Vizzuality playbook in progress
This project is maintained by Vizzuality
Bringing new people to the team is one of the most important processes for us. It helps us achieve our strategic priorities and ultimately brings us closer to our vision and purpose. Hiring is a big decision that affects resources and shapes the company we want to work at. A new hire is not just a set of capacities and skills, it is a person with whom we will spend many hours working side-by-side, who will hopefully develop personally and professionally with us and from whom we can learn.
A good (or bad) hiring decision affects us all and we believe the process should be as collective, open and transparent as possible.
This document outlines the general processes, tools and guidelines we use in a hiring process, and assumes the decision to hire someone has already been taken and the resources allocated. The process for deciding when to open a position is not covered here.
Job descriptions should be based on the evaluation of the role we are looking for, its key responsibility areas, the competencies, and the characteristics we value in all team members, such as:
A WIP document with Vizzuality’s core competencies can be found here These are competencies that we expect from all team members at diferent levels, regardless of their role.
Specific roles have additional competencies, mostly technical; but they could also be about leadership or communication depending on the role. Before hiring for a role we should take time to define such competencies.
A job description should generally contain:
A clear and straightforward description of the job opening: We are looking for a front-end engineer to join our team on a full-time contract in our office in Madrid or Porto.
A brief description of Vizzuality that also includes our values, vision and purpose. You can use the text below for this
Vizzuality is a world-leading data design agency based in Madrid, Cambridge, Porto and Washington, DC. Our talented team of designers, engineers and scientists work together to end malaria, stop deforestation and tackle climate change. We do this by designing and developing data-driven tools and applications for international organizations who focus on conservation, development, open data, and transparency. With our help, they’re able to share their stories with people more effectively and compel behavior changes that lead to a better world for everybody.
We’re looking for someone who is passionate about using their creativity and skills to create momentum that leads to social change. In return, we offer opportunities to work on interesting and innovative projects. We also offer a competitive salary, flexible working hours, and many opportunities to learn and grow with a supportive and diverse team of specialists.
An explanation of our general motivation and expectations around our new peer.
A descriptive text about the role, its importance for us, our projects and our purpose as a company.
A list of key responsibility areas and daily tasks (Advanced JavaScript programming of innovative interfaces and large client-side applications. Configuration and optimization of client-side libraries and frameworks…), and also additional sporadic or possible responsibilities (Assisting in proposals, Representing us in talks and conferences…)
A list of expected skills and competencies, including the desired level of each (Proficiency, experience, knowledge, familiarity…). These should be also stated as must or nice to have if that’s the case.
Any mandatory or disqualifying criteria like english level, visa status, academic level (if they exist.
[TBD] A note about diversity and equal opportunity
Clear instructions on how to apply, and mandatory info (CV, cover letter, code samples, document formats, etc)
When writing a job description we should always check our text for gender or racial bias, and avoid clichés such as “superstar”, “champion” or “hero”. The whole text should permeate our values, purpose and core competencies. Be ‘cooperative’ not ‘competitive’
We sometimes use automatic tools to check the text for gender bias (link to tool here), but in general it’s always good to have a few people read it to refine and spot possible issues.
Once the description has been written and reviewed we use BambooHR to publish it and manage the selection process. When creating a selection process there’s a few options to fill in, such as title, description, contract type or location. Please provide a BambooHR admin with this info to post the ad.
There’s also the possibility to add required or optional application questions such as CV, cover letter, link to personal website, LinkedIn or GitHub account, available date, etc Custom questions can also be added.
After creating the advert, the opening will be announced internally to all company (a good place to do this is in the #general channel). During this announcement, it’s recommended to remind employees about their referal bonus and ask to share it as broadly as possible. It’s important to ask for volunteers to work as collaborators during the incoming hiring process.
People who volunteer will be added as collaborators to the BambooHR application feed. Collaborators will have access to all the application data (except for private fields such as desired salary) and ability to score, comment or contact applicants.
Open positions are published at https://vizzuality.bamboohr.co.uk/jobs/ and automatically posted to certain free listings such as glassdoor and indeed.
When a new position is published you should also talk to our comms team / lead writer about promoting it in our social networks, and post in #general so other team members can do it in theirs.
Depending on the urgency or availability we sometimes use paid services like LinkedIn recruiter. These have a cost per impressions and should be monitored if set up. Speak to DG if you think the process needs it.
Additionally there are other resources that can be used:
Data-vis-jobs @ Googlegroups: Good place for datavis related jobs
Betabeers: Promotes job openings for devs, in Spain only, 50 € per announcement Add more here
Domestika: Mainly design/UX related jobs in Spain. Free.
Once the post is live, collaborators will receive email updates about new candidates, comments or status changes.
A coordinator will be selected (usually this role is occupied by the creator of the advert). The coordinator role will have the responsibility of assigning new candidates to each of the process’ collaborators. This can be done in a first come, first served basis.
When collaborators are assigned to a new candidate, they have the objective of getting the candidates through the hiring pipeline as soon as possible: either hiring the candidates or rejecting them.
If any member of the company wants to join as a collaborator once the process has started, they can do so by reaching out to anyone involved in the process. After which they will be added as a collaborator.
The collaborators don’t have the responsability to perform any of the steps in the hiring pipeline by themselves. Their main responsability is to find people in the company that can participate in the necessary steps.
While it’s very important to have empathy for the candidates throughout the process; we mustn’t forget that moving a candidate forward is time consuming and has a cost, both for the company, and the candidate. Therefore it’s vital to reject candidates as early in the process as possible if they are not a fit.
When people submit a new application we should send an acknowledgement email to confirm that we correctly received their information and that their process has started.
If the hiring process is paused (i.e. during holidays), the acknowledgement email should be updated to reflect that, and provide an estimated date for resuming it.
A first screening can be done at this point where any of the participants can suggest to discard a candidate as “not a fit”, “not qualified” or “over qualified”. The decision to discard a candidate should be made by consent, meaning if there’s no principled objections the candidate can be discarded.
Candidates who pass the first filter can either be marked as “reviewed” or “put on hold”. The choice is basically about priority. A candidate shouldn’t be placed on hold for more that a reasonable amount of time (2 - 3 weeks), once that time has passed the candidate should be contacted to advance in the process or be notified about rejection.
If the candidate looks promising but there’s more info needed (code samples, certifications, visa status, motivations, etc): collaborators can send an email through the system requesting it (there are available templates on BambooHR for this) and change the status to “Requested more info”. If a candidate doesn’t reply to the request for more info after a reasonable amount of time (2 weeks), the candidate should be dismissed.
Once a satisfactory response has been received applicant can be discarded, moved to “reviewed”, or “put on hold”.
Once a candidate is set as “reviewed”, the responsible collaborator has the responsibility of finding the appropriate people inside the company to participate in the call; collaborators should also email the candidate, and change status to “Scheduled Phone Screen”.
The phone screening is a short introductory call where we try to solve doubts and get a better sense of the candidate and how they fit with the role.
Ideally phone screening should be performed by two people, one of which should be in a functional role that is similar to the open position. There should be a brief preparation beforehand where the participants identify the things they want to find out and share with the participant.
It’s very important to remember that a phone screening isn’t an interview. Therefore it should go to the point, covering only things partipants want to learn about, or share with the candidate.
[TBD] Ideally ~at least a part of~ the phone screening should be conducted in English.
We have a template (WIP) with possible questions for these calls. In general they should be open and focus on the competencies, skills and cultural fit of the candidate.
Apart from other specific issues (such as availability, english language, etc) we should focus on the candidate’s motivation and offer to solve any doubts they may have about the position or the company.
Outcomes of the call should be documented in the “comments” section on BambooHR candidate’s page. Candidate will then be moved to “Phone screened” or discarded and informed accordingly.
Sometimes we may request a skill challenge to the candidates. Challenges are normally requested to candidates whose provided portafolio isn’t enough to determine their skills. Specific roles may have pre-created Challenges (e.g. Front end coding chalenge —> [TBD] create challenges for other roles?)
The assigned collaborator should explain clearly what we expect from the challenge, how much effort we think the candidate should put on it, the general rules and what we will be trying to learn from it. The challenge will have a reasonable time limit (1 week), that depending on the motive can be extended if necessary.
Once the challenge solution is received, the assigned collaborator should find participants to do a round of discussion around it, evaluate it and ask for clarifications if needed.
Candidates can then be discarded, put on hold or be moved to the next step in the process by consent. In all cases candidates should be contacted and informed.
Sucessful candidates are set for an interview. Interviews, when possible, should be conducted in person. If it’s hard to make it in person then we should make sure we have a proper set-up with cameras, a quiet environment and a good microphone. We should also set aside enough time for preparing and conducting the interview.
Ideally there should be between two and three people performing the interview. The interviewers should include someone in a similar role with equal or higher seniority. It’s preferable to have as much diversity among the interviewers (role, gender, seniority) as possible.
In the preparation we will try to converge on the most important topics to talk about and the things we want to learn/clarify. By this stage, we should have more or less a sense of the candidates experience; the main focus should be on clarifying and cementing what we know. If we feel that there’s areas where we haven’t deepen enough these should be added to the interview agenda. A key thing to keep in mind at this stage is cultural fit: we want people that want to stay at Vizzuality because they like who we are and what we do.
Once the participants have converged on what they want to take out of the interview, they should write it down in a small list of things to ask/evaluate. (This script can be inspired in the existing template, but should be adapted to what we need to learn and who are we interviewing. The existing template is quite thorough, we probably don’t need to cover all of it, and should be used as a guideline only).
[TBD] Ideally ~at least a part of~ the interview should be conducted in English
A rough outline of the interview could go like this:
After the interview the participants should have a quick debrief session, sharing their individual scores for the candidate. Each participant should grade the candidate based on the fit with what they previously set to find out and listed in the script.
The assigned collaborator should reach out to the participants and gather their notes. Posting the notes to the comments section. Finally setting the candidate as “Interviewed” or discarding using consent; in which case candidate should be informed.
When there’s one or more sucessful interviewed candidates we have a number of options, all decisions to be made by consent:
In principle there’s not a limit to the number of interviews, but we should also be conscious of the candidate’s time and availability.
Whatever the case the candidate should be contacted and informed
If there’s a consent to hire a candidate we should send a formal offer. This is legally binding, so it should be signed by someone in the exec team.
If the candidate accepts the offer, a pre-contract is signed and all the remaining candidates are informed.
If there’s a negotiation or the offer is rejected: the selection process continues normally.