Nordcloud, an IBM company, is the company established in 2011, the company that from the beginning of its existence had the vision that Public Cloud is the path that they want to pursue. Mind you, it was definitely a right decision and it turned out to be a great adventure for this organization and the people within it. In this case study you will learn how to scale a tech team with our RPO service.
Nordcloud today
From 2011 Nordcloud grew significantly, up to 1300+ people employed across Europe. 10 European countries have Nordcloud offices, 1000+ Public Cloud implementations, partnering with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, landing a place within Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, 1000+ AWS certifications and 1000+ Azure certifications among employees. Their main focus up to this date is Public Cloud, infrastructure solutions, cloud-native application services and, of course, satisfaction of both the employees and the clients.
Challenge: how to scale the Tech Team in Nordcloud?
However, the picture looked a bit different a year ago, when an RPO recruiter from Humeo, joined the ranks of Nordcloudians in order to assist the Talent Acquisition team in November of 2021, specifically to take care of the recruitment in the Netherlands.
The numbers of employed people, certifications, as well as of implementations were definitely smaller, and the company as a whole was in a hyper growth mode. It was truly important for Nordcloud to obtain the support from our side (RPO service) for two main reasons: hyper growth and the fact that they needed a dedicated recruiter for the Dutch tech team, so we accepted the challenge.
Mission: recruiting IT specialists in the Netherlands (various roles)
The main focus from the beginning, apart from the swift onboarding, was on getting to know the team and establishing contact with the Talent Acquisition team, Hiring Managers and the main figures in the Dutch team (like Delivery Executive, Tech Lead and Team Leaders). Besides, when it comes to recruitment itself, the focal point was conducting the processes for:
- Cloud Architects (AWS/Azure/Google Cloud),
- Kubernetes Engineers,
- Database Reliability Engineer,
- Delivery Executive.
Later on there were such roles as:
- Cloud Advisor,
- Customer Success Manager,
- Cloud Developer,
- Account Executive,
- Sales Lead.
As you can see, there were not only technical roles, included, but also a range for the Sales department. From the technical side, there was a lot of collaboration with Managed Cloud (mostly in the Netherlands, but also a few roles in the Polish market), Professional Services and Platform and Tools (specifically in this case it was a Polish team) departments.
Scaling of the Tech Team in Nordcloud – results of our Recruiter’s activities
During this year of collaboration between Humeo and Nordcloud, an IBM Company, there were numerous roles to be filled and quite a few challenges. However, it truly was a team work in its finest form, as our recruiter worked alongside with the TA team as an inhouse recruiter and an outright part of the team. Was this work fruitful? Most definitely.
It all started with acting as the only recruiter for the Netherlands, but then there were also multiple chances to work on the Polish market and source on Norwegian, Swedish and Danish markets once on behalf of Nordcloud.
During this year there were:
- 650+ applied candidates for the positions that the RPO recruiter was responsible for;
- 340+ processed candidates by the RPO recruiter;
- 33 offer letters were sent;
- 26 hired specialists;
- Working with 3 major tech departments;
- Collaboration with Talent Acquisition, Marketing and Employer Branding teams.
Client’s Review *We received professional and solid support from Humeo by RPO services.
It was a perfect solution that brought flexibility, professionalism, and expertise during hyper-growth in the IT market.
Our needs were taken into account and addressed adequately.
I appreciate the clear and open communication, regular feedback, and fair collaboration.
I can only recommend working with Humeo*.
Dorota Kowalik
Head of Talent Acquisition @ Nordcloud, an IBM Company
What influenced such a high efficiency of IT recruitment in Nordcloud?
The recruiter was fully integrated with the internal teams and truly was a part of the team and the Talent Acquisition team was working together on a shared goal and targets in a hyper growth period. The key point was to find, as usual, the best talents that would join Nordcloud ranks in supporting clients and creating new solutions for them.
In order to find the right people, Nordcloud team created the process that worked best for them, after the official application there were these steps:
- First interview with a recruiter.
- Technical assignment.
- Technical interview with the members of the team.
- Reference check.
- Interview with the manager.
The role of the recruiter in the whole picture was briefing with the Hiring Managers to determine the right profile, choosing candidates from either sourcing or applicants, guiding them through the process and assisting them, consulting the Hiring Managers on the positions, processes and priorities and sending offer letters to the chosen candidates, then closing the process.
Conducting the recruitment process on the example of the Cloud Architect role
At the end, we would like to show you how the recruitment process looked like in practice.
A good exemplary role would be a Cloud Architect one, as it is quite common throughout the whole company and the requirements for it are quite unified. It was present in the Dutch portal too, of course, but what were the key factors?
Overall, it is a highly technical role where they concentrate on creating a functional and stable architecture. They focus on solving business challenges, either multi cloud, or single cloud. Ideally they should also be able to communicate to C-level executives and translate technical requirements to business and vice versa.
From the technical perspective, obviously, there ought to be experience in creating the design for the cloud architecture, advanced knowledge of one of the public clouds (AWS, Azure or Google Cloud), building and delivering IaaS, PaaS or SaaS offerings, knowledge of containers, scripting or coding languages.
Does not seem like an easy task, therefore the recruitment process from Nordcloud that is used, definitely comes in handy to check the relevant factors!
How to scale a Tech Team with RPO – summary
The recruiter from the Humeo team who was working with Nordcloud was Mariia.
What does she think about this year? Let’s summarize this case study using her words:
Frankly, it was a completely new experience for me, where I got to try working with a large team and on a completely different scale than I had previously worked on.
There were, of course, some aspects that were completely new to me from both the technical and recruitment sides, but the Nordcloud Talent Acquisition team made it possible for me to adjust quickly.
For instance, the public cloud environment had appeared in other recruitment processes, but I had never had a chance to dive this deep into the topic before I joined Nordcloud, and the TA team together with the tech teams were super helpful in that respect.
I like to think the cooperation was useful for both parties and, according to the feedback I received from Nordcloud, that feeling was mutual.
From my side, I was constantly sharing my thoughts on how the process or job descriptions could be improved, and the hiring managers were open to receiving those insights and acting on them.
In my opinion, it was a great year and a truly valuable time that I spent with the Talent Acquisition team at Nordcloud, which I will remember warmly.
The recruitment processes, the technical teams we worked with, and the candidates I had a chance to guide through the journey all made my time at Nordcloud quite unique.
Mariia Horskykh
RPO Tech recruiter @ humeo | recruitment geeks
Mariia was also a co-author of this article.
