The sole focus on experience and professional skills is no longer the typical approach when it comes to how employers evaluate job candidates with technology. The change to using skill-based talent assessment tools is what businesses are after for. It’s not a question of if technology is changing the employment environment anymore; rather, it’s a question of how. What does the significant change in the hiring procedure imply for prospective developers and staffing industries?
In this week’s episode, Insquad Co-Founder and CEO Alex Svinov tackles us with his platform that helps from small to large tech business to save time on finding developers, software engineers, and programmers.
Insquad is an IT services company with a focus on offering excellent remote software developers from all over the world to United States and Europe companies. Insquad runs coding exercises and coding tests to prove their skills which is vital in hiring a developer.
If you are looking to hire remote software-developers, listen to this podcast on Actions-Antidote.
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How Tech Is Changing the Hiring Process in 2022 and Beyond with Alex Svinov
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We all know the workforce is changing and some of the concepts around hiring, retaining, and developing a good talent team is also changing quite a bit and one frustration that I think a lot of people have experienced over the past several years, in particular, even though that may be changing a bit in more recent times, is the challenge that often comes with trying to find good development talent. As you know, nearly every business, nearly every company, anyone that’s trying to do anything, needs to have a functioning website, needs to have some kind of a web presence, and a lot of other businesses are increasingly using data, data analytics, artificial intelligence, everything that comes from these development teams so development has become a really highly sought after talent base, especially senior developers, developers with certain expert level expertise, experience that can really jump in and solve your problem. My guest today, Alex Svinov, has a platform that helps small- to medium-sized businesses from startup to the mid-sized find remote senior development talent, something that I think we can all appreciate being a little bit easier.
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Alex, welcome to the program.
Hey, Stephen, thanks for inviting me, great to be here. Hello, everybody.
Thank you for joining. And let’s start out with what goes on, I think a lot of people are familiar with but maybe some aren’t, the challenge in finding development talent, whether it be a person to just build and maintain your website or a several-member team that has certain areas of expertise, like certain programming languages or domain expertise.
Yeah, I think the challenge in finding a great developer or building development team primarily lies in the part of evaluating and finding the right talents for your team, because everybody who’s been doing software development knows that there are no two identical developers out there. Even though they may be having the same stack, having the same experience, they will still be different type of person, actually different type of code writing pattern, and so on and so forth, and I guess the key problem there is that, to be successful in each and every team, you need a different type of developer. Some teams need somebody who’s doing a lot of coding, some of them do somebody who is very good in architecture, and so on and so forth. And then, essentially, what ends up with technical teams spending a lot of time interviewing candidates just to find the right person. This is what essentially we at Insquad are doing is that we’re trying to shorten this period so that the technical team spend less time interviewing candidates. We do that before them. We do have the initial screening process so that, ultimately, the developers that will land on our platform are already halfway through and, that way, we’re helping the existing teams save more time on the interviewing process and do actually what they love doing most. And it’s no secret that developers love to write code. They love to build something. They don’t love to interview other people.
That’s definitely a common theme that I’ve observed as well. Now, on your website, what I see is that we have options to find developers by a domain as well as a specific skill, and with skill, I think usually it’s talking about specific coding languages or specific cloud platforms. Does other factors such as what industry you have experience in or even a developer’s personality, given that I’ve observed some developers that have said to me, “My ideal day is one where I just put my headphones on and code from seven in the morning until 4:15 In the afternoon with just nothing but task number 3526 is the first priority, then 3791, then 4478,” or something like that, and then there are some other developers that have wanted to be, say, a little bit more involved in the overall system architecture and some of those other things, does that ever come into play in how people search for the talents?
The main purpose of this platform is actually to help the developer and the team to find each other.” Click To Tweet
So, our goal is to collect as much data as possible about the developer so whenever the customer comes to try to find somebody, they have a lot of information beforehand so they don’t need to do interviews with the guys, they know they are not just fit to this team. So, yeah, we do have filters that you can always search by domain, meaning that they’re experienced in fintech or or in blockchain or in healthtech or advertising, whatever, and we do collect all that data. And as for programming language, we’re actually collecting a lot of technical stuff, like how well they do know the basic principles of software engineering, do they do algorithms and data structures, and so on and so forth, and objective programming. A developer can confirm all the skills on the platform and then you as a client can review his profile and see, “Hey, this guy knows not only Python, or PyTorch, he also knows a whole bunch of these frameworks.” He knows that not because he said he knows that but because he has confirmed that in coding and quizzes and also you can see a video interview with him, and to get back to your question, we do work with every developer to find out what is his ideal day like and what are his aspirations in terms of the team he wants to join, whether it’s like he’s more accustomed to larger teams, smaller teams, does he have any business acumen so that he also wants to go a little bit more into product side of the development, because, again, there are teams that really need this particular skill and, this way, we are certain that we can establish more fruitful relationship for both parties and have people spend less time talking to each other to find out the right person but doing more time actually producing something. That’s where we see our motivation.
And so it sounds like there’s two elements, there’s two aspects to this. One is the amount of time it takes to hire someone, which I’ve seen so many teams go through exactly what you’re talking about, that video coding exercise to prove that you actually have the skill that’s listed on the resume, which is something that you’re automating or providing ahead of time for clients. And then there’s the other thing, which is when the person is hired, having them be the right fit, having them be in the right place at the right time so that everybody’s more happy and there’s way less of that friction that we often see in so many work environments when someone’s either in the wrong place or the wrong role or their personality, their motivations, even some of their values are just not a match for the particular organization that happened to hire them.
Yeah, absolutely. And the reason why we are actually able to have these developers in our vetted pool is because we went outside US, where in US, there’s a lot of competition. Even though these days we hear about people being laid off and the market is definitely not as red hot as it was like a year ago, but still, the prices are crazy high and still the demand for quality developers is always out there. There is always a need for new software engineering, there is always a need for qualified engineers. So what we did ourselves, we went outside, we went to offshore, we went to near shore, to Latin America, Eastern Europe, India, and so on and so forth and, there, we found a lot of talent that is actually is very keen to try something in US market because everybody sees US as the most competitive market, the most interesting projects out there and that’s what a lot of software engineers are looking for, to find an interesting project, not to be just a screw in this big machine but actually do something great and that’s how we are able to find the guys and to actually get all this data from them and have them actually waiting for these kind of projects.
Does any kind of language barrier ever get into play with kind of working across different markets, different countries where they speak different languages?
Well, I’d say that language barrier, I mean, obviously, there is one but we work with every developer who wants to work with US projects obviously has to be able to communicate English clearly. There is no need to perfect natural speaker. Actually, there are some clients who are like, “Hey, you know what, we want somebody who is probably not as good communicator but he can chat well,” and what we found that a lot of developers, even though they rarely speak fluent English, they chat ideally.
Yeah.
That’s their way of communication. And, obviously, then if you’re looking for these kinds of developer, there’s way more talent out there that actually can do that. There is an issue and that’s something that we are also heavily involved in solving is cultural issues. For example, if you’ve never worked with an Eastern European developer or with an Indian developer, you might experience certain things.
So it’s interesting. So you’re looking at some of these cultural differences across different countries and, specifically, work cultural differences. Are there any interesting observations you found? In particular, you talked about India and Eastern Europe, do they generally have a different attitude toward life and work? And if so, do you usually find that the American company and the Eastern European or Indian worker is able to find a compromise or find something that everybody can live with?
Well, I’d say, the market is very diverse.
Yeah.
We do have quite a few Indian American companies that are actually founded by Indian guys who moved to America and these guys are specifically asking for developers from India because they understand very well how to work with them. For us being emerging from European area, it was actually quite hard to learn how to work with Indians. However, it is possible definitely. I mean, nothing is impossible. In general, I’d say that culture and work ethics in Eastern Europe, in Poland, Ukraine, in Kazakhstan and Russia, I’d say it’s much more fruitful for a US company because people actually have way less opportunities out there. If they see that somebody is appreciating their job, is paying them well, and, of course, compared to US, the prices are much lower so paying well is still getting a bargain in the US market, they are ready to work day and night. I mean, we have teams where they actually are asking the developers just stop working on the weekends, but they’re like, “No, I really enjoy what I’m doing. I wanna finish these.” This problem solving skill, it’s built in brain, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot stop it. There are some people who are like, “I’m going to sleep and I’m still thinking about how to solve this thing and I want to do this code,” and this is the type of developers we try to discover and to bring in our platform because I think these developers will get the most rewarded on the US market. And as for funny examples, we actually had, with Indian developers, we had a lot of them. We had an Indian developer that matched with a US company and there is this thing within Indian culture that if you are my boss, I will never talk back to you even if I think that you’re doing something completely wrong. And this is okay when you’re talking about working in a shoe store, for example, but it’s definitely not okay, as a developer, I was better aware of this particular function or this particular technical ability and so on and so forth.
Yeah, you should point it out.
Yeah. There’s so many details that only the developer who actually wrote the code can understand. And we had this client of ours who was like, “Hey, there’s this developer, he seems to be doing fine but he’s never offering any ways to improve the things,” and what we then did in that case, we actually asked that there was another Indian developer on the team and we went ahead and we asked, not the boss to ask for improvements but his co-worker to ask for what initiatives did he have, and when he did that, this Prakash took out, I mean, this was right in the Zoom. He took out a piece of paper that had like 15 things he wrote down he thought should be done but he never actually went and talked about them to his boss because he thought it was impolite.
So you’re saying like people might make a big deal about the time zone and whether or not someone can work around like these different times, but it’s really about understanding the culture of where people come from and how that impacts the way the work back and forth relationship is going to work.
Yeah, big time.
And I was also going to ask you about current trends, because I think at the time of the recording of this podcast, I’m not sure what exact time you’re going to be listening to after it’s published, there’s been a lot of headlines around American big tech firms in particular laying off significant amounts of their staff, particularly Twitter, Meta, some of these social media companies as the interest rates have risen and making access to capital a little bit more challenging. Is this something that you’re also observing with the companies that you tend to work with which you say go from the startup towards the mid-sized space?
Well, absolutely. I think everybody is affected by this. There is a different degree how badly these current environment affects because some of the companies that were particularly focused on the speed of growth and they were using investor capital, they were not generating enough cash on their own and they were overstaffed. This psychology is well known to me because I know that the market is so hot that some of my developers will leave my team no matter what. So I got to hire new people so that whenever somebody leaves, I have the safe backup plan, because for software engineering, if somebody leaves, a lot of expertise leaves the room immediately, and the new guy came in but he doesn’t know anything and he doesn’t have this culture and there is a whole bunch of other problems that you may run into. So it is crucially important to always have a safe backup. And these days, obviously, when the markets are not as easy as they were, in terms of raising capital, obviously, the startups need to think about their teams as well so it cooled off. However, there are two things that we are definitely seeing. One is that the price levels in US are still quite high. Even though the market has cooled off, I can say that the prices, the salaries have actually lowered for software engineers and that’s one thing. And another thing is that there still is demand for skilled engineers. There’s always a demand. So it’s not like everybody stopped hiring, it doesn’t look like that. I’d say that the market has just changed in a sense that it’s not like everybody’s hiring, because a year ago, if I had a developer, I would have like 10 or 20 offers to him immediately. These days, it’s not like that. But still, the great developers can always find a great team to join and there’s an understanding that, okay, the market today is kind of hard but, again, it’s an opportunity to get great talent that otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get at reasonable prices.
Yeah. So, it’s kind of like when people observe a dip in the stock market and they’ll describe the stocks as being on sale, essentially saying even if it’s something that you consider to be a long-term play but you’re like, okay, it went down, it got oversold, as some people say, and that this current moment in time could represent an opportunity to find a great developer that might otherwise not have been on the market.
Oh, absolutely, yeah, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing.
We’re seeing some quite qualified personnel at reasonable prices.” Click To Tweet
I wouldn’t say that they’re cheap, but they are still reasonable. It’s not like you have to pay them 30 percent more for them to switch from their current place. Or sometimes I’ve heard about people increasing their salaries two or three times so it was just crazy.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it’s all about that supply and demand and given that, as mentioned before, there are so few businesses that don’t need some kind of a web presence, some kind of an e-commerce presence or some kind of data in some capacity or another and there’s all these different platforms, all this different expertise. Another trend I’m wondering about is that on your site, you mentioned the Web 3.0, the blockchain stuff. Do you see that becoming more and more in demand, as most people who talk about this Web 3.0 environment believe that it is the future?
Well, Web3 is in super-hot demand, even now. I mean, even though the market has cooled off in every other technology, Web3 is still very high. I mean, I don’t know how the current decline in the crypto will result but it still is definitely a new horizon on the market that people are looking at, people are investing into. I think there is also an understanding that there are very few qualified blockchain developers because the way blockchain works, from a technology standpoint, you only need a Web3 developer to develop a smart contract and doing that is something that you cannot update every two weeks because a typical software cycle, you’ve released it and two weeks you find some bugs, you will release update patch or whatever. With the smart contract, it’s not going to work like that because you cannot release updates as fast and as easy because they need to go through the adoption process. So, essentially, every blockchain developer needs to be a super senior level, like architect type of developer, to think about architecture of this block for this particular smart contract. Even the guys that we’re seeing in some remote locations like Malaysia or like Southeastern Asia, Latin America, they still are asking for 15K or something like that so it’s still ridiculously high. But, on the other hand, you don’t really need that many blockchain developers to write smart contracts.
Yeah. That’s interesting, and one thing that I think a lot of people may be wondering is is there that much of an overlap between the standard traditional web development skills, Python, stuff like that, and the skills that people use to develop blockchain contracts and other Web 3.0 applications?
There’s nothing like absolutely new in the sense that it’s still the same logic, it’s the same data structures. I guess the only point is that there is a little bit different frameworks that you have to use and the coding patterns that you have to follow to develop a great code in Web3. As a matter of fact, building a blockchain or Web3 application, it actually entails maybe 5 to 10 percent of coding in Web3, in Solana or whatever other technology, and then the rest is done in traditional Web2 React, js, TypeScript so it’s really not that much. So, to me, I look at it as one functionality or API that you would need to develop in Web3 and everything else can be done with the traditional programming languages and technologies.
So if someone listening is a developer and wants to get involved in Web 3.0, it’s a relatively seamless transition, more along the lines of like learning a new coding language or learning a new cloud platform or something like that.
It is easy in the sense of learning this language. Learning language is not hard. The hardest part is using it and using it to build something that is energy efficient, that thinks a lot about how my consumer will use this particular part of Web3 application and that’s where it gets kind of hard. This is where you need to invest a lot of time and effort into learning that because if you make some mistake, for example, if you don’t think how much energy would this smart contract use to change hands or to execute, then you may end up having a smart contract that is too expensive. It just takes a lot of power, electric power, and then it’s going to kill the entire application. This is essentially what, in a typical Web2 application, an architect or a tech lead person would be responsible for, to have the whole software product build solid and robust and efficient and so on and so forth and this is exactly what is needed in Web3 as well. So it’s easier to switch but it’s hard to really become a senior blockchain developer. I’ve seen very few of them over the course of their last couple years.
So, there is some challenge but if you get there, you’ll be kind of in this ultimate high demand.
Obviously, everybody likes to make money.
Yeah.
But I think when somebody becomes a real strong Web3 developer, it’s not because he wants to make a lot of money. Primarily, it’s about that he really, he or she really believes in this whole concept, because a lot of things out there, they still have very little documentation, you have to learn a lot by trying and failing and, obviously, you’re not always compensated for these tries. I mean, obviously, if you got a job that pays you a lot of money, then you are compensated but a lot of times, you don’t have this job. On the interview process, you are required to show that you’re capable of doing this kind of work and to do so, the only way to learn is to try so, actually, it requires a lot of time and investment which couldn’t be done by just me wanting to get extra money.
If you’re in search for money, there are so many other places where you can make decent living outside of the Web3 as well.” Click To Tweet
Now, Insquad helps with the platform connect people to the right resources and I know you work specifically with web development. What I’m wondering is, do you see this as a trend outside of the web development space as well, in like general work, because I know nearly everywhere, people are lamenting this sort of disconnect between a company’s needs, an organization’s needs and what potential talent is out there? What potential workforce solutions you have?
I’ll try to answer this maybe from my angle. What we’re betting on at Insquad is that remote offers a lot of sense to both the developer and the company because before, say, pandemic, when not too many people were thinking remote, I could only hire those people who were in my neighborhood.
For example, I’m trying maybe to put the things into prospective, 10 years ago, if I wasn’t a very good developer, I could still make a good living and I didn’t have to progress, I didn’t have to educate myself, didn’t have to learn new frameworks, because I had my sweet job, I knew that nobody’s going to fire me and I knew that there were just very few developers out there. Today, when the market is more competitive, obviously, I am, as a software engineer, I’m pushed to learn something new to try to add value to bring the best code out there so that, ultimately, my organization benefits. Not necessarily only startups but also larger organizations are also embracing remote work and are also looking for the best talents out there and are hiring developers from Africa, from Latin America. I mean, you name it. Everywhere now. It’s not like it was 10 or 20 years ago when it was only large corporations that were able to build outsourcing hubs in India or in Eastern Europe. Like it’s everybody now, and, ultimately, it helps the entire industry so it makes the products better. What’s important for us is that it gives the guys in the areas where it’s less opportunity, it gives them an option to show their talents and to improve their lifestyle at the same time.
Seems like it’s part of your mission with Insquad is to bring some of these opportunities not only to people that live in other parts of the world but also the opportunities that the small to mid-sized startup or smaller business can have to tap into the pool of talent that is pretty much anywhere as opposed to, as you said, before remote work really became a big thing, it was like your metropolitan area, people might commute, so I live in Denver, so it’ll be like, okay, the Denver-Boulder metro area is really all you can draw from as opposed to anywhere in the world. Tell me a little bit about Insquad, about your motivation and what drove you to want to build this business and want to build this platform?
Yeah. Actually, I built this platform because I wanted to use it myself. At my previous startup, it’s a fintech company, we had like an internal startup and we had everything planned, we had budget. My recruiting team started to search for developers, it was back in 2020, and it was right in the middle of pandemic and we’re like, “Hey, you probably are gonna be able to source some remote developers easily,” and it turned out to be that the demand was super high and we would spend a lot of time interviewing guys, just like everybody, and then we would find some great talent and then the asking price would be ridiculously high and we’re like, “Okay, yeah, let’s pay him,” and he’s gone. So there’s always somebody who is prepared to pay more than you have and, ultimately, like four or five months down the road, I realized that there is no other option but just to go and try to get some developers from staffing firms. And then I thought that I would get quality personnel. I would overpay, I was okay with that, but I would get quality personnel. And it turned out to be that they had similar problems just as we did so, ultimately, we had to interview the guys from a staffing firm and spend a lot of time on that. So, when I realized how much time my engineering team spends on interviewing, it’s basically like 50 percent of their time they are doing this, they are demotivated, that’s one thing, I don’t get the developers in team and, ultimately, it was like, “Hey, there’s no other option but to go remote to offshore,” because, obviously, there’s just too much of a demand for software engineers in my area, I need to go somewhere and that’s where the idea of Insquad came into play. Basically, what we’re doing is we’re lowering the cost because of the automation process, we’re making it super cheap to vet the developer, to make him go through our process, and essentially to build a detailed developer profile that helps them to hire a developer very fast. So that’s it.
Yet another business that’s born out of experience, born out of the necessity to solve your own problem, and then you decided that you wanted to bring that solution to others. Was this compassion type of issue where you said, “Okay, I’m solving my own problem but, now, there are so many other people that are also in that same boat,” there’s so many other people that are looking for those developers only to have those same experiences that you had?
I’d say that, one of the first clients, it was an artificial intelligence company out of California and they came over to us and they had one of their senior data scientists resign, the guys from operations and the COO that I was talking to, well, he was really, really spooked because he didn’t know what to do. It was like one of the key team members. They didn’t have a big team, they were like 15 or 20 people. It was one of the key team members and they had like —
Yeah, that can really hurt a company.
— and they had release coming in two to three months, a big release, and they had also investor presentation and so on and so forth and it was like things were not going the right way to him. So, when we helped them to hire the guy quite soon, I think like a couple weeks, he wrote me a letter of gratitude. Not only that, they’re still employing this developer. And I felt that there’s a lot of personal involvement, personal touch in this business.
Obviously, every business is making money but it’s very important to be actually solving some real problem, helping people.” Click To Tweet
We got all these guys from remote locations and there are so many talents out there that they just sit, they do their nine to five job because there is no other thing to do and they trying to create something but, obviously, they are not very well experienced in the US market so they are trying to access to the market but they don’t have the right to instruments so that’s where we felt that we’re adding a lot of value and that’s very emotional for me as well and my team.
Yeah, that’s the reward, and if I were to head up to the broad view, it’s feel like one of the things the internet in general did was just open people up to more possibilities. It opens everyone up to everyone. People might think about as recently as maybe a hundred years ago, a hundred some years ago, before people started getting telephones where if you want to communicate with someone on another continent, you had to write a letter and have it delivered by usually a boat, I’m thinking before airplanes, and it would take several weeks for that letter to get from the United States to France and then several weeks for that letter from France to get back to the United States and so, even if someone in the 19th century were to get a scholarship to study abroad, they would maybe submit their application via a letter in February and they wouldn’t receive that letter back until April, making some of these barriers impossible to surmount. And now, with the internet and with all this video conferencing, we can work everywhere so it’s up to people like you and some other people to develop the platforms, develop the solutions in order to facilitate it in a smart way because the internet also connected everyone to everything so you could search for anything, it’s like how do you find, “Oh, I need a developer,” say, and every developer in the world is available even online with a resume, with something, how do I get to the right one without going through so much clutter, which is something that I really hope comes to almost the entire workforce, in a way, because so many people struggle with finding the right job, they end up in the wrong job for a little while and waddle around for a bit, or struggle to hire the right person, maybe hire the wrong person a couple times and then have to go through so much frustration, so much energy loss, so much productivity loss in this entire process. So, I love what you’re doing and how you’re bringing it to people.
Thank you very much. Actually, I think you raised a very important point, people being on the wrong jobs. This is my story because right after I graduated from university, I’m a computer science graduate, I felt like career in finance is going to be more financially beneficial and so I went to work in investment banking and I spent there a good 10 or 12 years, but, ultimately, at some point, I was like, “Hey, you know what, I’m doing good, I’m living a nice lifestyle but it doesn’t feel rewarding.” It just doesn’t feel, like, ultimately, we all are going to die one day, there is no point not to try to do something that you really love doing and that’s exactly what internet has given the opportunities, especially now with remote that I can try this job, if it doesn’t work out, it’s okay, I can try something different and, ultimately, find something where I’m super enthusiastic, what I love to do, and then I’m going to do my best and I will definitely take off.
Yeah, and so anything to make that process of once you’ve realized, “Okay, I’m in the wrong job for this reason, that reason, I need to find a different job a little bit quicker,” because, as you mentioned, all the interviews, all the searching, even resume building and perfecting and templating can be a very frustrating process that has so little to do with what work actually needs to be done.
Oh, yeah. One of the things that got me really annoyed is when I read the resume and I see this is like a super talent and we try, we go in interview, and we find somebody completely different so that’s what we put on our site, we hire not for resume building skills but for actual coding skills.
Yeah, that’s what you actually need. And so if anyone out there is listening and needs to find some talent, is interested in what you’re saying based on everything we’ve talked about, what will be the best way for someone to get a hold of you and say, “Hey, I have my needs, I’m looking for this type of person, that type of person”?
Oh, absolutely. You’re welcome to connect to me on LinkedIn, I’m Alex Svinov, and I’ll be happy to help or address with some of my team members who help you to get around.
Excellent. And, once again, congratulations on building this business, on building something that’s going to help us get to the world we want to where this process of finding the right job is way more seamless. I would like to thank you for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, and I’d also like to give a thank you to everybody out there listening, anyone that’s listened to this episode, whether it be your first one or whether it be your 76th.
Yeah, thank you very much, Stephen. Have a good day.
Yeah, you too.
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About Alex Svinov
Co-founder/CEO in four successful startups with exits. Mentors companies on growth and building high-performance remote teams @ Alchemist. Contributes to business community @ Forbes. Loves creating new things with technology. Father of three in his heart, Buddhist in his mind.