Every company hires new people to join their team every year. At ShimBi Labs we have a unique procedure to hire new people which is a little time consuming but it helps us recruit people who are best fit for the job.

Today I had the opportunity to interview the founder and CEO of ShimBi Labs Mr. Siddharth Deshmukh on how they recruit and hire people at his company.

To watch the interview click here!

Every year do you have a fixed number of vacancies? How do you decide on how many new people you want to hire in your company?

No there is no fixed number. In-fact we hire very less people. We are not a service company that we have to do bulk hiring, we are very selective in hiring and there are years when we don’t hire at all. In most cases when we are hiring, we hire only 1 person and only in extraordinary circumstances such as right now we are hiring 3 engineers.

We don’t have any positions at our company. We have engineers and we all work together to create new things. Whenever we feel that there are a lot of jobs of managing and developing new software’s and there is a requirement of a new teammate then we just add on.

If someone wants to apply for a job in your company how do they reach out to you?

They don’t need to reach out to us. We will publish the new opening via different social media channels as well as on our blog and career page of our website. So, people can go there and check the availabilities and apply. We get huge number of applications and we screen through them. When we feel like getting back, we get back to the candidate.

A lot of fresh graduates and experienced people must be applying for jobs in your company. How do you sift through so many applications?

We take out time to go through each and every application. We do not want any automatic filters because we don’t ask for certain degree or qualification. We completely rely on interaction. It is time consuming but it is fun. On our website we have different sections for experienced people and for fresh graduates.

For fresh graduates its pretty much simple, people apply and an automatic email goes and then we talk about lot of software’s and then we ask them to develop some kind of a project and send it to us.

If we like that project, we ask them to come and join us for a certain period of time. We see if they can improve the product and work with us. It is a longer process for hiring experienced people.

What if there are people who do not reside in Pune apply for jobs? How do you go about their selection procedure?

Since the last two 2 years we don’t insist people to travel to Pune. Earlier when people had to work, they had to travel and live in Pune because they had to work in our office but the interview process was done online through telephone or skype and other video conferencing apps.

But now we are a completely remote company so people can work from anywhere. They do not have to travel to Pune. From interview to onboarding and start working, everything happens virtually.

As a matter of fact, on 31st July 2020 our office lease will be ending so we will not have any office.

Apart from educational achievements what other factors attract you the most?

We don’t ask anybody about their graduation degrees. You can be a computer science graduate or an engineer what matter to us is that if you are an engineer can you code? If you are a UI can you visualize and design something?

Show us and if it is really good and we can use it in some of our production, we know you are the right person to work with us.

Secondly, we also check your compatibility with our company culture. We are also very careful with our communication because remote working requires a lot of communication.

After skills we also check that you are culturally fit or not.

Due to the lockdown this year how do you plan on hiring fresh interns?

Nothing has changed, as long there is a requirement we are hiring. Right now, we are hiring 3 engineers at high position and for a fresh graduate it’s a more or less preparation for the future.

When we hire a fresh graduate, we know that it will take at least 1 year until they can actually work with us on the real stuff. Depending from person to person. Some people can capture very fast but still it takes at least 6 to 8 months until they can work on actual projects. 

We keep hiring fresh graduates and giving them opportunities. Over the period of 3 months we hire 10 people but only 2 survive. Either because they give up too early, or they get better opportunities, or we feel that they are not up-to our standards. 

They have to really prove and earn themselves. We don’t conduct any interviews but they have to earn the job. We don’t take interviews because we feel we can’t ask any questions to freshers because anyway they have just started.

3 months with us is a pretty long time to earn the job.

As there is a no interview or entrance test policy at ShimBi Labs what should I do to stand out among the crowd?

Write the code!

There is no brain teaser test, and we don’t ask any weird questions. We simply give them a coding test.

They can write the code and we ask questions pertaining to it. I don’t tell them to write code in any particular language, they can freely express themselves.

What is the day to day responsibilities of interns at your company?

At ShimBi labs we only have two positions. One is engineering and the other is non engineering. In non-engineering there are only 3 people including me. We do everything else which engineers cannot do. For engineers it is to write good code, learn new things and deliver on time.

Interviewing him was a wonderful opportunity that I got. Moreover, the good news is that you can also join our team at ShimBi labs!

We are hiring 3 engineers to join our engineering team. They can be specialists in web applications or mobile applications but we would love to have a full stack engineer who knows how to code for mobile as well as web. We are specially looking for PHP engineer and mobile engineer who are capable to write cross platform code like on android and iOS. The openings are posted on the website and we would love to hear from you.

Apply now and get a wonderful opportunity to work with a great team remotely from the comfort of your home!