How recruiting works at Apps with love

Editor's Note January 2024
Since we wrote this blog post in 2020, a few things have changed. Fortunately, corona no longer has such a strong impact on our everyday lives and our team has continued to grow.

The recruitment process has remained fundamentally the same. We attach great importance to getting to know potential candidates as well as possible and giving them as realistic an insight as possible into our day-to-day work during a trial day on site. 
However, compared to before coronavirus, we are increasingly conducting initial interviews online, as video calls have become even more established in recent years. We have described what needs to be considered and some tips in the last section.

We hope this article will help you familiarise yourself with the recruitment process at Apps with love and prepare you for a potential job interview.

As some of you may know, Apps with love has grown healthily but steadily over the past few years. We are now a team of 36 experts spread across two locations in Bern and Basel. We are currently looking for further support and are also in the middle of the recruitment process to fill a position in project management.

Now, of course, the coronavirus has brought this process to a halt. We explain why this is the case and how we generally find new talent in the blog.

Why getting to know each other personally is important to us

As a company that attaches great importance to its culture and relies heavily on a well-established team, we consider it very important to give ourselves enough time to get to know new team members. In concrete terms, this means that candidates go through a multi-stage process:  

Recruitment is a very personal process for everyone involved. That's why we are guided by personal impressions rather than a lot of data, e-recruiting tools and databases. Of course, we also use electronic tools, especially for communication and advertising vacancies. However, we rely heavily on our network and analogue processes instead of e-recruiting.

The first steps in the application process

Thanks to CVs, education and professional experience, we usually know that a profile fits before we even meet the candidate. The HR team makes an initial pre-selection based on this key data. In an internal discussion with members of the team looking for additional support - for example, the design team or the project management team - it is then clarified who is eligible for pre-selection. During the pre-selection process, the initial "tangible" data is clarified so that we can decide whether it makes sense to get to know each other better. This data includes an approximate salary expectation, a possible start date and, in the case of internships, the desired duration of the internship, for example.

The first meeting

The initial key data from the pre-selection is important, but of course there are still many detailed questions that are discussed during a recruitment interview. Nevertheless, it is primarily the person behind the potential new team member that interests us. What questions are asked? Could the applicant imagine working in a company with a carefully cultivated corporate culture? In a working environment such as ours - with our structures, relatively few processes and rather flat hierarchies - could the full potential be realised and the role fulfilled in an entrepreneurial spirit?

These questions are usually clarified in the course of an initial meeting at our offices. In circumstances where an initial physical meeting is not possible, getting to know a person is a challenge. Although we are better connected than ever before and many things are possible with video calls, they cannot completely replace a face-to-face meeting. It is therefore all the more important that certain things are taken into account when recruiting via Skype, Hangout, Zoom, etc. We provide important tips for good video conferencing at the end of this article.

What we pay attention to at the first meeting

In general, it is important to give applicants a feeling of security. A short round of introductions of all interview partners at the beginning lightens the mood and it is clear to everyone who is listening and what role he/she has in the company. In the meantime, the candidate has the opportunity to prepare themselves to present themselves and their career in their own words. The participants usually only know the application documents, as the first contact is mostly between HR and the candidate.

A relaxed and safe atmosphere characterised by openness and acceptance allows authenticity from both sides: Applicants gain an insight into the atmosphere and behaviour in our company and at the same time can reveal something about their character. Nevertheless, it is essential that such an interview does not go nowhere. Ideally, the interview should be structured and have a common thread. It is also very important to ask open questions, preferably from both sides. It should not become a monologue. This usually gives a good initial indication of whether the conversation has taken place as openly and naturally as possible and whether the necessary spark has been ignited ;).

The further procedure in case of mutual interest

If the first interview is positive, we invite applicants to a taster day/assessment. We consider it inappropriate to digitise this process. It is fundamental for Apps with love that future team members experience a day in the office. Possible questions such as; who would I work for in the future, does the mission statement really correspond to the reality in the company, in which team would I work and what would my tasks be, can be better answered and made tangible in this form;

Ideally, applicants can say after the taster day: "Oh, so this is what my working day would look like as a new team member of the company!" The most important questions are clarified and at the same time give both sides an optimal opportunity to recognise whether the right person is "onboarding" the right ship.

The difficult decision

The decision for or against a new job, or for or against a new team member, can be harder or easier - but no one should take it lightly. After all, it is a decision that has a major impact on both sides and cannot be quickly reversed. It is therefore worth taking a close look, thinking carefully and then deciding all the more emphatically. What remains are the final contractual details. With us, however, these are usually not very complicated: Our wage model answers questions about salary, and thanks to the trial day, the future role and the associated main tasks are also clear.

Conclusion

Perfect decisions are difficult and sometimes you only realise over a longer period of time that the job or the collaboration doesn't feel quite as good as you had hoped. Nevertheless, we have had very good experiences with our process overall: staff turnover is very low and departures always have easily explainable reasons. We believe in having the right team rather than the biggest team possible. It is therefore worth taking enough time and putting a lot of thought into the recruitment process.

But now - in keeping with the current times - a few tips and tricks for good online conversations:

The basic requirements for a successful conversation via video call

In the last few weeks, but also earlier, we have gained valuable experience in online interviews and other meetings via video call, which we are happy to share:

By now, this is probably something new for very few people, but ideally you have a quiet place in your home where you can retreat from distracting noise and which can be used as an office from time to time. Distractions don't just mean children running around happily in the background during a Hangout meeting wearing only their pants, but also the singing naked Pavarotti across the road or attention-hungry pets. 

A stable internet connection and a room that is as bright as possible are of course also an advantage so that the dialogue partners can both see and hear each other well.

In our experience, it is often a first for applicants to introduce themselves online, i.e. it is their first digital job interview. We therefore consider it all the more important that the introduction is as open and relaxed as possible so that a good and authentic atmosphere is created, as far as this is possible despite physical distance.

It is helpful if the course of the conversation also follows a common thread via the screen: Proper preparation plays an important role. For acoustic reasons, we recommend that dialogue partners always switch to mute at the start of every conversation and only switch on the microphone when speaking. This allows you to focus on the other person and not lose energy unnecessarily filtering out background noise.

We are flexible when it comes to the tools we use: the most important thing is that everyone is comfortable with them. For example, we have described the tools we normally use here.

Reading body language remains a major challenge: how can I recognise whether it fits? Whether someone is 'themselves'? How does interest, sympathy, rejection and so on manifest themselves? This challenge is the reason why we believe that physical meetings will remain very important in the future - despite the many exciting approaches to online collaboration tools, VR and AR.