How Platogo hires developers in the changing environment

Platogo is a leading social and mobile games developer focused on the fast-growing multi-billion-dollar social casino gaming market. Their apps embed Europe’s most popular gaming content in a beautiful user-friendly and playful environment. Platogo’s flagship app Slotpark is localised in more than 15 languages and played by more than five million users worldwide.

The company grew from a small team of friends with a passion for making games that millions of players around the globe will enjoy. In 2019 the last founders left the company, so the remaining team needed to hire more tech talent as soon as possible.

Platogo started collaborating with external recruiters while also receiving applications via Stack Overflow and their own career pages. Finding the candidates who would be the right fit was crucial for the team.

“Toughbyte is a company that delves into the tech stack and tries to find the right fit. They provide weekly updates on how many candidates were contacted and how many got interested which is quite useful. Another good thing about our collaboration is that we receive not just competent candidates, but a significantly large number of them,” says Vanja Pasic, HR Manager at Platogo.

When asked about the experience of hiring developers in today’s changing environment and some tips for other companies looking for tech talent, Vanja shares:

“From our experience interviewing candidates, we have noticed that the part of the interview that focuses on the culture fit got lost due to the crisis. Many companies don’t practice it any more, so it all comes down to just a coding challenge and that’s it, but the engagement on a personal level is missing. We think this is still important, even though it’s not really possible to meet in person, especially with someone from a different country. We make sure that the candidate still has a chance to see the office. I’m always there during the last round of interviews to show the office using the webcam of my laptop. After the call, all employees join just to chat and have a coffee together. It’s still remote and not the same experience, but we try to do it for our candidates.”

Using different tools and being present in the developer community is also something that Platogo believes to be important for the successful hiring. Vanja’s advice for non-technical HRs is to involve a developer in the interview process:

“It’s not a good idea when a regular HR tries to do the tech part of the interview because you can learn the basics but not go into detail and answer all of the candidate’s technical questions. Our Managing Director, Dominik Go, who is a former team lead of the Server Team, always joins the interviews to ask technical questions as well as to answer all technical questions from the candidate.”

Another important thing to consider is allowing your employees to work remotely.

“Home office once a week in exceptional cases was not an issue at all for us. These days, we know it’s something we’ll have to change, so our employees will have the possibility to work more often from home. That’s something many companies will do in order to keep their talent,” says Vanja.

We’ve helped Platogo find a Backend Developer and are happy to keep working with them on growing the tech team further.