If you ask any Nortal employee (or Nortalists, as we call ourselves) what has kept them with the company, 9 times out of 10 they will answer, “It’s the people.” Having ambitious growth plans and hiring hard-to-find tech candidates among a highly competitive labor market, our Talent Acquisition team is often at the front line of the battlefield ensuring we attract the right talent while keeping our strong culture by hiring people who share our values. We follow a few guidelines in finding and choosing the right people for the team.
The 4 simple yet powerful principles we follow for recruiting:
- Team fit beats the skills. We are eager to find the best unicorns on the market and hire superstars, but Nortal wouldn’t be the company it is if not for the people who put the team first and personal interests second. We don’t believe in titles and don’t have managers with white gloves who cannot switch between different roles, getting their hands dirty when required. At Nortal, humbleness is not a sign of weakness but a sign of intelligence.
From the recruiter’s perspective, we often need to identify the potential, rather than the existing skillset, to bring aboard only those who have the right starter kit to perform well in the position and are eager and curious to grow together with us.
- It’s all about the right time and the right role for the candidate. We believe in transparent communication, which means we are open about challenges the candidate might encounter within the role and the company. We won’t push a candidate into a role to fill the position; instead, we work to adjust and align the role with the person’s skill set and talents they’ll bring to the team.
Our recruiters often see themselves as career coaches – they view everything from the candidate’s perspective and what’s best for them. Sometimes, this means we have nothing suitable to offer, and we have the integrity to say it is not the right time or right role for a great candidate (which doesn’t mean that we might not have the perfect role in a few months).
- Finding great people on the team is the company’s common mission. Recruitment is not just a task on the Talent Acquisition table but a business-critical function where all company employees are held accountable. We have developed a culture where people from various positions – project managers, developers, analysts, business managers – are brand ambassadors who develop a network within the market and actively participate in the recruitment process.
Our recruiters ensure that relevant stakeholders have the needed skills to contribute to an excellent candidate journey by their involvement in every part of the recruitment cycle – sometimes by identifying and referring talent or personally reaching out to exceptional candidates before the offer negotiation phase.
- Turning “No” into “Yes’” by keeping the talent pool warm. Changing jobs often means there are many small details that need to come together to make it happen. Sometimes it’s just not the right time for the candidate or us, but since the first contact has already happened, it would be a waste of a lot of resources if we left it just there.
We keep our talent pool warm and take care of our stand-out candidates all year by sending out Wolt vouchers for Christmas, sharing the latest Nortal tech blog, or occasionally inviting the candidates to Nortal events. It’s worth the extra effort since the average period to fill positions at Nortal has become relatively short, and candidates appreciate our attentiveness. Thus, if most of your time goes toward putting out fires, and you don’t have time to develop the talent pool processes strategically, it’s difficult to find the right “yes” at the right time!
Excelling in recruiting is about consistency
Recruitment has been a business-critical function at Nortal for years, which means finding great people on the team is the company’s common mission. The recruitment team is much larger than just the recruiter responsible for filling certain roles. We position the recruiters as strategic partners alongside the managers by keeping relevant stakeholders accountable in the recruitment process. We make sure we have the systems and tools in place to ensure consistency in ongoing recruitments.
While being on a mission to find the best talent for each position – it’s important to highlight that it is always the candidate at the center of the recruitment process.
Join our Talent Acquisition team and do great things with us!
