Percolate is the reigning champion in the realm of enterprise-level content marketing platforms. Marketing experts established the company, driven by a goal to aid brands in achieving success and advancement in the digital landscape dominated by social media and mobile devices. The suite of Percolate’s products and services can enhance openness, simplify collaboration and generate superior marketing content and campaigns.
There is intense competition and a deficiency of pipeline.
The task of filling open positions for front- and back-end engineers posed an arduous challenge for Percolate, given its position of headquarters in three of the most fiercely competitive software engineering markets, namely New York, San Francisco, and Denver. The company also had to contend with a more strenuous task – that of replacing developers and entire teams who departed for other opportunities.
The Director of Engineering at Percolate, Kimberly Peterson, has shared her views regarding the company’s recruitment difficulties for pipeline positions. The competitive market has resulted in a demanding process of hiring suitable individuals. Frequently, the candidates may have already appeared for interviews with five or six other firms by the time Percolate reaches out, and might even have received job offers from some of them. This creates a financial tug-of-war between the companies to capture the candidate’s interest.
As engineers at Percolate, we were highly cognizant of the intensifying pressure arising from the recruitment challenges our company faced. With fewer resources than the other tech industry peers in the vicinity, we felt the desperate nature of the situation increasing with each passing day.
Preserving Team Unity and Fidelity
After a trial-and-error phase of offshore mobile development agreements, Percolate recognized the significance of team harmony in their primary product. As a result, the company prioritized the recruitment of individuals who could cultivate strong relationships with team members, instead of expecting their engineers to devise requirements, deliver them, and then seldom interact with other engineers who they may not know.
Kimberly was steadfast in her efforts to enhance the team’s confidence, values, and productivity. We aimed to avoid conveying the impression that we had abandoned recruitment, and took particular care to ensure that the engineering team did not feel vulnerable to replacement by offshore workers. Furthermore, a few individuals were not dedicated to completing the project, and we made all possible attempts to prevent that from happening.
Kimberly and her Vice President of Engineering deliberated on the viability of a pilot project with Works. They deemed it to align perfectly with Percolate’s integration-focused culture, having a constructive impact. As a result, they aborted any plans of outsourcing with any other party, considering the Works discussion to be adequate.
Join the Team when Initiating a New Project
Eric Gichuri and Angie Mutava were the first members of Percolate’s workforce, having joined the team in September. They were greeted with a highly efficient and diverse productivity-oriented team that already had functional remote working alternatives. The team was dedicated to developing inventive features that facilitated a streamlined onboarding process while retaining vital context.
During their maiden visit to New York City, Eric and Angie established lasting bonds with their four co-workers. Kimberly remarked on the group’s efficiency, emphasizing their unity in achieving common objectives and their close-knit dynamic. This experience showcased the feasibility of expanding the team, resulting in the recruitment of four additional developers by the end of the year.
Strengthen Your Team Instead of Outsourcing.
The Works engineers have displayed an extraordinary level of dedication and proactivity, providing Percolate with confidence through their reliability and enthusiasm to surpass expectations for the company and its clientele.
During the two-week vacation of the backend team leader, Eric assumed the role’s responsibilities. He was readily available on Slack to address any problems, and even offered to handle the issues himself when on pager duty rotation. Additionally, an API engineer assisted by addressing a customer inquiry outside of regular business hours by logging into the system at five in the morning. Eric’s unwavering commitment to resolving issues and providing top-notch customer service is laudable.
At Works, Kimberly, an engineer, observed a colleague expertly transition from a back-end to a front-end position by leveraging their full-stack abilities. Kimberly remarked, “Watching their versatility in action was amazing.” The Works team takes pride in their work, a critical distinction between team augmentation and project outsourcing.
Effective Approaches for Assigning Tasks to Remote Workers
Percolate’s fully remote team has profited from the implementation of Works’ most effective techniques. Our comprehension of how a remote team operates has been enhanced considerably by Works. We now have uniform communication practices, with Zoom being the preferred method for decision-making as opposed to Slack. Works is responsible for all these developments.
Percolate has currently established six Works teams, including two for the application, analytics and platform teams each, as reported. Additionally, the integration capacity of their Application Programming Interface (API) is being augmented to allow for greater integrations.
If you’re considering building your own Works engineering department, get in touch and advise us on how we can aid you.
