they're open to different ways of doing things. And they have a people first attitude. So our view is, if you put... If you really look after your people properly, they'll look after your clients, and that will mean your business is strong. And I think working with companies who share that mindset of like, if we take care of our people, they'll take care of us and everything else will fall into place. And looking to onboard customers who I think are gonna have a view towards modern ways of building software, modern frameworks and technologies that are looking to innovate and to solve problems and do cool and interesting work.

0:21:14.4 PC: And when we figure out that we're dealing with a company that shares those values and sense of culture, then we're happy to work with that company, because we know that the engineers that will fit with Zartis culture will fit with that client. And when a client project comes to an end, and those engineers come back onto our bench, so to speak, until we find them a new project, we know we're dealing with people that will fit elsewhere within the organization, it can slot into other teams. So when you have that, we kind of... We interview clients in much the same way that we interview potential employees, we wanna make sure the fit is right on both sides. I mean, there's loads of organizations out there that are not a good fit for us. And vice versa, we're not a good fit for them. And in which case, you should try and figure that out early in a sales process and then say, okay, maybe you're better off to work with a different type of provider, maybe someone larger or someone who work in a different maybe... In a different methodology, a different approach to building software. So, getting the client culture fit right and then getting the engineer culture fit right, is kind of how you can get everything to fit together.

0:22:21.8 MR: Yeah, I agree, certainly, in the sales process. If you have to say whatever you have to say, to get a client on board, you might find that they're a nightmare client, because you weren't upfront and honest in the approach. So if there's like a culture fit and if the service you provide is what they need and you're honest and open about it, it could be a really good relationship. But equally, if you're able to say no, if they're asking for the sun, the moon and the stars and you're able to say, "Well, no." It's gonna be creating a much more healthy dynamic with all of your customers and build good relationships, again, across the board.

0:22:58.3 PC: Yeah, I'd agree with that. I think, if you're going to onboard customers through trickery, and insincerity you're creating a much larger problem that you're gonna have to solve further down the line. So I think that level of transparency and being upfront with people both in terms of people that you would like to join your company and potential customers you'd like to work with, if they're not a good fit, it's better to figure it all out upfront, rather than have some nasty surprises for them down the line.

0:23:28.6 MR: Definitely. And obviously you hire a lot of engineers, what process have you found works for hiring technical talent?

0:23:38.5 PC: Okay, it's a very good question. So, there's about 220 people in the company. So more or less 200 engineers and 20 people across business and operational roles. When it comes to hiring engineers, we have our own process. So we have a talent acquisition team that engage with engineers that are looking to change jobs and they assess them in terms of communication skills, their experience, the technologies, they're interested in working in the domains that they worked in and then all the usual hygiene factors around salary expectations, notice periods, etcetera. Assuming that there's been let's say, good rapport on both sides, then those engineers would meet with two people from the technology pillar of Zartis. And that's a kind of a two way dialogue, really, it's an opportunity for the candidates to share their skills and experience and to ask questions about Zartis, about the clients that they're likely to work for etcetera.

0:24:42.6 PC: And then on the other side, for that exchange to happen on the flip side of that coin. So meeting with two people from technology and the artists we think is good, because it gives them, I suppose, a sense of the scale of the company in some ways, because they'll meet two folks from two different parts of Zartis. So maybe one person working in a FinTech project, another person working in, let's say, an education technology project. And also, the folks involved in interviewing have generally been around the company for four or five years, maybe they worked in three or four different client teams. So it gives people an understanding that, okay, you'll be hired in to work for a specific client team. But in the event that things don't work out, such as I don't know, the client encounters financial difficulty or the market changes or the need changes, and they will no longer require that engineer, but there'll be a position for them elsewhere within Zartis. And to give people comfort that there's opportunities for mobility as well in terms of, you might join one client as a senior engineer, and maybe two years later, you'll move to another client as a technical lead.

0:25:48.1 PC: So sharing that context, giving people exposure to what the culture of the company is, I think is valuable, because they can see, okay, maybe I wanna be involved in a company like Zartis or maybe they figure that, "Actually, I don't like these people at all." And again, that's good to be... It's good to have that understood upfront. And then after that, if they've made it through the talent acquisition interview, made it through the interview with our two engineers, we would then typically have them meet with someone from the client before we confirm that they're gonna join that particular team. We think it's good to give clients exposure to who they will potentially be working with before any decisions are made, and also for the candidate themselves to have some dialogue with their future co-workers from the client side, and we're thinking that's offering a nice amount of transparency to everyone involved.

0:26:48.5 MR: Yeah, definitely. And obviously, you work with a lot of engineers, but I know you're not from a technical background, so how did you bridge, rather the gap in your own knowledge to deal with technical people and technical teams?

0:27:02.6 PC: That's a really good question. You're correct. My first job after university was working in... It was a leadership development consultancy, but it was focused very much on the technology world. So we were doing a lot of work with companies like Facebook and the technology side, etcetera, etcetera. And I was working primarily in sales and business development roles throughout my career, primarily in the technology world, so I guess from the moment I left university, I've had some exposure to the wider domain, but I've had to bridge a gap in that I'm not coming from a computer science background myself. I'm naturally a curious person. I like reading a lot, and I like reading stuff that maybe other people won't enjoy reading. I read the GDPR from start to finish, for example, because I was curious. I knew that there was a lot of consequences for our business, and I was curious to see how it was all going to be laid out, so I spent a Friday evening once reading the GDPR.

0:28:05.4 PC: So I guess being like... While I'm not from the software engineering world, I'm very much a nerd, I studied Latin in school. I represented Ireland at the World's Latin Championships in 2001. So being kind of nerdy, I think has been helpful, and I think people on the engineering side pick up that I'm also kind of nerdy, but maybe in a slightly different way. I think being interested has been very helpful, so I've been very... I have a very curious mind and I've been very curious about the world of software engineering, and one of my roles as well, prior to joining Zartis was I worked for the Adecco Group, and I set up an IT staffing business for the Adecco group around 2012 and I run that from 2012 to 2014. And during that period to tell you my job was just talking to software engineers all day every day, and primarily about them relocating from Europe to Ireland. So I got exposure to the concepts of international mobility, and also a lot of the concepts around technology and software engineering in general.

0:29:09.7 PC: So really just learning by osmosis, reading a lot, picking stuff up as I was going, there was some good books that I read on the topic, and I guess software is eating the world I suppose in some shape or form, and it's hard not to engage with the general topics around software development. So my dad asking me recently to explain to him what blockchain is. [chuckle] It was an interesting conversation because it's kinda one of those things that I kinda know what this is, but I kinda don't know it well enough to explain it, so I went out and did a little bit of reading, I actually recorded to the podcast on the topic, and then went back to my dad, I was like, "Okay, here's what it is," he didn't really care any more, but I came back with the answer, but I suppose we are fortunate to live in an era where a huge amount of information is freely available to us, it's there at our disposal at the end of a Google search query or an equivalent. So I think curiosity, also I suppose I have been in the sector now for 12 or more years, and I was talking to our CTO earlier and I was telling them about... One of the things I love about the job that I do is I get to learn every day, and I get to learn about technology, I get to learn about people, human nature, business, etcetera. So I think if you are someone who appreciates the fruits of learning, then it can be helpful, I suppose, in that regard.

0:30:39.2 MR: For companies that need to hire a tech talent, but they don't have a technical background or they don't have any technical people. How do you think that they should go about it?

0:30:48.6 PC: It's a very good question. I think there should be kind of an honest appraisal, about whether this individual or set of full-time employees are needed for the long-term benefit of the company, or is there maybe an agency, and I don't mean Zartis in particular, but if you needed some web development work, do you need a full-time web designer or do you need a web development agency to build you a nice website? And so very often people fall into the trap of thinking that they actually have a... They have an ongoing, forever need when in fact, maybe they have a distinct piece of work that needs to be done. And I have a conversation later today with a new customer of ours in Ohio, in the US, and they've gotten through the first, I think four years in existence as a tech company without having any full-time software engineers. They've done that by using white label products that are already built, that they license and their CEO figured out how to, maybe in some ways, badly integrate, but how to integrate full set of applications that they've been licensing.

0:32:01.2 PC: So there's an awful lot of code has been written and products have been built that don't need to be built from the ground up again. So I would say before you can go down the track of going for full-time employees, see, are there alternatives out there that could be using an external consulting service, it could be buying off the shelf products that already exist, and then if you are going to go down the track of bringing full-time employees and maybe get someone you know, that you trust that has more knowledge than you have to be party to some interview processes, just to make sure that you don't bring in people who have the wrong skills. It can be quite difficult to evaluate the technical skills of technical people if you don't come from a technical background yourself, so I would say a good steer I could give would be to try and solicit some help so that you avoid making the mistakes of maybe hiring the wrong type of engineer, hiring engineers that you don't need, hiring too many people.

0:33:04.6 PC: The list of mistakes that people can make on the hiring front is pretty long and so I think the first thing to make sure is, that you don't hire someone that you don't really need because nothing would be more boring for an individual than to join the company and realize that actually, they have nothing to be doing and there's nothing of value for them to do. Engineers will get very dis-orientated pretty quickly, and that's not a scenario that's good for anyone, I would say.

0:33:31.7 MR: Yeah, definitely. And when people are evaluating services these days, they often go to reviews, and that's bled into the world of hiring people in the form of Glassdoor. So I wanted to ask you, what's your opinion on Glassdoor?

0:33:48.1 PC: I think Glassdoor is fantastic. I think Glassdoor is forcing employers everywhere to be much more considered in terms of how they treat people. I think the fact that anyone can write a review on their way out the door or whilst still in the organization if they feel they've been poorly treated, it's enforcing... I think over time, it's gonna enforce a greater degree of high quality behavior from employers towards their employees. It's also something that's rewarding high quality behavior from employers. So I think we're 4.8 out of 5 on Glassdoor after 60 plus reviews at Zartis. And I'm super pleased about that, because the amount of people who have joined the company were like, "I wasn't gonna join a consultancy company ever, but then I saw the reviews about your company, and it sounds like you guys actually do stuff pretty well," and that's really nice. Very gratifying to hear. I'm very grateful to all the people that have worked in the company over the years that have written reviews.

0:34:49.7 PC: I'm also grateful for the small number of... I don't think we've ever really gotten any negative reviews, but we've got a couple of three-star reviews instead of five stars, shall we say, and there was very often some very honest, practical feedback for how we could improve as a company, and I think it's made us more conscientious in general, so I'm a big fan of Glassdoor from that perspective, I think it's changed the dynamic somewhat and it's made things in general a little bit more pro-employee. It's given employees a safe route to maybe share how they've genuinely been treated by a particular employer and as I say, it's forcing employers to be very, I would say, thoughtful in how they go about treating and managing people that are under their care.

0:35:48.3 MR: Yeah, definitely. And as you mentioned you have a lot of five-star reviews and great reviews on Glassdoor, how did you get your employees to complete those reviews?

0:36:00.2 PC: Well, we didn't get anyone to do anything, which I think is important. I guess we have tried to be really nice to people. [chuckle] I think that that's been important. Yeah, I think we've been very proactive in taking the view that as a consulting business, the only value we have as a company is the people that choose to come and work with us. So the only value we have is our values, and I think that that's been a powerful thing. We're an employee-owned company as well, so a lot of people have skin in the game, they have potential significant upside if the company does well over the long-term, so I think that that's something a little bit different. We're not VC-backed, so there's no... We're not on this kind of pathway where people are looking to cash out quickly or sell the company or flip the company etcetera, so I think that that has engendered a slightly different mindset.

0:37:09.6 PC: We try to be really fair in terms of how we reward people, so we spend more than 80% of our revenue goes on payroll, so that's probably way too much, [chuckle] but it helps in a consulting business to look after your people properly. So I think all of those things kinda add up, and I guess there's a lot of good will within the company, people want their employer to do well, so I think they're incentivized to not only do a good job, but try and help us build our reputation. And one thing we've gotten better at is, we have folks responsible for employee engagement, and they carry out not only engagement surveys, but one-to-one meetings with everyone in the company and people can ask any questions that they want in those meetings, and the answers are then shared in a company all-hands, so I don't know who's asking the questions, but it's like, what are the things you wanna know about the company? Or what are the things you're concerned about the company, but don't wanna ask directly, let's say to the CEO.

0:38:16.0 PC: So yesterday, I had an all-hands meeting and it was like 20 questions came through, not all of them were super comfortable for me to ask, answer, [chuckle] but I think the important thing is that degree of transparency and giving everyone access to that kind of information. So I suppose all of that adds up to help in that regard, and is it... I'd say, and makes that into good will across the company, has been helpful I would say... One thing we have done is we've had a few people resign over the past few years on really good terms, so they've left and said, "Look I'm gonna do a start-up with my friends or I'm leaving because I've been offered a Head of Engineering role at another company, etcetera, etcetera. But I've really loved being here, I've had a great experience. Thank you for everything." And in those situations, I'll often say, "If you don't mind to write us a review on Glassdoor when you're leaving, that would be super helpful," so I think you can be proactive, I think in those scenarios, if you have maybe a good leaver, I think that that's an appropriate time maybe to say like, "Okay, well, I'm glad you enjoyed it here, maybe you can write a review because it might help other people to find us and to join us."

0:39:30.6 PC: So there can be some stuff I think you should do, but I think trying to engineer that kind of stuff, I think companies should be a little bit careful. I think try to be good to people, [chuckle] I think that's probably the best thing you can do for looking after your Glassdoor ranking, and if stuff is coming to you on Glassdoor that you didn't know about, maybe think about [0:39:54.0] ____ engagement initiatives, think about surveying people, think about trying to find out what problems there are in the organization. Where they are small before they become big problems.

0:40:05.4 MR: Thanks for tuning into the Hiring Talent podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. If you want more content like this, be sure to subscribe and visit our site, hirehive.com.