Please join WhiteRock Systems in welcoming Liam Kenny, our newest team member! Liam has joined us as a software developer with a wealth of knowledge and experience and will focus on one of our new and exciting projects.

Finding Liam was quite the struggle, and if it weren’t for the recruitment consultant who reached out to us, we would have had no idea he was just around the corner (quite literally, we’re practically neighbours). We’ve spent the past few months screening CV after CV, only to find that most applicants don’t quite meet the needs of the business. They may use the wrong stack or lack the experience we look for in remote workers, either way, we provide feedback to the recruiter and move on to the next candidate.

Sometimes it’s different, and everything aligns. On these occasions, we’re excited to interview the candidate but often walk away disappointed after realising their personality wouldn’t fit well with the team. Worse still is when it all aligns and their character is excellent, but they fail the practical test so abysmally that we wouldn’t have the time or capacity required to train and support them in a role with us; those scenarios are the most challenging.

Liam was different to almost all of our other applicants – his CV matched our requirements. His location couldn’t have been more ideal. His skills and experience were genuine, and his personality was so great that we’d have offered him an in-office role even if his technical abilities didn’t quite stack up.

As a small business, we focus on recruiting great personalities, as team fit is crucial. Maybe our next recruit will have no experience using Angular, perhaps they’ll be fully remote, or maybe they’ll only want to work part-time; there are a lot of maybes, but only one certainty – our next recruit will have a personality that fits well with the team.

Hiring based on team fit is the best way to create a company culture that drives innovation, breeds teamwork, and instils a sense of belonging to every new team member who walks through our door. Our recruitment priorities make it a challenging process. Still, it means that we’re confident in our choices, considering the needs of our current team, and we end up recruiting people like Liam – an absolute asset and a pleasure to work with!

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash