ITCraftship

Please describe your company and your position there.

Sum builds a consumer app combining social media and contact management. We are in an early startup phase but with global market. I am founder and CEO and responsible for our recruitments.

For what projects/services did your company hire ITCraftship?

For recruit developers to our app teams.

What were your goals for this engagement?

We needed help to quickly recruit our first developers to get started on building our product and had both high requirements on seniority, cultural fit and inner motivation as the team was just being formed.

How did you select ITCraftship?

We chose to work with ITCraftship as they have a very quick turnaround on recruitment process as well as a very diligent vetting process and a good understanding of how to approach developers.

Describe the engagement in detail.

Through a series of interviews ITCraftship sought to understand our need, our product and our culture and created a job description, sourced applicants and presented the best candidates for interviews.

What was the team composition?

Maks was our main contact but several others helpt during the process.

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

We successfully hired our first iOS developer with the help of ITCraftship, who has been a star recruitment, both in terms of skillset but also a great culture fit.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Maks and ITCraftship was a great help and boost in getting from recruitment thought/need to having a developer on board.

What did you find most impressive about this vendor?

The understanding of developers. Both from a developers point of view, what is a good employer, and also from an employer point of view taking into account both skillset, cultural fit and ability to work remotely.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not that I can think of as of now. I would not hesitate to work with ITCraftship again.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of MOSEA Technologies Ltd. We facilitate payments. If someone is hosting a party, a fundraiser, an event, or need to split a bill, really anything that involves group collection to a single account, we facilitate that on our platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with ITCraftship?

We needed to fill a senior software engineering role for a competitive price. We reached out to them to find the right candidate.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Max (CEO) came in, looked at our codebase, wrote strict notes, and came up with an entire report that was more in-depth than any other company. Right away, they found four solid candidates for reasonable prices. Throughout the whole thing, I’ve been impressed by how professional the process was and how exceptional the candidates were.

They worked with our existing code base to improve the UI/UX, add new features, fix bugs, and create the next iterations for our end users. An iOS platform, one of the features they built for us helps users decide how to collect the money. For example, they can collect $10 per person, and set a ticket price,  or if they need to raise $1,000, that could be split evenly between everyone who joins.

The tech stack is pretty modern — we’re using Amplify and GraphQL. The software developer that ITCraftship found for us was incredibly experienced in these already, even though the newest versions have only been out for a few months.

What is the team composition?

I worked primarily with Max,  Maciej (COO & Tech Recruiter) and Jakub (software developer) was our point for administrative stuff.

How did you come to work with ITCraftship?

I saw the CEO of ITCraftship speak on a webinar panel and reached out to them. In total, I reviewed 15–20 different agencies who reached out to me on LinkedIn or because I contacted them. Max seemed to know more than anyone I met personally. He knew exactly what we needed.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $11,000 CAD (approximately $8,100 USD)  

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in April 2020 and we hired a candidate in May. We still work with them.

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

So far, everything they’ve produced has been functional and has worked very well. We don’t have any real metrics, though, because our platform is based around hosting events and gatherings, we’ve had to shut down during COVID-19.

How did ITCraftship perform from a project management standpoint?

The developer we hired is based in Poland, so there are 4–6 hours per day that we need to be able to reach him. He has been very responsive, has joined all of our stand-up meeting, provides feedback, and mentions different ideas he has. Overall, it has been a really harmonious relationship.

We use GitHub, PivotalTracker, and Zepplin. Then we have an excel sheet with a Gantt chart and a waterfall framework,

What did you find most impressive about them?

I admired their process. They went through about 30 different questions and probably spent 15 hours reviewing each candidate to make sure they were the perfect fit. They read our entire codebase and made custom problem sets based on our code. He conducted three personal interviews for each candidate they presented us. They made sure we had the absolute best partner we could find.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There has to be, but there’s nothing worth mentioning.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t be afraid to share all the information with them. The more code you’re able to share with them, the better the candidate they’ll be able to find.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a very small software company, and I'm one of the co-founders. We are both technical co-founders who have a ton of experience doing professional software development.

For what projects/services did your company hire ITCraftship?

We hired ITCraftship to help us build more features/functionality for our customers more quickly.

What were your goals for this project?

We had a particular set of work items in our backlog that were top customer requests. We knew we wouldn't be able to get to them on our own as quickly as our customers were wanting them.

How did you select this vendor?

Maks and ITCraftship were highly recommended by an acquaintance who also builds software.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We had two part-time engineers build some additional ReactJS/Redux functionality in our existing codebase. We needed full-stack developers for this project.

What was the team composition?

The project consisted of myself and my business partner (we both had a day job and had been working on Senior Place in the evenings and weekends only at that point). We are based on the west coast in the US, but the software developers from ITCraftship had flexible schedules to talk with us earlier in the morning or later in the evening (since we were already working late at night). We provided the project planning/details, and they built some features for us.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The team of engineers built some features that our customers had been asking for. We were able to ship the code and move on to build other features ourselves.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We did most of the project management ourselves, although Maks from ITCraftship helped coordinate with their developers given the time difference.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Maks knows his stuff technically speaking, and they were extremely focused on our satisfaction as their customer.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We were overly budget conscious and ended up trying to hire some of their less experienced engineers on a project that was a bit too complex for their skill level. That was more our fault that theirs, and Maks worked with our budget to help us get more skilled engineers at a reasonable price.

Please describe your company and your position there.

As the founder on the project, my role is to enable and defend. To identify the problems, lead conversations on strategy and source people who can help us solve the unique challenges that we are solving in both a macro and micro capacity.

For what projects/services did your company hire ITCraftship?

Software, and IT components are a key piece of the delivery vehicle for our staffing solution. In our case, the business goals, and technical goals were both demanding. I needed to find people who could move fluidly between those two spheres of the business. I was also working directly with customers on the application as well - from day one, so I needed all members of the team to be comfortable with the customer led product development.

What were your goals for this project?

My goal for the project has been and continues to be to create better work opportunities and experiences for medical professionals and hospitals.

How did you select this vendor?

In my search to find individuals that would be a good ongoing fit for the team, I came across Maks and Maciek, who were both owners at IT Craftship. They expressed interest in the project, and we started working together on it in a limited capacity. We've expanded the relationship as we've hit goals and milestones together.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

IT Craftship has been critical throughout the duration of the project in providing development services, stable software environments, technical and strategic oversight, as well as QA, and CI deliverables.

What was the team composition?

The team started with 2 members, but has grown over time due to consistency in performance and delivery. The team now consists of an average of 10 people, and includes full stack developers, QA, CI/CD, SCRUM Management, and Project Management roles

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Sourcing talent is hard. Delivering in a start up is hard. Sourcing talent to fill a variety of shifting roles AND having those people consistently deliver is very hard. IT Craftship continues to deliver people and product that surpass anything we have seen stateside.

Each team member is mission driven, centrally focused and trained in a variety of skills, and disciplines. They are careful in their recommendations, and support their product suggestions, and their hiring recommendations with data. Every time. Their impact on the project has been immeasurable to date.

You simply won't find a more cost conscious, qualified and intelligent software development team anywhere else. They are dedicated to their craft, and I am reminded of that dedication and brilliance everyday as I'm using the products they have helped deliver.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management on our project has been very impressive, especially compared to the quality of the output I have seen historically across a variety of different teams and individuals. Team members responsible for timelines, deliverables, and communication of such have been remarkable assets to our project and need very little oversight. Show them where you want to go on the horizon, or what your goals are, and they deliver within the scope and timeline.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I have never met a team of people with the consistency of output that IT Craftship has. As they have helped us find additional team members, their hiring has been spot on every time - without fail. When those team members are given deliverables, there is clear communication with the intent to reach a point of mutual understanding, and then they deliver day in and day out.

They are delightful to work with, sharp as a tack, and consistently seek to raise our vision of what is possible with a development partner. They are the first team that has ever sought to come to us physically in an effort to better understand their role, and how we could continue to work together. Working with them continues to be a gift.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Very little improvement needed. Small items come up now and again, but improvement is a consistent part of the delivery with IT Craftship - Each team member receives ample investment in time and energy from the companies leadership team - They are in this to make your project better, period.

Please describe your company and your position there.

edChild is an EdTech company working for the UN Global Goal 4.2: "Equal access to quality early childhood development, care and preprimary education". After running preschools for almost 10 years, we decided to develop a digital tool that puts the preschool educator's practical work into focus. The tool, Fokus Förskola, is a collaboration between preschool teachers from Hoppetossa and edChild, and it is edChild's first tool. I am the CEO, and one of the founders, of edChild.

For what projects/services did your company hire ITCraftship?

Mobile App Development is a broad and challenging area, especially for a startup. We have gotten great support and coaching within various areas such as product management, UX/UI, how to build a happy and efficient product / tech team and efficient testing for a tech start-up.

What were your goals for this project?

Sometimes you find support and knowledge at the exact time that you need it, and that is very much the case here. Our goals and expectations were met and more!

How did you select this vendor?

I selected this vendor through the incubator that our start-up is a part of.

Describe the project in detail.

The project started with arrangements over e-mail, then we met on a weekly basis via Zoom. Everything went smooth and accordingly to plan.

What was the team composition?

I mainly worked directly with the CEO of the vendor, a very smooth and generous approach.

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

During the project we landed all strategic decision when it comes to our app development. We got help within getting our app on the market in a cost efficient yet qualitative way. We are more than happy!

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Overall, I was impressed by the timeline. Quick, easy and knowledgeable feedback and discussions.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was blown away by the knowledge this vendor has on app mobile development, start-up development and overall tech development. They make any difficult task look easy!

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing that I could think of, I am very happy!

Please describe your company and your position there.

Full-time CTO at Curvestone and London Lead for Facebook Developer Circles. Many years of experience with different technologies within startups, enterprise and product development. Our mission is to change the way we work by building software and systems that automate labour intensive manual tasks and enable a highly skilled and motivated workforce to focus on issues that really matter.

We support organisations in the discovery, development and delivery of automation ideas to help your teams grow above and beyond. We are a cross-disciplinary team of software engineers, consultants, machine learning experts, designers, directors and ethnographers. We are fascinated by the future of work and automation.

At lunch we talk about blockchain, AI, agile development and disrupting industries. We love to code and we teach anyone with industry experience who knocks on our door. We have a start-up mentality and keep our millennial spirits happy by spending our time going after projects we can get fully behind. Choosing projects we believe in, for clients we admire, inspires us to put in the extra hours that makes the difference between good and great.

For what projects/services did your company hire ITCraftship?

ITCraftship has helped us with the recruitment of a full stack developer.

What were your goals for this project?

• Recruit a developer
• Speed of recruitment
• Salary expectations
• Advise on the market

How did you select this vendor?

Word of mouth. Fellow member of WeWork Labs.

Describe the project in detail.

Recruitment.

What was the team composition?

We are a full-stack / cross-functional team.

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

ITCraftship has helped us to recruit a new team member. We are extremely happy with the new team member. It has been over 4 months at the time of writing this review.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective. We had a Slack channel set up where we could discuss new hires.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The quality of the candidates. ITCraftship did all the heavy lifting of making sure that the candidates were technically capable.

Are there any areas for improvement?

ITCraftship uses a platform to track the candidates. The platform was useful, but somehow I found it confusing at first. Perhaps more in-depth walkthrough of the platform would have been useful.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Head of Engineering at the company building a suite of easy-to-use security products for the connected world. We are the team behind CFEngine and Mender based in Oslo and San Francisco, with remote team members all around the world.

For what projects/services did your company hire ITCraftship?

At Northern.tech we built a different workplace compared to most traditional hierarchical organizations. With a strong focus on self-organization and autonomy, the goal of minimizing the number of rules and regulations and desire to automate as much as possible our recruitment process is considered to be challenging.

On top of a strong technical focus, it has an extensive cultural alignment track making it even harder. We engaged with ITCraftship to help us securing backend development lead role in Europe.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to secure the backend developer role either in Oslo or remotely in Europe within a three to six months timeframe.

How did you select this vendor?

Our team worked with several recruitment agencies both in Norway and in Europe without satisfying results. We tried to extend the number of recruiters we worked with to increase our chance of success and engaged with ITCraftship. We fouds them through the job board as their job adverts stood out from the rest as very modern and high-quality ones.

Describe the project in detail.

During the initial call, we discussed our needs and process/experience so far and we started with creating a matrix of both hard and soft skills required for the role. After a fairly short initial calibration phase, most of the recruitment process was run by ITCraftship (including most of the technical and cultural parts) offloading us almost completely.

On our end, we run only the last two parts of the process which were video-conference meet-and-greet call and then final on-site interview in our office in Oslo. They provided a lot of modern tools and integration with the tools we've been already using making communication and providing the candidate's status very easy to follow.

What was the team composition?

Throughout the whole process, depending on the stage, we had two/three cont persons available on top of two persons assigned on our side.

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

Within a little bit more than three months we managed to secure the role we've been looking for.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The cooperation was really smooth and swift. By using modern tools we always knew what was the status of the candidates, what the next steps were and what was expected from our side. At the same time by integrating with the tools we've been using already it was extremely easy to follow the whole process.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The whole process was maintained excellently, with the level of automation and transparency we have never seen before, fully supporting the way we try and like to do things. On top of that, they managed to offload most of the technical and cultural alignment parts (including reviews of the home assignments we sent to candidates) letting us focus our day-to-day business.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Everything was perfect, and our best experience with the recruitment company so far!

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of AℓVA Technologies - a Norwegian proptech working towards a vision of a more transparent real-estate market. We combine state-of-the-art design and technology to provide actors in the real-estate industry with actionable data inputs that empower them to make better decisions.

For what projects/services did your company hire ITCraftship?

Recruiting skilled developers in Norway is a real-struggle due to a severe lack of talent and hiring offshore/nearshore resources always involves a great deal of effort and risk. We hired ITCraftship to help identify experienced full-stack developers outside Norway.

What were your goals for this project?

To identify skilled developers with unquestionable communication skills in English.

How did you select this vendor?

We met with a range of companies identified through LinkedIn. ITCraftship stood out as a detail-oriented, hard-working and professional provider. Our CTO was the key decision maker in choosing ITC. We were thoroughly impressed with their sophisticated recruiting process. Several ITC employees are senior developers themselves and therefore have a perfect background to evaluate candidates.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

ITC ran a full search to identify candidates, did a thorough motivational and technical screening before finally involving us to proceed with the final interview rounds of selected candidates. We had a shared slack-channel and the communication was great throughout the project.

What was the team composition?

ITC worked as an independent team and involved us when needed.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The full-stack developer identified by ITC is now a very valuable member of our team, and we have later leveraged his network to hire additional talent.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management could not have been better.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Knowledgeable, skilled developers, fast-paced, great network.

Are there any areas for improvement?

N/A

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Auka AS, a financial technology company that offers a mobile payment platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with ITCraftship?

We were opening a location in Bucharest and needed support with the staffing process for our new office.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Once we provided the job description, ITCraftship sourced and screened candidates for our open development roles. The team developed and administered comprehensive competency tests.

What is the team composition?

We had two points of contact who supported us throughout the project. 

How did you come to work with ITCraftship?

ITCraftship was referred to us by a colleague.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $10,000 on this engagement.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from February-August 2019.

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

The job candidates that ITCraftship were able to procure were highly skilled, and the competence testing they provided was very thorough. ITCraftship’s efforts greatly reduced the amount of time we would’ve had to spend on recruitment internally.

How did ITCraftship perform from a project management standpoint?

The team at ITCraftship were very diligent in terms of keeping us updated on their progress throughout the project. We communicated with them through Slack and held meetings as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

ITCraftship’s skill in screening candidates is unique to any other recruitment agency I’ve ever used. The team was dedicated to understanding our own business in order to judge candidates with that much more accuracy.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I can think of.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend working with ITCraftship, as they really ease the process of recruitment. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a co-founder and CTO of a Norwegian P2P car sharing platform called Nabobil. We founded it in 2015 and it was acquired by Getaround Inc in 2019.

For what projects/services did your company hire ITCraftship?

We have used ITCraftship for sourcing tech talent for our mobile- and web applications.

What were your goals for this project?

Speed up development with senior developers.

How did you select this vendor?

The CEO (Maks) reached out to me via email.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

ITCraftship first provided a quick intro to several developers and did a pre screening of them. I then participated in 4 interviews before we selected one of the candidates.

When the candidate was selected, he joined our team full time as a developer for out mobile- and web application. He has been, and still is, an important and great part of our small (7 people) tech team.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

By partnering with them, we've been able to speed up our product innovation while keeping the level of quality high.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We have done this in-house.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

ITCraftship has been very service-minded and always finds a solution.