Hi Susi – good luck in the new role!

I’ve been working in a Fintech start-up for almost 2 years and depending on the technology your recruiting for it can be super tough! We recruit mainly Python Developers, QA, BA and scrum/agile.  We have some success with direct applications for more junior develops, and employee referrals (we pay £1K referral fee) but have still had to rely quite heavily on recruiters, especially when  hiring volume and more senior technical. I would recommend sticking with a very limited number of agencies and we have regular updates to make sure they know the relevant info about our business and are ‘selling’ the opportunity to candidates – it’s tough as a start up when candidates have never heard of you etc…

The market has been particularly tough in the past 6 months or so and speed is definitely a factor, good candidates are getting snapped up really quickly so my first piece of advice would be to really think about your process, you need the commitment up front from hiring managers to agree the process and stick to it – I tend to block book time out in their calendars in advance for when we anticipate to interview.  Also think about technical tests and timing, we ask developers to complete a test after their first video screen – it works well, agencies will try and push back that we’ll lose candidates as they’ve got several opportunities on the go so they won’t take the time to complete the tests, we haven’t had this problem yet and we’ve found is really important in gauging candidates approach to development and skills level.

We’re using BambooHR as our HRIS system and have the ATS add-on, it works perfectly well but if you’re going to push for direct model then I’d recommend you look at a more robust ATS tool like Workable.

We have also recently been talking to a company called Cord (https://cord.co) – it’s a direct recruitment platform specifically for tech recruitment – it’s quite London centric at the moment but with the rise of hybrid working etc this is changing.  We’re going to try Cord and see if we can build more direct engagements with candidates.

Hope that helps!
Siobhan