Scaling the Engineering Team at MEDWING
MEDWING offers a digital career platform for all healthcare professions. It has one of the largest employee pools for medical and nursing professions in Germany and Europe. MEDWING was ranked amongst the top 75 most innovative companies in Germany according to Handelsblatt, and in VCBay´s top 10 German healthcare startups. With a team of over 300 entrepreneurs, consultants, and engineers across Germany, France, UK, and Austria, it is rapidly becoming the go-to destination for working in healthcare across Europe.
We had a chat with İpek Tosun, Senior Tech Recruiting Manager at MEDWING, about finding candidates on the highly competitive market, collaborating with Toughbyte and keeping the team happy in the changing work environment.
Why did you decide to hire more developers?
The company in general is expanding. We have recently started operating in Austria and want to expand to different markets. MEDWING is a tech focused company. Our main products are web and mobile applications so we want to grow and reach our target group successfully, we need to offer a user-friendly and well-developed service. That’s why we decided to scale the engineering team.
Where did you find developers before starting work with Toughbyte?
In 2020, we were publishing job ads on StackOverflow. We also use active sourcing platforms like talent.io and Honeypot. Other than that, we use other portals, such as LinkedIn, Indeed, and Glassdoor. If necessary, I go on LinkedIn myself and search for candidates, but for the engineering roles that’s not a very fast solution nowadays.
What does your hiring process look like now?
Overall, there are 4 steps. It starts with a 30-minute recruiter screening call. Here I check cultural fit and give candidates more information about the projects and team they are going to work in. The second step is a one-hour technical questions and answers interview where applicants receive some general questions as well as some specific questions about their areas - backend or frontend. Afterwards there’s a 30-minute behavioral interview with our VP of Engineering to ensure the team fit given. Finally, we have pair programming and system design sessions in which the engineer codes online simultaneously with one of our team members and then designs a system from scratch. Ideally, we also introduce them to the Product Manager of the cross-functional team they will be a part of to see if the collaboration between the engineer and our Product team would work well.
What did you like about working with Toughbyte?
It’s always a matter of time - you can start the collaboration but if you are not happy with it, then it usually doesn’t last long. With Toughbyte we hired a candidate within the first month of our collaboration which was quite successful. Everything was going quite smooth and fast. After we agreed on the positions I started receiving several suitable profiles. The platform itself is also really convenient because I can just share my availability and the interview will be booked for me!
Do you have any tips for other companies hiring developers?
If you decide to scale up and need to hire a lot of people in a short period of time, you really need a strategy. You can’t just post and pray for applications to come in. You need to look for people on your own almost every day, and also be prepared to do the interviews at any time. The market is very competitive, at least in Berlin, so if you don’t plan an interview with the candidate fast, they might receive an offer from another company. Acting in a timely manner and having a strategy is the key. It’s not about the candidates looking for a job and trying to sell themselves to you, it’s you selling your position to them.
Are there any major trends in recruitment that you're seeing?
Tech recruiting is getting really popular in Germany because there are so many tech companies being founded. Startups in general, have a more flexible way of working which is pretty attractive for engineers all around the world. Most candidates that I got to know want to be able to work from home but a remarkable percentage of them are also trying to move to Germany for good working conditions. That’s what makes the market very competitive. Basically, every company needs a good tech team and that’s why there are more jobs than people available.
How did you adapt to changes due to COVID?
The pandemic has changed working mindsets forever. When we look at job ads, it’s rare not to see remote or hybrid working on the description and MEDWING also adapted to that. Our offices remain open but we try to stay remote at the peak times. We also started using Google Meet and Zoom way more often than before.