DevTalent

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of a company called RFA Labs, which is part of a broader corporate entity called RFA Capital. We are in the financial services business, and we're specifically and substantially a mortgage lender based in Toronto, Canada.

What challenge were you trying to address with DevTalent?

RFA Labs is our internal technology service provider. We have obtained a couple of legacy platforms and some disparate systems, and we’re looking to embark on a substantial project to overhaul our legacy infrastructure and undergo a cloud transformation.

Through that process, we want to have support and expertise on the architecture of a cloud infrastructure for security and scalability. This led us to the goal of finding the talent to help us plan and work on the project.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The service they provide us is source, screen, and arrange a number of candidates for us to interview. I met with their CTO, a technologist, who has first-hand experience to understand the technical problems we were facing. We spent some time outlining the problems and opportunities and helped us find the perfect candidates.

Essentially, the candidates that we meet have already gone through a screening process, and passed a certain level of technical ability and expertise. The team continues to assist us with the interview process, and facilitate the contracts of the individuals we work with.

What is the team composition?

We work with two people from their team.

How did you come to work with DevTalent?

A colleague of mine and another contact had reached out to a former CTO of the company — so basically, I came across the CTO of DevTalent through a network. Initially, the thought was perhaps that individual could be the person that would help us, but then he shared that he had developed this platform for sourcing high-quality, Canadian engineering talent. Therefore we decided to work with him on that basis.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $40,000 so far, but we just signed an extension so contractually, it’s around $70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in October 2020, and the partnership remains ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The individual they sourced for us was able to quickly identify an architectural pattern that we would be able to follow, and ultimately address concerns around security and scalability. Additionally, they would use the best modern practices for building cloud applications, and using that in the context of a highly regulated financial services environment. This will then address some concerns that come from the regulatory environment, and the restrictions in place as being a Canadian bank.

The individual is able to very effectively straddle both those goals and constraints, and the feedback has been very positive on the approach that we’ve recommended.

How did DevTalent perform from a project management standpoint?

Honestly, the engagement is quite hands-off from a project management standpoint. Basically, someone from DevTalent participates in a weekly call with us, but they’re not involved in the day-to-day.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I would say it’s their level of personal service. We’ve been working directly with the CEO, managing partner, and CTO, so we have access to the decision-makers of DevTalent. Moreover, I’ve never seen the quality of candidates that they deliver from other agencies.

We work with other agencies through our platform. They tend to be much larger companies that provide you with an account manager, and outsourced overseas development talent. Most of which don’t necessarily bring the level of business understanding, context, and technical ability that we need. The type of candidate that they’re able to source is quite different from their competitors, and that’s the primary reason why we continue to use them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only bit of feedback that I would provide is they could be more hands-on with the project management and be more involved with the day-to-day. We would like DevTalent to be part of the process and area that we’re working with. Though we haven’t really pursued it because I don’t know if this is part of their business model. Besides that, we’ve had a lot of success with the business model we have with them now.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would say to be very clear with your requirements and do the best you can to leverage their talent and expertise. That way, you can continue to engage DevTalent throughout the process.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of a startup in the healthcare space that focuses on treating mental health conditions by establishing a network of medical clinics, building digital technologies, and conducting pharmaceutical research.

For what projects/services did your company hire DevTalent?

We hired Dev Talent to help us find a back-end engineer to join as our first internal software hire. As our digital platforms are a key part of our growth strategy, this was an important role, and Dev Talent brought some great value-add services to this process.

What were your goals for this engagement?

We wanted to hire a strong, self-sufficient engineer who would fit well within our corporate culture and would help us in grow our internal software team as the company scales.

How did you select DevTalent?

We met with several different recruitment companies, but DevTalent stood out from others as they went above and beyond in screening candidates not only for fit and personality, but also using technical case interviews.

Describe the engagement in detail.

Sean and Chris did an amazing job identifying and screening candidates. We had a very specific tech stack and budget we were working within, and they were able to find candidates that met those requirements while also offering a good personality and culture fit.

Their process involved finding candidates, conducting initial screenings, a technical case interview, and then short-listing those candidates only to the best along with providing a video "reel" of the candidate's interview highlights.

What was the team composition?

I worked directly with the founders of the company, Sean and Chris. Sean focused on the sourcing and business development side while Chris provided a strong technical background for vetting and screening the candidates.

Can you share any outcomes from the engagement that demonstrate progress or success?

The candidate we hired met all the requirements we requested from the DevTalent team and has so far been working out well for our organization.

Relative to other vendors we've used, the candidates that were provided by DevTalent were much closer to our required profile and required less work and screening on our side. Overall DevTalent is among the best technical recruiting teams I've worked with.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow with the DevTalent team was great - they were good communicators, touched base regularly but were respectful of my time, and went above and beyond in helping to facilitate interviews and assist with the process of making offers and completing the overall recruiting process, beyond just providing candidates.

What did you find most impressive about this vendor?

Both Sean and Chris were great to work with, highly professional, asked great questions, and because they come from a technology background their ability to more deeply screen candidates prior to sending them over to our team saved us a lot of time and helped us in selecting the right person.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Overall we were very happy with DevTalent and their services.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a venture-funded startup, and we have about 200 people around the globe. We are in the software development industry headquartered in Silicon Valley. I oversee all of the global operations. 

What challenge were you trying to address with DevTalent?

As part of our growth expansion, we saw a lot of opportunities in the Canadian market for talent. After researching the market business, assessing all the different factors, we realized that it was a great market for us to expand the team. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

They help us with our talent acquisition efforts in Canada. Usually, there’s an understanding between outside agency partners to help us staff and source talent quickly. However, since we’re not familiar with the Canadian market from talent, nuances, business, best practices — they help us to staff our Toronto team in a quick manner. They’ve been more than just a company that finds talents for us. They’ve been an adviser and a sounding board. They introduce us to other vendors and to their network for potential business development opportunities to show the partnership has been much bigger than just providing talent for us. We have less than 10 people so far, about a handful comes from them.

What is the team composition?

We work with two people, both of them balance each other. One is more focused on business outreach. Meanwhile, the second is a career engineer — he understands the technical requirements and does more of the technical screening for a lot of our engineering talent that we need. They work together hand in hand. 

How did you come to work with DevTalent?

We found them through a Google Search and started researching their profile online. After connecting with them, we started working together. We looked at several providers and I screened and I got calls with a few of them. After all of the vetting, we decided that DevTalent was the best partner. 

How much have you invested with them?

I’m thinking we’ve spent close to six figures, around $100,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working in August 2020, and our partnership is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We’ve been very happy with them. They’re probably one of the best partners that I worked with in my career at the company. We've worked with several agency partners around the globe, and they’re probably in our top two. As a startup, we really depend on them to be a true extension for us. 

For the qualitative metrics, we want them to be an advocate for us in representing the brand. We never wanted to come off as sales and trying to just find talent. We have been very particular and that’s why the conversion has been lower, because our standards are quite high, and they’re aware and willing to adapt and do what is necessary to help us. 

From the quantitative metrics, we base it on how they find the right talent, how quickly they move, and how a position gets filled. Ultimately, that’s how we measured their success, and they’ve been able to do that.

How did DevTalent perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re always quick to respond, and they do it within minutes. They’ve also been extremely helpful. As a global startup, their contribution is valuable since we need to move fast. We have a Slack channel and sometimes we call each other — since we’re only three hours apart in Toronto. Slack has been a great tool for us to collaborate, chat, and discuss issues. 

They’ve kept us informed in a transparent way, which I haven’t seen in a lot of partners, even the ones we’ve worked with for years. They provide us with reports, summaries, and details. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their responsiveness, transparency, and professionalism stand out. They’re also personable and approachable. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there are any issues. They’re just two people running an engine, so I know bandwidth can be a challenge. As they grow, perhaps they can partner with more people so that they’re able to look and provide more talent for us in bigger volume and faster time — they have more of a resource constraint that I think could be an area that can improve over time. Other than that, we’ve been very happy with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be specific in what you’re looking for and leverage their expertise. They’re specifically targeting Toronto and technical talents  — it’s a pretty niche find. If you plan to engage with them, make sure that their offer is within your target market and demographics. Otherwise, they would probably not be helpful. Above all, listen to their advice because they come with really good intentions, knowledge, and a good network of folks. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

IT and technical marketing, focusing on technical automation and website development.

For what projects/services did your company hire DevTalent?

Our company needed to scale our development team quickly to meet increasing client project demands.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to hire great development talent quickly and in a scalable way, with a focus on talent retention.

How did you select this vendor?

Word of mouth referral from my network for an introduction. They had a great selection of candidates and were very in tune with our needs to not only fill positions but find talent that fit our culture and met our desire for employee retention.

Describe the project in detail.

Very shortly after we engaged DevTalent we had a strong pool of potential candidates for interviews and were able to add to our team quickly.

What was the team composition?

The founders were involved on DevTalent's side, with our founder and HR working with them on our team.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Quick time to fill, a great pool of talented developers, time savings because shortlisting/profiles were presented to us instead of us having to screen.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective - we worked seamlessly with DevTalent and they made the entire process easily and without bottlenecks.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Great pool of candidates that matched our criteria, both in terms of skill and culture.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not at this time, DevTalent has been great so far!