We are having difficulties with capacity. How do we address this?

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Job description

I have done another iteration over the job description, based on additional thoughts I had in the meantime, as well as feedback gathered from candidates & additional people I’ve asked advice to over the past week. See my edits in the document history - I have:

  • Tried to highlight more of what makes OpenCraft unique, for example put additional focus on open source and being good at handling remote work, about compensation, freedom, and about work-life balance
  • I have also emphasized the requirement of a contribution to a third party project as this is one of our main filters for candidatures – to encourage people without a contribution to do one before applying (since we would be filtering them out otherwise, it could increase the number of candidatures we would consider), and linking to the bounties to allow candidates to get paid for that contribution work if they can deliver it on Open edX

Since the changes are significant, I’ll wait until Monday to do the changes on all the ads, to give a chance for reviews – particularly from you @Fox since you have led that effort.

Recruitment process changes

I have also made corresponding changes on the recruitment form, and further modifications to test a change of process: adding a second interview after the technical interview, with me, for candidates who pass the first interview, and group all the contract discussions at that time (review of contract, setting the rate, answering questions about invoicing, etc.). We’ll need to see if that’s worth it, as that means that we would filter people who are out of price range later, but since that’s the step where we are losing more people than we used to currently (ie we have more applicants, but a larger proportion of them end up going for another offer), that would allow me to discuss more directly with candidates during that phase, answer their questions and address their hesitations when they have some, and also generally spend more time with them, to show that we value them.

Another benefit is that the candidatures are now immediately accessible to recruitment managers without any need for further automation, since there wouldn’t be any rate information to filter out in the initial form. CC @usman @adolfo @paulo – I’ll need to do a pass to update the recruitment process accordingly, as we are discussing with @paulo on Log in - OpenCraft

Bounties

I have also looked into bounties. @adolfo I don’t think you have provided the list of potential bugs yet, right? I looked at https://github.com/openedx/build-test-release-wg/projects/1 and spotted two potential tickets, for which I’ve created corresponding bounties on Bountysource:

I wasn’t able to credit the bounties though, as Paypal is throwing a tantrum and doesn’t let me pay – I’ll need to look into it more closely. That gives you time to confirm the tickets @adolfo , and provide an hours estimation. Also, I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better (or at least complementary) to post the bounties on our site, and offer them to the candidates who want to apply but don’t have a merged contribution to an open source project – that’s actually a large portion of people applying, that we currently reject. We would also have more control on the assignation and awarding of the bounties, and not have to pay for them upfront without knowing if the work will actually be done.

Recruiters

I’ve reached out to a recruiter I had met a few years ago and who was a really nice and serious person – I don’t know what to expect from his work, but that could be a way to test this approach. I have a meeting scheduled with him on Monday.

Temporary contractors

@raul I’m replying to you here to keep things fully transparent here. Thanks for submitting the recruitment form for the two contractors. Looking at their profile I notice that they don’t have any contribution to a third party project listed – are there some that you could link to? I had assumed that since they do contract work for scrappinghub they would have many, but maybe I was wrong? Having existing contributions is a hard requirement for any developer joining the team, even for contractors. (Also could you respond to @Fox’ questions & remarks above, to also have this discussion here?)

Website & handbook update

Maybe something like “OpenCraft Website - Recruitment improvements”?

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