Daemon Cultivates a Culture of Feedback & Collaboration for Successful Hiring

Sixth in the Tech Employers Leading the Way Series

Editor’s Note: Tech Employers Leading the Way recognises companies that innovate and work to improve the hiring experience for both their hiring managers and the tech candidates they seek. In this series, we’ll dive into what works for them, and what they’ve learned, and share it with our readers. Sharing these stories and learnings supports our company vision to make hiring more equitable, efficient, and transparent.

Hired’s List of 2023 Top Employers Winning Tech Talent highlighted companies across a variety of segments and industries creating tech hiring processes and experiences embracing principles such as equity, efficiency, and transparency. 

Among those leading the way is Daemon, a people-first tech consultancy seeking to better the world through digital transformation. 

Resourcing Manager Wayne Taylor shares how Daemon values feedback to improve the hiring process and uses Hired to maximise the impact of its Talent Team. 

About Daemon

Both internally and externally, our vision and North Star ambitions at Daemon are clear to see. We want to use technology to make the world a better place.

Now these aren’t just words on our website, these are built into our ways of working, engaging with our employees, and communicating with candidates.

As a value-led business, we hire by our values, as well as partner with clients based on shared values. Your technology skills are secondary to your values and cultural fit for us as we can support you in your technical journey.

“What I love about Daemon is they hire for future potential. Daemon sees beyond what is written on your CV…they see potential and invest in that potential. That was one of the best things I noticed in the interview stages.”

Daemon Software Engineering

See what else our Daemonites have to say about the Daemon culture. 

Tell us about a process you implemented to improve candidate experience and the hiring process.

At Daemon, we have a heavy feedback culture internally and with our clients to enable continuous improvement and progression for all parties. Our interview process is no different.

Around 12 months ago, we introduced a document to the process. This allows our interviewer community to have a one-stop place for all the tools required to interview. 

Editor’s note: standardising the interview process is a good DEI hiring practice as well.

It contains interview questions (prompting responses highlighting each of our values), feedback on the candidates from previous interviews, and any “flags” to look out for, as well as space for them to record the candidates’ answers to their questions and the overall feedback.

Introducing this to the process allowed us to capture feedback almost instantly. This reduces the need for the hiring manager/talent team to have a further catch-up meeting with the interviewers to gain feedback, as everything is shared on the doc. 

This has improved our candidate experience and decreased the time it takes for candidates to get through our process too. It took our time to hire to under 20 days in most cases. 

Related: 3 Ways You Should Use C-Suite to Recruit Tech Talent (+ Free Templates), Want to Run Better Interviews? You Need a Pre-Interview Meeting (Free Template)

What are some of Daemon’s strategies for maintaining a strong employer brand?

There are a few strategies we use to build and maintain our strong employer brand.

We make sure we’re on the right channels, like Hired, where the top talent is, and keeping Daemon at the forefront of our target candidates.

Being very responsive, timely, and engaged ensures their experience on these channels is better than our competitors. Efficient hiring is very important to us. 

We have a very vibrant and energetic brand and we want to make sure this is clearly visible to those interested in Daemon. 

Making sure we have a strong LinkedIn presence, which not only focuses on client-related content but also our culture. We do this through blogs, videos, podcasts, charity initiatives, events, etc. 

Sharing our People stories is very important to us as we are a people-focused business. It’s natural for us to tell Daemon stories.

How has collaboration between hiring managers and TA teams improved efficiency?

Collaboration and teamwork are at the heart of all things we do at Daemon, whether it’s client and internal projects or improving internal processes.

As a Talent Team we have regular meetings with our interviewer community to discuss what went well the previous month and any iterations to the questions. These are upvoted and chosen by the interviewers themselves to ensure consistency, even with different interviewers conducting the interviews.

There are two interviewers on each culture interview. The purpose is to reduce the risk of unconscious bias, offer collaboration for the interviewers to agree on the outcome, and give an opportunity for feedback on the candidates interviewing.

For our technical interviews, our Principal Consultants have a monthly Town Hall. This is a platform to talk openly with the executive board and collaborate on interviewing techniques. Again, this offers a repeatable and consistent process.

Related: Technical Assessments for Recruiting & Hiring Tech Talent 

How are you using tools and technologies to improve your hiring process?

Overall, we are really dedicated to having speedy recruitment processes, from the first conversation to onboarding.

Hired is certainly one of those tools. It makes the first conversation much easier, enabling us to move faster.

We recently introduced a new HRIS (Bamboo) which works as an Applicant Tracking System. It also allows a consistent and efficient onboarding experience for everyone who is offered a role at Daemon. 

This includes everything from clear offer letters to a welcome note with the relevant onboarding forms for completion online. This removes our paper footprint and ensures candidates and colleagues have accessible documents from day one and throughout their time at Daemon.

How has Hired supported your hiring strategy?

Hired has been instrumental in us making tech hires over the last 24 months we’ve been working with them.

We have access to high calibre candidates who we might not have been aware of if we hired through other means.

The efficiency of the platform and ease of use are so helpful. That includes the information you receive upfront on the candidates to the ability to conduct very specific searches based on a range of demographics. With the number of hires we’ve made through the platform, we as a Talent Team really trust the quality of the candidates on Hired. 

Lastly, but by no means least, is the support from the Hired team through the assigned Account Manager and Account Directors. All of them provide great feedback and updates on industry trends. 

Are you interested in sourcing top tech talent? See all of Hired’s products and services in action with a demo.

Check out all the featured tech employers in the series so far: 

1. Firstup Puts People First to Help Companies Speed Up
2. One Medical Focuses on Authenticity in the Candidate Experience
3. Veho’s Multi-Faceted and Candidate-Centric Interview Process for Better Alignment
4. Cisco Turns Talent Acquisition Professionals into Talent Advisors 
5. AutoFi Showcases Culture & Employee Development to Strengthen Employer Branding