Over the past 25 years, tech hiring has been the consistent area where the demand for talent outstrips the supply. While the precise skills that are in shortage change as the technology landscape evolves, it has always been a candidate-driven market.
So is the pandemic crisis changing the balance in tech hiring and how should companies be looking to attract and assess tech talent in our changed future?
My guest this week is Natalia Panowicz, CEO of Codility. Codility works with some of the biggest technology employers on the planet, and Natalia has some unique and data-driven insights to share.
In the interview, we discuss:
• How is the pandemic affecting the tech hiring market?
• Will demand continue to outstrip supply in the future?
• How remote hiring is opening up the global market for software engineers
• The impact of evidence-based hiring
• Avoiding bias and increasing diversity
• Assessment design
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Just before we start the show this week, I wanted to tell you about a webinar I’m hosting with the support of the awesome team at attrax. I’ll be talking to Eli Hart, recruitment lead at SNC Lavalin and Ben Gledhill, head of Resourcing Transformation at Thames Water, about what’s next for talent acquisition through the rest of 2020 and beyond into 2021. The webinar is taking place on Wednesday 20th May and it would be fantastic to have you come us. You can find out more and register by going to Bit ly Recruiting Future webinar. That’s Bit ly Recruiting Future Webinar, all in lowercase. Now on with the show.
Matt Alder [00:01:05]:
This is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 265 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Over the past 25 years, tech hiring has been the consistent area where demand for talent outstrips supply, while the precise skills that are in shortage change as the technology landscape evolves. It’s always been a candidate driven market. So is the pandemic crisis changing the balance in tech hiring and how should companies be looking to attract and assess tech talent in our changed future? My guest this week is Natalia Panowicz, CEO of Codility. Codility works with some of the biggest technology employers on the planet and Natalia has some unique and data driven insights to share. Hi Natalia and welcome to the podcast.
Natalia Panowicz [00:01:58]:
Hello Matt, Pleasure to be here and.
Matt Alder [00:02:00]:
And an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Natalia Panowicz [00:02:05]:
Absolutely. I’m Natalia Panowicz, CEO of Codility and Codility is an evidence based platform that supports engineering hiring for any company globally.
Matt Alder [00:02:21]:
And tell us a little bit about your story. How did you get to do what you do now?
Natalia Panowicz [00:02:25]:
I was very, very, very lucky to meet the founder of Codility, Greg Yakatsk, years ago when Codility was only five people and I immediately saw amazing potential for the company. I fell in love with our category and the problem we’re solving and also Greg’s story. So Greg’s story was that of a senior software engineer that found himself spending pretty much all his time during a moment when his company at the time in Beijing, China was scaling very fast. He was interviewing software engineers all the time instead of writing code, instead of building products and he figured out there is a better way to run engineering recruitment at scale. So, so he wrote Codility for himself. Initially it worked very well. So codility was automating technical assessments that Greg would have done himself otherwise. And then it turned out that so many other people in the world and so many other companies are facing exactly the same problem that Greg faced a little bit more than 10 years ago. So I’m very proud to be part of this journey for the last eight years. And we serve more than 1500 customers globally across variety, variety of segments. So we work with traditional tech employers, with Microsoft, Amazon, Slack, Tesla, but also with financial institutions that have, have a huge need for high performing engineering teams throughout the digitization processes that are happening in that segment. So we serve Citibank, we work with American Express here in the States and globally. And pretty much we’re seeing similar trends of digitization across all industry segments. So this is where credility comes as a strategic partner to our customers trying to build their engineering teams for the future.
Matt Alder [00:05:02]:
So we’re recording this interview right at the beginning of May in 2020. Obviously very, very challenging times all around the world at the moment. How is it affecting the technical recruiting market right now? What, what are you, what are you seeing from your clients? What, what are you seeing happening around the world?
Natalia Panowicz [00:05:20]:
So I will, I will start with sharing what we saw just before, just before COVID 19 because I think this is, this realize where we were two months ago as industry, so we were seeing a couple of trends that are very applicable to today as well. First of all, there was really a very serious structural imbalance in the job market for software engineers and technical talent. There were way more open positions than people qualified to fill them. So this is the starting point. At the same time, hiring engineers seem to be a race that everybody joined at once. So every company currently becomes a tech company. Therefore everybody is after the same pool of talent. So that was putting yet another interesting pressure on this, on this, on this sector, on this job sector. And companies are realizing that engineering teams are key for their future strategic advantage, pretty much. So it becomes a necessity to have a high performing engineering team. So this was the starting point pre COVID 19. What we are seeing right now is it really depends on the sector. So on one hand, in the sector of smaller medium businesses, we see a strong trend to do some pause in terms of hiring so that we interpret it as a little bit of uncertainty when it comes to how long the current crisis will last, what will be the duration of the current recession that we’re in. So we see that from certain customers at the same time there are so that actually opens a very very interesting window for bigger enterprises that pre COVID 19 would have lose a lot of technical talent to startups, to smaller companies. For right now this is a great time for those players to go after engineering talent. We also see certain segments that are currently doing very well and are very necessary for all of us to help us deal with the current situation. So we see healthcare recruiting a lot. We see, we see that governments actually are are recruiting a lot. We see, we see automation automation and robotics as as yet another, another, another segment where, where a lot is happening right now.
Matt Alder [00:08:44]:
So really over the last 20 years we’ve seen, you know, we’ve seen a similar, a similar position with there being more vacant software engineering vacancies than there are, than there are people to to fill them. Coming out of this is to continue or do you think we’ll get to a stage where supply finally starts exceeding demand?
Natalia Panowicz [00:09:05]:
We’re very, we’re very far from that situation. We actually, we actually see that, that, that the need for engineering is growing and will continue will continue to grow. Of course of course there’s the world doesn’t doesn’t know vacuum. So so there are many many non traditional institutions trying to to fil of not enough engineers being taught at traditional institutions or universities. So this is happening and we think we will see this to continue. But I would say that we are still years before the saturation in this job sector. Another thing that is a very interesting phenomenon right now is the trend actually pretty much very very rapid acceleration of the trend of remote work and remote hiring. We saw a lot of that in our industry before COVID 19 but right now whomever can went remote engineering profession, software engineering is actually very well poised to be to be done well in a remote setting. So this means that the world opens up and there definitely will be a lot of dispersed, a lot more dispersed engineering teams set up than prior. So suddenly if you have your team in say Bay Area sheltering in place, working from home, why not to have, why not to have engineers in Ottawa or Mexico City, right? What not. So it’s it’s. It’s really. It really levels levels the playing field I think dramatically which is, which is a very interesting, very interesting situation.
Matt Alder [00:11:11]:
Absolutely. I think that’s a, that, that’s a really interesting trend that’s coming out from this and I suppose in software engineering, technical hiring, as you say, it’s something that is something that’s already this or that’s already happening and has been happening for quite a while. Tell us a little bit more about how it works that there will be people listening from other sectors who are having to hire remotely for the, for the, for the first time or are considering hiring remotely. How do people do it? What do they, what do they need to bear in mind?
Natalia Panowicz [00:11:38]:
I would say that if, if any job, if any job can be done remote done remotely, that means that you can hire people to do this job remotely. So that’s, that’s that point point point one. From, from my perspective, I think what, what remote hiring forces forces everybody to do do even more so than in person hiring is to have a very, very structured process and really know what signals you’re looking for to make a decision on a particular candidate. We’re seeing some of our customers actually doing one to one mapping of a physical hiring process to a remote process. And we see some that, that make, that make adjustments. What is very important is to really understand who you’re looking for, how will you know that this person is the right person for your particular job. And as much as possible. So we are big believers in very relevant assessments and, and simulating as much as possible simulating job environment during the recruitment process so that we get a stronger, stronger signal of potential fit of candidates to who you’re looking for.
Matt Alder [00:13:06]:
Tell us a little bit more about that kind of evidence based hiring. What can companies do to do that? To sort of simulate what the jobs like to do and assess people that way.
Natalia Panowicz [00:13:15]:
So we of course do we support evidence based hiring in the sector of software engineering, which in a way is probably a little bit easier than other professions. So what codility does is we have various solutions that our customers are using to gain evidence around programming skills and other skills necessary for, for software engineers to be considered a fit for their open positions. So pretty much the premise of codility is that our customers give problems, real engineering problems to solve to their engineering job candidates. And then candidates are our coding in a very, very comfortable setting, just as they would do on the job. So this is one part of our platform where this can happen asynchronously. So these are programming assessments that are done in an automated way. And then another solution that we’re having is a pair programming solution in which in real time hiring managers and technical interviewers can code in a shared editor with their candidates. So pretty much they are able to simulate how it would be to work with that person and how it would be to code together, to pair program together. They can look into the thought process of, of particular engineer, into how they are solving problems how they are designing solutions. So these features of our platform are actually very important for our customers and give them a lot of accurate signal around engineering skills of their, of their potential job candidates. So I would say so we are a little bit. Probably it’s way easier to do it for engineering than for other professions. But I’m a big believer in structured assessments, structured interviews for everybody, no matter the role.
Matt Alder [00:15:59]:
One of the things that we talk about a lot on the show is bias. Whether that’s unconscious human bias, conscious human bias, or bias that might be amplified by technology and algorithms and automation. What’s your, what’s your take on the, the whole bias issue? How do you avoid it in the approach that you have?
Natalia Panowicz [00:16:23]:
Thank you so much. We really put a lot of, a lot of attention and a lot of research into to understanding bias and assessments. So as you say, bias is something that we all have, we all have conscious and unconscious biases. Our take is that the more you can make your unconscious bias conscious, you’re able to deal with this and then you’re able to decide how you can adjust. So we really want to, we really want to lead with this notion. What we are helping our customers with actually is designing a process that. Designing a process and designing assessments that minimize this bias. It. It’s also easier to do actually, paradoxically, it’s easier to do in a remote setting when you have to structure your process in a more rigorous way because you are able to recreate very similar conditions to everybody that would go through your process. So definitely consciously designing the process is one. Is one important, important factor. And then of course, observing how, what, what’s what results. This, the process that you’re having is, is yielding. Right? So do you. Ideally, ideally it would. You. You should, you should close your feedback loop and, and see are, are the people that, that you hire through that process, are they, are they the right people? And how, how you can adjust the process further to open up to more. I would say diverse group of people too. So what we studied, especially in software engineering, we all know that there is a disparity between genders when it comes, when it comes to engineering population right now. So there’s a lot of efforts that many companies, rightfully so make to provide a very fair and unbiased process that is inclusive to all genders. We studied this particular problem in the context of, of assessments. What we realized, and that was a very interesting finding for us is that particular assessments do not. There are no differences between genders and particular programming tasks. Programming assessments, but the way that our customers are assembling these assessments into a. A bigger process, into a set of assessments. Actually those sets show some differences between genders. So it’s also a question of who and how is designing processes and designing assessments or putting everything together that we found to have an effect. Another effect that we saw that we are making our customers conscious about is to provide especially for groups that might be underrepresented groups. This is happening in our profession, in particular with women. However, I think similar thought could be argued for other professions with underrepresented groups. It’s very, very important to make sure that the environment in which you conduct assessments, in which you conduct job interviews is actually as comfortable as possible to everybody that undergoes your process. Because under a represented groups will have more self questioning and actually their own self perception can be at play there and could unfortunately negatively impact their performance in the process. So as much as possible, comfortable, comfortable process making, making, making your candidates very much at ease. Same same testing conditions for everybody. So these are, these are the things that we, that we see that, that are working very well in, in building a process that is. That is less biased and more inclusive.
Matt Alder [00:21:30]:
So final question. It’s impossible to accurately predict the future at the moment, but what are your clients planning for in 2021? What do you think recruiting is going to look like in. In sort of six to nine months time?
Natalia Panowicz [00:21:47]:
Definitely definitely we will see a new normal of, of remote hiring and remote recruiting processes. So this is something that, that our customers were were already doing and right now are forced to do and, and find out that that such. If the, if the, if the, if such process is structured right, the results it yields is just as in person process or maybe because they have to be more rigorous right now, it yields better results and more accurate signals. So this is definitely to stay with us. So we will see a lot of hiring done remotely. We will see a lot of work happen in remotely. So that definitely got accelerated. We also think that engineering, after this moment of uncertainty, engineering hiring will actually bounce back faster than many other professions. And this is due to the underlying trends that are so important for this profession, which is everybody is digitizing. Every company becomes a tech company. It’s a race to hire engineering teams. And right now who restarts their engineering hiring faster will have an advantage in the future for sure. So we think that, that it will be a short structural shift in this particular job sector. So we look forward to the future very much.
Matt Alder [00:23:38]:
Natalia, thank you very much for talking to me.
Natalia Panowicz [00:23:40]:
Thank you so much.
Matt Alder [00:23:40]:
Matt, my thanks to Natalia. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow us on Instagram. You can find the show by searching for Recruiting Future. You can also listen and subscribe to the show on Spotify. You can find all the past episodes@www.recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about Working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
