How Badoo Gets Developers

Hello! My name is Arkady, I'm a team leader at Badoo. Today I will tell you about how, over the weekend, we made an offer to work for eight mobile developers. And again, I invite you to participate in our recruiting event, following which we will take the best Android and iOS developers to work in the London office of Badoo.

It's no secret that the software industry today is experiencing a severe shortage of qualified personnel. Employers and recruiters are doing their best to attract good specialists. All means are used: from trivial spam on LinkedIn, advertising on social networks and profile sites to invitations within their own services. I think many people have heard the story of how Google analyzes search queries, identifies developers and offers them jobs. I’m not sure that this story is true, but I personally was invited by a popular fintech startup to an interview through his mobile application.

Modern advertising platforms allow you to accurately target ads to the target audience. For example, it’s very easy to order ads on Facebook, which will be shown to developers in a certain area. However, all this gives a very mediocre result, if you look at the number of candidates who responded to the vacancy and passed the interview.

Badoo is now growing rapidly, and we constantly need new strong developers who can quickly join the team and start working productively. This summer, it became clear that we needed more people than the standard search process could provide, and we began to think what could be done. We actively advertised our vacancy, saw good results on views, but received a modest number of responses. And this despite the fact that the company has a pretty good reputation.

Many of the guys from our teams know about speaking at conferences and on the blog on Habré . Working conditions at Badoo already became a legend, at some point a report on our monthly parties was even shown on TV (now I am writing this post, and preparations for the Halloween party are in full swing). In personal conversations, almost everyone expresses a sincere desire to work with us. So what is missing?

How did we come up with the idea of ​​conducting all stages of the interview in one day off?

We thought about what can be changed in the recruitment process in order to recruit people faster, while not lowering the bar of requirements for employees. They tried to take the place of the potential specialist we are looking for. It was not difficult, because we all once were candidates ourselves.

So, our potential colleague has several years of specialized experience. Thanks to his extraordinary abilities, he is most likely already working in a good and / or well-known company; he has a rather high salary. And in general, everything has already developed with him, everything is stable. Nevertheless, he is open to suggestions and is ready to consider new opportunities. And then he finds out about our vacancy ...

Surely he had already heard about the company, perhaps he had read the reviews on Glassdoor and was inspired. He will call and arrange an interview right on Thursday. Although no, on Thursday the next release, you must be at work, you can’t let the team down. So next week! Although no, next week it will also not be possible to allocate time: rallies every day. But there will be several interviews, and each time it will be necessary to somehow find time. How to explain your absence at the workplace, and even several times in a row? Even if the management is adequate and does not make the tragedy out of the fact that employees go for interviews, it is still somehow inconvenient. And then they write something to him in a corporate chat, he opens a new tab in the browser, and the question from the interview goes into the category of “when there will be time”. That is never.

Common situation?

It became clear: if a person has no good reason to change his job, if he is generally happy with everything, then it is very difficult to induce him to even just come for an interview. Even if he, in principle, does not mind trying his hand. And in our case, the situation is even more complicated: after successful video interviews, we invite the candidate to our London office. That is, you need to make a visa and set aside several days for the trip.

What to do is obvious: eliminate all the inconvenience. Is it difficult to set aside time in a week? Schedule weekend interviews. Long wait for a visa, is it hard to fly to London? We transfer the action to our Moscow office. And to make the process even more convenient, you need to compress it to one day. And we all did it!

We set a date: on the weekend, when our team will fly from London to Moscow to interview candidates non-stop. For pre-selection, they did a test on hackerrank.com. We wrote a post with an invitation , made several posts on social networks - and this turned out to be enough for 407 developers on iOS and Android to try our test. We selected 36 people with the highest scores and invited them to our office. Mobile teams prepared questions on their platforms for two interviews (the first - for half an hour, the second - for an hour, each stage - for elimination). Those who went through both stages were waiting for the final hour-long interview on system design. Having successfully completed all stages, we immediately made a written offer of work.

Between interviews, candidates could have a bite to eat, see our reports on the big screen, play table tennis or immerse themselves in virtual reality. By the way, the last way of entertainment is not suitable for everyone: your head may begin to feel dizzy, which will be very inappropriate for the interview (verified by personal experience).

Some statistics:
407 people tried to pass our test on Hackerrank;
36 people we invited to the office for interviews;
22 successfully completed the first stage;
16 have passed the second stage;
eight people received job offers;
five of them are already working in our London office.

The results were considered super successful, and now, six months later, we decided to repeat the recruiting event. A date has already been set! On November 18-19, our team will again interview candidates in Moscow.

About the event November 18-19

So, we again invite Android and iOS developers to try their hand!

Like last time, in order to receive an invitation to an in-person meeting, you need to pass a simple test at hackerrank.com. The link to it is here events.badoo.com

I talked with the guys who participated in the last event and now work with us, asked what they would improve. Almost everyone noted that between the stages of the interview there were too long periods of longing. Therefore, we compiled a new schedule in which these delays for each candidate were eliminated. We will invite candidates in small groups at different times during the day and provide the necessary number of interviewers so that for each candidate interviews are held without breaks.

And here is our interviewers, get acquainted!

iOS-team: Bogdan Orlov KAIIIAJIOT , Anton Schukin AntonPalich , Alexis Santos, Victor Shamanov wiruzx .



Android team: Andrey Kulikov andkulikov , Nikita Starkin, Arkady Ivanov.



As well as Rafael López (head of mobile development), Ivan Biryukov bivy (Android features team lead), Jairo Gonzalez (iOS features team lead) and I, Arkady Gamza arkadygamza (iOS and Android core team lead).

“I would come, but ...”

I understand that many people are afraid of the very idea of ​​moving to another country. Therefore, I will try to dispel some fears that may deter you from making such a decision. I have compiled personal statistics of the arguments that people most often cite when they refuse to move to London ...

“... the weather is bad in London”

To be honest, I myself thought so until I moved. And he was extremely surprised that the weather in London is much better than in Moscow. In general, the climate is much milder: in summer it is not so hot, in winter it is not so cold. According to statistics, there are 142 sunny days a year in London, while in Moscow there are only 114. That is, there is more sun for a whole month a year! My personal observations are consistent with statistics; I often exchange photos with friends from Moscow and St. Petersburg, it looks something like this (photos were taken on the same day):





By the way, in London there are a lot of evergreens, including palm trees, which perfectly tolerate the local winter.

But the benefits, of course, are not only in the sun and temperature. London is clean. I go in winter and summer in white sneakers, and they do not get dirty! The car can be washed once a year, it remains clean, even if the road is wet. I personally in Moscow was very depressed for six months a year (or even more) to endure dirt on the roads, breathe with frost and see a dull stream from dirty cars. Perhaps it is precisely because of the clean roads in the UK that many do not take off shoes at the doorstep when entering home, which horrifies our compatriots.

"…I do not know much English"

Formally, to get a work visa, it is enough to score 4 out of nine points on the IELTS exam. This is a very low level. If you can order beer on your own in English, then most likely hand it over.

In everyday life, you certainly will not experience difficulties - London is slightly less than completely inhabited by migrants from all over the world, everyone has long been accustomed to a very different pronunciation and level of understanding of English. For example, I only had difficulty talking on the phone. And still do not understand everything; but now I’m not embarrassed to ask again until I understand the thought of the interlocutor.

"... there is very expensive!"

It’s true - a lot is more expensive than in Russia. But they pay very well. I will give an example. Badoo gives out new relocation employees a relocation bonus of £ 10,000 to new employees. Then every month, in addition to the salary, you can earn a bonus up to 75%! There are also semi-annual bonuses twice a year. As a result, developer income can exceed £ 100,000 per year. I often hear: "Everybody makes money there." This is a myth: only 2% of the UK population receives so much. So in the London Underground you will have a good chance to be the highest paid specialist.

More about all the nuances of moving to London and living in Foggy Albion, our colleague wrote here in this article .

Feel free to ask questions in the comments, we will try to answer everything!

Once again, a link to the events.badoo.com

Update test : over the weekend of November 18-19, we made 11 offers! Many thanks to everyone who participated!