To give our employees the opportunity to get to know an applicant better, we have revised our recruiting process and introduced the Meet the Minds Day. In this blog post, you will find out what it day looks like and what are the experiences of our employees.

Recruiting is a team task! We used to use classic methods for the recruitment process: we placed job advertisements, the candidates were interviewed by the HR department and then talked to the management for 2 to 3 hours. The managing director decided whether an applicant would be hired or not. But this led to some difficulties:

• it was not possible to ensure that an applicant would be a good fit for the team because he/she had not spent enough time with potential future team members;
• the decision-making process took too long because the managing directors or the HR department were often very busy with other tasks;
• sometimes we came to the mutual conclusion that our company culture does not match the candidate’s expectations.

We decided to further develop our recruiting concept and introduced the so-called “Meet the Minds Day” (MTMD). On this special day, a self-organized team (often without the CEO and the HR department) has the opportunity to spend time with the applicant, to work with him/her and to get to know him/her better.

This self-organized team consists of employees from different areas of the company who would ultimately work with the applicant on a daily basis. Not only can the employees get to know the candidate, but they are also actively involved in the decision-making process. The corporate culture also plays an important role: we make sure whether the candidate shares our corporate values and mentality. These include trust and self-organization and what better way to live them than by participating in “Meet the Minds Day”?

If we reflect on the data collected over the last years, contract terminations after the probationary period were largely connected to the lack of an MTMD. While it takes a lot of time, energy and money to organize a full day with 3-7 colleagues who also work on customer projects, we see this as a long-term investment that pays off 100%. The new employees are hired by their future colleagues and it is ensured that they share the company mentality.

Here are the testimonials of some of our colleagues who participated in the Meet the Minds Day:

Rick:

I met several QualityMinds employees at a conference, some before they even became QualityMinds employees. After meeting in Manchester, I realized that most of the people I was most comfortable discussing ideas with were co-workers and it seemed that they really appreciated the atmosphere and energy in their work. After a few conversations and phone calls, I was invited to the MTMD in Munich to see how people work there.

During the MTMD I got to know the Quality Learning Team and the Testing Team. I attended their daily meeting and their start of the week meeting and met some people in the office. After being given a tour, I was asked to introduce myself and present an idea to my future colleagues. I chose the topic “The Illusion of Perfection” and everyone participated enthusiastically and asked many questions. This gave me the impression that the employees here are also very interested in topics that go beyond their own area of expertise.

After lunch, where I was able to chat with even more staff, I learned how the Quality Learning team looks to the future and, upon request, I held a retrospective workshop. This was a good test for me because I had to think about what’s important and what I really wanted to emphasize. The topics were chosen by prospective colleagues, which immediately strengthened the connection to the team and made the application immediately unique. This was followed by a similar test and exercise with the Testing Team, who also gave me their expectations and examples of their day-to-day work.

All in all I find this to be a unique approach to see if applicants fit into a team and if the candidate’s skills match expectations. Even if I hadn’t been hired, I would at least have felt that I had the chance that day to show who I am as a person and see what day-to-day life at QualityMinds is like. This is very rare compared to the companies I’ve worked for or heard about. The staff also didn’t seem to mind taking the time, it even gave them the opportunity to learn about things outside of their area. Excellent!

Katie:

I first met some of the QualityMinds staff at the TestBash Munich. Everyone was so friendly and they were all eager to share how amazing the company is! I then emailed my resume to QualityMinds and had a technical interview online. I was then invited to an MTMD in the Munich office. I knew I had to give a presentation that I could prepare in advance, that there would be an exercise, some kind of test (ugh!), and another technical interview.

That day I was asked interesting questions at the presentation, the exercise was testing a website and the test was way too fun to even be called a test, it was more like a game – find the algorithm! I had the opportunity to have lunch with several employees while we sat on sofas, had nice conversations and got to know each other better.

Overall I can say the day went by very quickly and it was a wonderful opportunity to find out about the company, the staff and myself!