{"id":5011,"date":"2015-12-09T17:37:31","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T22:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/codility-how-to-disrupt-recruitment-of-software-engineers-and-have-fun-in-the-process\/"},"modified":"2015-12-09T17:38:22","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T22:38:22","slug":"codility-how-to-disrupt-recruitment-of-software-engineers-and-have-fun-in-the-process","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/codility-how-to-disrupt-recruitment-of-software-engineers-and-have-fun-in-the-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Codility \u2013 how to disrupt recruitment of software engineers and have fun in the process!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine you are Google. Or LinkedIn. Or SurveyMonkey. Or Dropbox. What is your most important asset? The one\u00a0that differentiates you and drives your ability to innovate in the more and more crowded and competitive tech space?\u00a0It’s not your computational power. It’s often not even your original business idea. It’s the talent\u00a0that you are able to gather under your roof, it’s the people that transform the tasty meals from the company cafeteria into lines of cutting-edge code.\u00a0What is your key challenge then? How to recruit the best ones. What is one of your key risks? That you will waste hours of time of your current employees on inefficient recruitment processes which won’t really deliver top talent to your door.<\/p>\n

Traditionally, recruiting of programmers in Silicon Valley\u00a0starts\u00a0with collecting resumes, followed by\u00a0a few phone calls with software engineers currently employed by the company. They ask candidates questions like\u00a0“how would you code this or that in this or that programming language”. This process is quite\u00a0inefficient, though: takes a tonne of\u00a0valuable employee time (just look at software engineers’ salaries!), is largely incomparable between recruiters, and cannot be performed by non-technical staff.\u00a0Codility<\/a> created a remedy for that – it started as an online, automatic tool to\u00a0filter out the candidates unable to deliver correct solutions to easy programming tasks<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"3054731\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The business model\u00a0<\/strong>has not changed a lot since the idea appeared in the founder, Greg Jakacki’s head, about 10 years ago.\u00a0Codility creates value<\/strong> for its clients via:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. offering programming tests – it\u00a0has a pool of over 100 different tasks at three difficulty levels, which are taken by candidates from any location they choose,<\/li>\n
  2. providing detailed reporting and benchmarking against other candidates – reports can be evaluated by non-technical employees of the client (saving time of programmers at the expense of HR staff),<\/li>\n
  3. offering the intuitive e-mailing tool – candidates can be contacted directly through Codility’s system.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Besides that, the firm has sophisticated tools for plagiarism detection embedded in the product, it can work together with the client to create customized tasks, and offers API and ATS integration. It is also open to creating white-label solutions for its most dedicated clients. It provides 24\/7 customer service.<\/p>\n

    Codility defines itself as\u00a0software as a service<\/strong>\u00a0company. It has experimented with a number of different pricing<\/strong> strategies, and currently charges the bulk of its customers a monthly fee, based on a number of tests to be performed\u00a0within a month<\/strong>. However, there is a number of caveats to that. Firstly, each prospective customer is offered a\u00a014-day-long free trial, which allows Codility to be noticed by smaller potential clients, not just tech giants. Secondly, it is open to providing discounts to start-ups, in recognition of its own start-upish roots and start-upish culture. Thirdly, contracts with its largest clients are individually negotiated, and any customization \/ white-label tools are individually priced. Negotiations of the biggest contracts are often run by the COO herself.<\/p>\n

    Operating model<\/strong> of the company very strongly supports its business model.<\/p>\n

    Clearly, just like for its clients, Codility’s competitive advantage driver is its ability to generate tests and reports that are able to filter the best prospective programmers for its clients<\/strong>. It is able to achieve that by efficiently\u00a0transforming\u00a0its assets and capabilities into the best possible outcome.<\/p>\n

    The most important “asset” for the company\u00a0is its<\/strong> people<\/strong>, and\u00a0Codility recognizes it: majority of the firm’s technical employees used to work for or intern at some of its’ major clients or their competitors, hence <\/span>they know exactly what the clients\u00a0are looking for<\/strong> and are able to design the most adequate product. The company also <\/span>uses advisors extensively<\/strong>, which helps it generate leads, gain market intelligence, and establish presence.<\/span><\/p>\n

    A related aspect\u00a0is the intellectual property<\/strong>: company founders ensure it does not leave the firm,\u00a0both through contracts with its employees and clients, but also through building trust-based company culture.<\/p>\n

    Codility also pays attention to the physical capital which supports the culture-building efforts<\/strong>: it has\u00a0funky offices, up to the Silicon Valley standards, where employees feel at home (hammocks included).<\/p>\n

    Obviously, as any software company should, Codility\u00a0strives to effectively manage its capital and equipment<\/strong> (namely, computers with significant computational power).<\/p>\n

    The company\u00a0structure is<\/strong> lean<\/strong>: hires about 30 people across its three offices\u00a0(Warsaw, London, and San Francisco – recently opened to be close to Codility’s Bay Area clients), mostly as programmers and account executives. It is non-hierarchical<\/strong>: both CEO and COO are young, energetic, down-to-earth, and extremely open. The\u00a0COO travels frequently between the offices and the employees are advised to do the same to ensure consistent company culture<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    The company is still small, hence a lot of the processes<\/strong> are not entirely codified<\/strong> (e.g. recruiting). However, the most important process – generation of the product – is clear, codified, and overseen by the top people in the company.<\/p>\n

    As a consequence of the strategic alignment between the business and operating model of the firm, Codility is hugely successful: bootstrapped and growing its revenue at crazy rates (unfortunately, the numbers are not public and cannot be shared here). Let us keep our fingers crossed for the good times to continue!<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. https:\/\/codility.com\/<\/li>\n
    2. Interview with Codility’s COO, Natalia Panowicz<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      A few thoughts on a small, Polish company that helps Silicon Valley giants hire top talent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1189,"featured_media":5175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"class_list":["post-5011","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/assignment\/the-tom-challenge-tom-winners-and-losers-assignment\/","yoast_head":"\nCodility \u2013 how to disrupt recruitment of software engineers and have fun in the process! - Technology and Operations Management<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/codility-how-to-disrupt-recruitment-of-software-engineers-and-have-fun-in-the-process\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Codility \u2013 how to disrupt recruitment of software engineers and have fun in the process! 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