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Jeff Henderson says a good hiring process should be seamless, thoughtful and consistent.
Even amid continued recession threats, many Canadian tech companies are still hiring. One of these is Interac, the organization that processes over six billion transactions a year for Canadians between debit, Interac e-Transfers and other digital payment solutions.
“I like my interviews to be very conversational,” Henderson said. “I want to know the individual.”
However, simply having open roles and a well-known brand is not enough to attract the right technical talent. It’s a challenge that Jeff Henderson, CTO of Interac, is thinking deeply about as the company looks to fill multiple roles in 2023. Speaking with BetaKit, Henderson explained how he approaches technical hiring from a process perspective and his advice to other CTOs or heads of talent scouts to hire.
Smoother process, better results
Henderson said Interac’s approach to recruiting has been dynamic from the start: Talent Acquisition works as a single team across the organization, collaborating cross-functionally to ensure talent needs are met. He also said that the talent acquisition team works to ensure that the company’s recruitment process achieves three goals: to be as seamless as possible, to be considerate of candidates and to be in line with the types of candidates. that Interac wants to attract.
One of the challenges in the recruiting process is figuring out how many interviews is the right number. Over time, Henderson said Interac has found its “sweet spot” of three to five interviews depending on the needs of the role and seniority. In this highly competitive environment, Interac’s talent acquisition team has accelerated its process so that the applicant journey for a successful candidate to make an offer is approximately 10 days.
“Too little means you’re adding a risk that you won’t properly assess the suitability of the individual,” Henderson said. “And too many can also be a waste of the candidate’s time.”
Henderson added that being considerate of applicants means showing them they are valued throughout the process. While he said the execution of it can be a bit “intangible”. One example Henderson provided was making sure interviews weren’t rescheduled.
“If your interviews are constantly moving around, you start to ask, ‘how engaged is the organization?’ How much of a priority is it really to me?” Henderson said.
Consistently attracting the right type of candidate requires both diversity and candidate fit: Henderson said Interac is committed to diversity and that its human resources team works to ensure the talent pool is diverse. This comes through both building inclusive talent funnels and partnering with community organizations to expand reach.
As for the candidate’s fit with the company, Henderson added that he wants to ensure that candidates can value Interac as much as Interac values them. One of the ways Interac works to achieve this is through social media, where the company shares personal vignettes of Interac team members, showing both what they are doing and who they are outside of work. Henderson noted that he likes the approach in general, but also has a personal connection to it: Before taking on the CTO role, he was perusing Interac’s social media and reading a vignette of a senior technical lead at the company, who he has since had the opportunity to work with.
“It gave me a really good comfort level that if this is the person who likes to work here and I can connect with them, that’s a big step in getting a good comfort level,” Henderson said.
Note to CTOs: Tech people are no different
As with all technical hires, Henderson and the HR team must evaluate the technical talent. At Interac, there are several different approaches. For some roles (such as development), the first step may involve the candidate submitting sample work that is evaluated by Interac’s technical team. In other technical roles, candidates are given a scenario and have to come up with a technical proposal to solve it. After the assessments, candidates attend a live interview where Interac’s technical leaders ask the candidate about their thought process during the assessment and go through technical problem-solving questions.
After this first stage, a second interview looks at the applicant’s entire CV, basket of experience and motivation for wanting to join Interac. If the candidate passes these stages, they are invited to take a Birkman assessment to identify their work personalities.
Despite these steps, Henderson advised anyone hiring for technical roles not to treat technical hires any differently than other employees, noting that all hires must fit into the company’s culture.
“That can be a mistake because whether you’re recruiting for a technical role or a non-technical role, when you’re hiring someone full-time, you can’t relax—or I guess you underestimate—the importance of cultural fit,” Henderson said.
For Interac, cultural fit involves understanding the company’s values of integrity, accountability and collaboration. But it also means understanding the company’s position as a major service provider to Canada’s financial ecosystem, a situation that will have its excitement and pressures.
Assessing cultural fit is why candidates who interview Henderson find that he’s not just asking about technical competence. Instead, it also asks questions that reveal whether you would thrive in Interac’s culture.
In particular, he likes to ask what people liked and disliked about their previous roles, what they liked or disliked about previous work cultures, and what they valued in work or from an employer. Those questions, Henderson said, help him understand how someone might fit in and contribute overall to Interac as an organization, rather than just assessing whether they have good technical skills.
“I like my interviews to be very conversational,” Henderson said. “I want to know the individual.”
Interac is looking to grow and hire more in the near future. But even a robust evaluation process doesn’t resolve a potential talent shortage. In particular, Henderson said there is a smaller talent pool for cybersecurity, which can be a challenge. However, he sees an opportunity for Canada, noting that this talent gap can be filled with skilled workers with work experience outside of Canada, provided the government can deal with its own backlog and process visa and residency applications.
“This is a critical area for Canada to make sure we have that talent pool [cybersecurity] which anticipates the complexity of the industry,” Henderson said. “And it’s an opportunity for Canada to be a leader in cybersecurity around the world.”
Feature image courtesy of Unsplash.
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