Behind the scenes of back-end recruitment at Qvik
Growth is not the only thing Qvik values. It’s also important for us to give our experts the opportunity to keep growing professionally. At Qvik, developers are encouraged to learn more about their areas of interest – be it back-end, frontend, cloud infra, DevOps, you name it. For instance, if there are any certifications (GCP, […]
Growth is not the only thing Qvik values. It’s also important for us to give our experts the opportunity to keep growing professionally.
At Qvik, developers are encouraged to learn more about their areas of interest – be it back-end, frontend, cloud infra, DevOps, you name it. For instance, if there are any certifications (GCP, AWS, Scrum, etc.) you would like to obtain, Qvik will support you with that and cover the fees.
It’s also safe to say that Qvik is a flexible employer when it comes to different life situations and needs.
For instance, I have my home and family in England and consider Helsinki more like my second home – and Qvik is fine with it. Also, Olli Paakkunainen from our back-end team recently moved to South Korea, and this was not an issue.
What happens in our recruitment process?
Our recruitment process is fairly straightforward. It’s usually done in two meetings. The first time around, we talk culture with the potential candidate. After that, the candidate is given the choices to either do an assignment (coding/design) to work on or show us a hobby/personal project to check out.
We expect the hobby or personal projects to be similar or more complex if the candidate chooses the latter option.
The purpose of the assignment is to evaluate the candidate’s practical skills. Upon submission of the assignment we hold a second meeting, which is mostly technical.
We discuss the solution to the assignment along with the candidate’s other relevant skills and theoretical knowledge. If the technical meeting goes well, we usually make an offer within a day or two.
Read the experiences of our own Kuisma Joentakanen, recently recruited to our back-end team.
1. Tell us about yourself.
My name is Kuisma and I work as a Software Engineer for Qvik. I don’t like siskonmakkarakeitto (Finnish soup with strange sausages) and Samuli Edelmann (Finnish singer/actor).
In my free time, I like to swim, bowl, sing (especially hymns and old Finnish schlagers), do volunteer work for my local churches, enjoy beer and whiskey. I also enjoy taking long walks late in the evening. I haven’t found enough time for reading lately, but I would like to change that!
I think I’m the only one responsible for how my career turns out and how I will improve and get challenged.
I welcomed the change and I was not afraid at all, even though we had a baby coming and we also have a mortgage to pay till the day we die.
2. What was the recruitment assignment like? How did you feel about it?
I was given the chance to either do the assignment or provide my own project’s source code instead. I selected the latter.
I was happy that my code was thoroughly reviewed and I got a lot of questions on why I did this and that, and what might have been a better way to implement certain things.
The technical interview was sheer torture (piinapenkki), the Qvikies were really twisting my thumbs!
3. What is your impression about Qvik?
The people seem nice and relaxed. The company has this small-company feeling, in a good way. The people you see around are not just someone from another division that you will never see again.
Interested?
Well we’d love to hear from you, so apply here! Or if you want to know more about how we run our back-end at Qvik, here’s some further reading.
Illustration: Niina Nissinen
