Culture and values are now more important than skills and experience, but how do you communicate those to potential employees and how should they communicate back? The CV is well and truly dead, and LinkedIn nothing more than a snake-pit of head-hunters and fantastically tall-story. How’s it’s going to work if you can’t hire based on a formulaic CV?
At Connected we employ a slightly different approach.
We hire people. Not skillsets and CVs
Radical, I know. Modern day technology is not hard to grasp, a few days on Code Academy and you’ll understand 85% of what’s needed to work for a web development agency. In fact, you can probably already code, you just didn’t know it. The technology is not some super-exclusive club, it’s a tool that needs to be applied, much like a brush. In that sense, it’s never too late to learn the basics of coding. Go on, give it a try.
Good, we’ve got that out of the way – We’re not looking for coders. We’ve hired, fired and lost lots of them over the years – one valuable ones brought the application of coding, or a design flair to make it look good or a User Interface that transformed the experience of the user. It’s worth, then, understanding what we do with code.
“We build commercially-focused digital services using WordPress”
That means we value people who understand the commercial realities of digital services. That includes a good understanding of sales & marketing, customer services, operations and even finance. A shit-hot digital marketer who can code is worth twice a digitally-ignorant one and ten times the value of the best code-monkey in the world.
The same applies to the remaining skillsets. In the future of delivering digital services, we’ll all need to be a lot more rounded in terms of our skillsets. At it’s core, we need:
- Great communicators who believe in great client service. Our clients treat us as a genuine part of the team and really appreciate what we do. We return that appreciation by making a difference to their lives.
- Self-motivated individuals with a drive to make things better. What we do now is, honesty, not good enough and if we loiter around living off the back of what we did a few years ago then we’ll become irrelevant and extinct
- Change-adapted, with the keenness to learn new stuff. We are programmed from a young age to accept certain norms, the creatively adapted person will challenge that and be an agent of change.
- Those that value enjoyment, engagement and recognition over salary packages. A 50k package might be nice, and it certainly covers the mortgage but it can easily become a millstone if it’s not enjoyable. We offer a better quality of life with unlimited holidays, a 25hr working week and location-independence.
- Finally, we need to understand (in a single paragraph) why we should work together
Over the years we’ve drawn folks from all walks of life, very few were coders. We’ve rarely had a formal vacancy, we’ve jumped at the opportunity when we’ve met the right people – we’re always hiring, I guess.
