A Day in The Life of our Consultancy Division: The Future Cities Project
Phase 4 – Recruiting the New CTO
This fourth in a series of blog case studies follows our Lead IoT Consultant, Stuart White and his colleague, Kerry Pain, as they help a Community Interest Company change the world over the next five years by recruiting the talent that will reimagine how cities work in the future using innovative technology.
You can read about Phase 1, 2 and 3 of the recruitment project here.
This week’s priority is to move forward with the CTO role.
The first screening has happened and we’ve whittled down the list to three leading candidates.
Working closely with the founders to develop the interview and format of the interview process, we began by giving guidance on how the first phone conversation should go with the candidates. It was important that the founders did a good job of explaining what the business was about and what this unusual role would involve.
Providing a framework for the interviews and presentations was essential as it’s very easy for stakeholders to go off-piste when talking about the business. It needed to be focused.
Presenting Motivations
We spent half a day on site helping our client present to the CTO candidates face to face, selling the merits of this great opportunity. The founders explained their reasoning behind the drivers of the business, and why they decided to invest so much money into getting it off the ground. They gave a history of the business, presented their vision and gave good detail on their products. This presentation was at a much higher level than we’d advised the founders to do previously for other roles.
After hearing about the business, each candidate was then asked to give the founders their 30, 60 and 90-day roadmap of what they would do if they came on board.
The founders then asked the candidates to talk about something they had built at a software level (not a typical question asked of CTOs but this is no ordinary CTO position).
Meeting the Team
It was time to meet the team. All the candidates were taken for a tour of the building to meet the individuals they could be working with. We encouraged the staff to interact and engage with the candidates so they could experience real life at the company, discussing challenges and methodologies so that the candidates could really see how things worked.
After lunch, the candidates were asked how the meetings and tour had changed their idea of the role and what they would change in their 30, 60 and 90-day roadmap. This exercise gave some useful insight on each individual.
Exceeded Expectations
The day finished with an interview with HR, which we followed up with a debrief. Each candidate gave great feedback on the day. They were all very impressed with the company and site, and felt their expectations had been exceeded. They had been inspired by the intelligence of the people they met and the motivations of the founders. The human interaction left each of them with an outstanding impression of the organisation.
It was a job very well done by the founders.
Find out what happens in Phase 5 of this recruitment campaign.