How we manage to establish and maintain stable DreamTeam

How we manage to build the DreamTeam at Dreamix and maintain it stable? In this blog post I will share how Talent Acquisition looks like from the IT company point of view. Being a small team of experts providing quality software services and products for top enterprises and startups around the world through Java and Web technologies, we face common difficulties in attracting and retaining great talents in our growing team.

At Dreamix we believe that the employer – employee relationship must be in the form of partnership not transaction. What we do as a company is to invest as much as possible in people and in return everyone of us invests as much as he can in Dreamix. When people become better professionally and personally the value of the company also increases because we offer a service provided by the team. My personal belief is that if we respect each other as colleagues, we will take care of our needs a thousand times daily by our commitment.

Let me share with you how we build and retain our dream team:

1. Create a company culture that differentiates you from the other companies on the market – people join a team and stay in one place when they identify with the company’s values, vision and mission. Appreciate your team and invest as much as possible to support people`s growth. You can check how we do this from our blog post for our company culture – all credits go to Stoyan who is one of the partners at Dreamix.

2. Create a culture of transparent communication where team members can share their ideas — because when your team improves and succeeds, so do you. Our progress results from our common efforts and what is most important, each of us understands their personal contribution to the company’s success, as we all can come up with new ideas, test various options and make decisions. Humbleness is what we cherish and is one of our company values. That’s why last year we decided to use non аnonymous feedback for our 360 degree assessment of our DreamTeam members- constructive feedback leads to improvements and to get the most out of it you need to know who gave it and what the context is.

3. Hire only the right people – make sure they have integrity and fit with the rest of the team. We hire smart people who are passionate about our business and share our values. Hiring the right employees drives our culture and success. How we get to the them?

– We ask our team for referrals. Our top talents connect us with other great minds and in that way we build strong tech trend in one place – everyone wants to work with the best performers and with people who can share valuable knowledge and experience. For the last year 70% of hired people were recommended. In addition, we support and give bonuses to our team for teaching at the University and this is a way to connect and interact with students and people who are striving to master themselves.

– Use our network in our favor. Spread the news that your team is growing and let other people know about the open positions. Turn connections into relationships.

– Search and visit different events so we can meet professionals and make new contacts. You can also create a tech event at your office and invite people to interact. For example, Veselin one of the dev machines in the team, came last year to one of out #frydix events and soon after the end of day he said something like “ Hey, guys, do you have a vacancy for me in the team?”. Two days later we signed a contract 🙂

– Sharing office space is another option for making new relations and gather with potential newcomers. At the end of last year we made decision to move our office to a coworking space where we are surrounded by companies and freelancers who share our mindset of sharing knowledge and ideas.

4. Onboard the new colleague even before the starting day. Twice per month we have #frydix presentations in the office and they are the best time for the newcomer to our DreamTeam to come and meet the team. Also, after the event we have free lunch together. Topics vary from tech to entrepreneurship, wine & food testing, lectures about Space & Astronomy and many more so everyone can find new and curious facts and discuss them with others. You can watch some of our presentations on our YouTube channel.

We are now more than 40 people in the team and thanks to the continuous efforts everyone makes, Dreamix is such a great place to work. For the past year 13 newcomers joined the big family with total retention rate for the period of 93%.

We start the new year with main goals focused on developing more and more people and culture, so feel free to share your thoughts on the topic.