What Accella Looks For in Our Employees

A reporter recently sent along an inquiry asking what kind of skills do we look for when hiring designers & developers. Now, we’re not talking about what code languages they know, or which software programs they understand, but rather what general skills are we interested in when looking for people to work at Accella.

Below are the thoughts of Jason King, president of Accella. Our clients expect our best work each and every time we take on a project, so we need to make sure that the people we have working on their projects can provide that and more, without fail.

Hiring

Besides the basics of being a strong developer and having experience with the technologies we are hiring for, here are the two biggest things I look for in a potential hire:

• Communication: Can I easily have a conversation with the individual? Are the relatively outgoing? Are they are generally positive and upbeat person? Our developers frequently interact with clients and are obviously always interacting with other team members and our project managers. From a team perspective, we want someone that fits in with our corporate culture and does not put off other members. From a client perspective, we want someone that seems accessible. Our project managers are the main contact for our clients, but when things get overly technical, we need developers that can communicate effectively with our clients.
• Passion: We want developers that are passionate about technology and what they do. We look for potential hires that have their own blogs and twitter accounts and post about new technology updates. We want developers that are building iPhone apps in their spare time or buying the latest tech gadget or building a computer. We want to know that we are hiring someone who is not just doing this for a job, but doing it because they love to problem solve and they love technology.

Promoting

Once a developer is in the door, here are some of the key components to earning a promotion within Accella:

• Rapport with Clients: Do clients gush over a developer? Do they ask to make sure a certain developer will be working on their next project? As in the hiring process, we want developers that can have good relationships with our clients and produce high quality work that our clients love.
• Eager: How does a developer react when we ask them to work on a project that is outside of their area of expertise? Are they an iPhone developer and we have an Android project coming up that we’d like them to tackle? We not only evaluate how well they do transitioning to new technologies, but also how eager they are to learn and take on new challenges. Technology and development change rapidly, so we need a team that is up for that challenge.
• Dedication: Do they call / write on the weekends to give you an update on a project? Do they work a few extra hours to get a project done by the due date? Are they trying to come up with ideas on how to improve the company? We try to not to ask our developers to put in more than 40 hrs a week on average, but sometimes a project requires a little extra effort. Is this employee up for dedicating a little extra time because they want to see a project succeed?
• Proactive: Does a developer respond to an issue before you have to ask? Will they address a client’s question directly? Will they think about the next steps in a project so that you don’t have to prod them along? Being proactive helps alleviate a lot of checks up and extra work by management. The more proactive a developer is, the more jobs the company can handle, and the more successful we are.
• Testing: How well does a developer test their own work? Does our QA team always expect a particular developer to miss easy bugs? Once again, this is all about creating extra work. The QA process should be about catching bugs that are not easily identified, not about checking to make sure the app doesn’t crash when I click on a button from the home screen.

In all, the atmosphere at Accella is not one of micro-managing and heavy oversight, we hire competent, strong developers who are entrusted to complete their tasks and projects on time, and at a high level of execution. If you feel that you have the above talents, and can work in a fast-paced, free atmosphere, then maybe you could become a part of this fast-growing, award-winning organization.

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