At the current stage of development of the IT industry, there is an acute demand for experienced front-end specialists who are able not only to write code, but also to build processes, mentor a team and make technical decisions. Team Leads who are able to combine technical expertise with management skills are especially appreciated. Our agency Invista successfully solves such problems. This case study shows the experience of closing a Team Lead Frontend developer position for 21 days, despite a number of challenges.
Customer request
We were approached by an EdTech product service that is developing a B2C platform with millions of users. The company was at the scaling stage and needed a specialist who could lead a team of 6 front-end developers, build stable processes and implement technical solutions aimed at improving performance and stability.
Key expectations from the candidate:
- Strong knowledge of the modern stack (TypeScript, React, Redux, Webpack);
- Experience in managing a team of at least 3 people;
- Participation in building the architecture of front-end applications;
- Understanding CI/CD and participating in code-review practices;
- Developed soft-skills and experience in High load products.
Difficulties encountered
1. The need to combine hard and soft competencies.
The client was looking for a “versatile fighter”: technically strong, but also with leadership skills. Many candidates either focused only on code or had managerial experience but were poor at writing themselves.
2. A narrow market for experienced team leads.
In the front-end development market, the demand for senior specialists and team leads is extremely high. Some relevant candidates were already working in big products, were not ready to change jobs, or were in the process of moving to another project.
3. High requirements for soft skills.
The candidate had to not only “manage”, but also be a mentor, facilitator and mediator between the team and the product side. This limited the range of suitable profiles.
4. Competition with internal recruiters.
The client had its own HR team and was also recruiting through another agency. We had to act quickly and accurately to stand out and show value.
Recruitment process
A study of motivations and career expectations.
We conducted a series of in-depth interviews with Senior+ candidates from our database and foreign markets to find out which of them are considering moving to a team lead position at a product company. They focused on professional development, architectural freedom and the flexibility of processes within the team.
Focus on passive candidates.
We deliberately reached out to candidates who do not post resumes in the public domain, but are open to proposals if they have an interesting task. This made it possible to find a specialist that the competitors did not see.
Close work with the client.
Regular syncs with the client's HR and tech teams allowed us to quickly make adjustments to the candidate's portrait, coordinate interview dates and deliver feedback from both sides.
Assessment of management competencies.
We introduced a preliminary soft-skills assessment stage: candidates were offered situation cases related to team conflicts, overload and burnout. This helped to immediately weed out those who could not cope with people management.
The result of our work
Already in fortnight we presented three finalists to the client, each of whom met the requirements and had management experience. One of the candidates went through all stages of the interview and received an offer.
Key advantages of the candidate:
- 7 years of experience in development, the last 2 years as a team lead;
- Experience in building a SPA application architecture from scratch;
- Empathy, a mature approach to management and the ability to “guide” the team through change;
- Readiness to enter the offer within 2 weeks.
The position was closed in 21 days from the moment the search started. Already in the first month of work, the new team lead helped build code-review processes and introduced a clearer task planning system, which had a positive impact on release dates.
Дата