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Lucky hunter

How to find a DevOps Evangelist
in 3 weeks?
Case

Every job opening at Lucky Hunter is unique. Uniqueness is determined by the approach we use to fill a role, requirements, company specifics. But in some cases, the uniqueness of the vacancy lies in the position itself.

The request to fill the rarest positions on the market plays a special role for us because this is a truly challenging task (and ambitious tasks is our passion). Today we are going to tell you about such a case.

In November 2020, we filled a vacancy for a position of DevOps Evangelist for an international IT company. This case is our crown jewel, so read the unique story in the world of IT recruiting right now.

Alina Murashova, the Lucky Hunter
IT Recruiter

Task

Apart from the fact that the position itself is very rare on the market, the requirements for the job opening also can't be called simple. The specialist that our client's team was searching for shouldn't only have an excellent technical background and have a vast professional experience, but also:

know the Linux kernel.

Have good communication skills (which is rare in the DevOps world). Communication skills are not just the ability to find common ground with other people. This is the ability to proficiently negotiate, participate in conferences and meetups, and have a well-bred speech.

know English at a high level.

Difficulties

The reason why the company contacted Lucky Hunter was that the in-house HR-s couldn't fill the vacancy for a long time. The difficulties the team faced turned out to be quite serious:

The experts couldn't find a DevOps Evangelist with equally strong technical and communication skills. The person was required to speak about the company's product in a professional manner, communicate a lot and teach others, but at the same time, the candidate was required to have a strong technical background. This combination of skills is quite rare in the DevOps world.

DevOps Evangelists found by the in-house specialists didn't speak English well enough, since an extremely high level was required, which is also a rare skill on the market.

There was a feeling that there is no suitable candidate on the market. As we said, challenging tasks are our passion, so we took up work with enthusiasm.

How did we fill the opening?

The client's difficulties solution

The difficulties that the client's team faced allowed us to quickly identify bottlenecks in the selection. We determined that the key problem was the revealing the fact there really are very few suitable specialists in the Russian market, so we understood that we should expand the search geography and look for the IT talent around the world.

The change of focus from the Russian market to the world market allowed us to expand the candidate funnel, solving the client's key problem-the shortage
of suitable specialists.

Building a candidate profile

Then we built a candidate profile. Our ideal candidate looked like this: it was a specialist with a strong DevOps background, who lives either in Europe or in Russian-speaking countries, but has experience working abroad.

We excluded the USA from the search since the salaries of specialists from the USA are significantly higher than the market average and are beyond the financial capabilities of our client.

We also determined that, ideally, a specialist should have a PhD in a technical field, or at least complete a master's degree: the scientific field not only gives strong technical skills but also develops a person's communication skills.

After defining the candidate's profile, we started the search.

We were looking for specialists throughout all existing recruiting channels (LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, our own database, services for tech recruiting, such as Podbor.io, AmazingHiring, CVHub, GitHub platform etc.)

Overall, we processed 254 Cvs, sent over 234 emails, conducted 7 interviews with the best in order to find a long-awaited specialist (whom we subsequently found in just three weeks)

For clarity, we provide statistics from the CRM system:

DevOps Evangelist Statystics

Strategy

It's also very important to highlight how we drew the attention of candidates.

First, it's the position itself. This is a rare role that stands out from other vacancies.

Secondly, these are tasks. We emphasized that DevOps Evangelist wouldn't need to sell anything (this is what many experts are afraid of).

In addition, the specialist will have a chance to improve their communication skills and improve their level of English. We remarked that communication includes not only participation in conferences, meetups and interaction with the team.

The specialist will get a unique chance to communicate with like-minded people that are completely immersed in the industry.

We also highlighted the fact that this role in the company is new: the specialist will have an opportunity for implementation of their own ideas.

Result

As a result, we filled the role within three weeks after the job opening discussion. The profile exactly coincided with ours:

the specialist has been working at the university for 15 years as a DevOps Engineer;

at the moment he is receiving a PhD degree (technical field);

often speaks at conferences;

knows Linux;

Our IT-pro is also good with English: our candidate is from Portugal and, therefore, speaks English at a high level.

What's the reason for the success?

The key success factors include three aspects. We:

quickly understood why our client was unable to find a specialist for a long time;

accurately defined the candidate's profile;
identified the key advantages of the position.

In addition, as in any case, the professionalism of the Lucky Hunter team plays an important role, as well as the principle that we unconditionally follow in any business - the principle of partnership with the client.

Contact Lucky Hunter: we'll help you fill a vacancy of any complexity because we know that your ideal candidate is waiting for you, and we will help you find them :)