Gazprom Media Holding needed a Head of the Development Department. We found one. And it turned out that another one was needed — but in a different field. Here's how we managed to fill two similar vacancies in a very narrow field of operation.
I give the floor to our recruiter Margarita.
Requirements for the Head of the Gazprom-Media Development Department
- Over 3 years of experience in leading several development teams.
- Ability to build full-cycle development processes
- Experience managing development teams/departments of at least 30 employees
- Experience working as a developer or system architect
- Ability to strategic thinking
- Strong understanding of the projects' value to the business
- Excellent communication skills, oral and written literacy
- Strong leadership qualities
- Technical background. Work experience or a good understanding of the current team stack: JavaScript, ES6, TypeScript, PHP 7, MySQL, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, Redis,Vue.js, Kotlin, Swift
- Ability to take responsibility for team performance
- Self-reliance
And here are the tasks that were to be performed:
- Managing development teams, managing development processes and standards, building communication between teams
- Department budget planning
- Hiring employees, building teams
- Improving the product architecture, advancing the technology stack, "reviewing" the other team members' code
- Contributing to solution design
- Interacting with product managers and clients to analyze demands and find the best solution
- Team building
- Development management: interacting with business customers, participating in planning and discussing strategic plans for project development, making final decisions on project architecture
- Implementing new and optimizing ongoing processes within the department
- Building and implementing development standards
- Developing a culture of knowledge exchange among the department's employees
- Organizing the transparency of the development process.
I immediately realized that the vacancy was about hunting. The task was not an easy one: the media sector is very narrow, such specialists are very few in number, and companies cling to them tightly.
Two months later, the very candidate was found. He was the sixth. The applicant had 11 years of experience in the field of media, had all the necessary technology knowledge and was a great personal fit. He wanted new challenges, which such a large media holding could provide. Everything came together here: the candidate's motivation, skills, Gazprom-Media requirements — he received a job offer.
I thought I already knew everyone by their last names and had to Google more, reach those I couldn't reach the first time, look for alternative sources.
The brand and the tasks offered by Gazprom-Media played a crucial role for the candidate — he agreed to talk. The person had such a high level of negotiation skills that he was able to argue for the payment he was interested in, while our colleagues were delighted with the conversation.