Nordcloud, an IBM company, is the company established in 2011, the company that from the beginning of its existence had the vision that Public Cloud is the path that they want to pursue. Mind you, it was definitely a right decision and it turned out to be a great adventure for this organization and the people within it. In this case study you will learn how to scale a tech team with our RPO service.

Table of Contents:

1. About Nordcloud
2. Challenge: how to scale the Tech Team in Nordcloud?
3. Mission: recruiting IT specialists in the Netherlands
4. Scaling the Tech Team, using Humeo’s RPO service – results
5. Client’s review
6. Extras: behind the scenes of cooperation and an example recruitment process
7. Scaling of the Tech Team in Nordcloud – summary

Nordcloud today

From 2011 Nordcloud grew significantly, up to 1300+ people employed across Europe. 10 European countries have Nordcloud offices, 1000+ Public Cloud implementations, partnering with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, landing a place within Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, 1000+ AWS certifications and 1000+ Azure certifications among employees. Their main focus up to this date is Public Cloud, infrastructure solutions, cloud-native application services and, of course, satisfaction of both the employees and the clients.

Challenge: how to scale the Tech Team in Nordcloud?

However, the picture looked a bit different a year ago, when an RPO recruiter from Humeo, joined the ranks of Nordcloudians in order to assist the Talent Acquisition team in November of 2021, specifically to take care of the recruitment in the Netherlands.

The numbers of employed people, certifications, as well as of implementations were definitely smaller, and the company as a whole was in a hyper growth mode. It was truly important for Nordcloud to obtain the support from our side (RPO service) for two main reasons: hyper growth and the fact that they needed a dedicated recruiter for the Dutch tech team, so we accepted the challenge. 

Mission: recruiting IT specialists in the Netherlands (various roles)

The main focus from the beginning, apart from the swift onboarding, was on getting to know the team and establishing contact with the Talent Acquisition team, Hiring Managers and the main figures in the Dutch team (like Delivery Executive, Tech Lead and Team Leaders).  Besides, when it comes to recruitment itself, the focal point was conducting the processes for: 

Later on there were such roles as: 

As you can see, there were not only technical roles, included, but also a range for the Sales department. From the technical side, there was a lot of collaboration with Managed Cloud (mostly in the Netherlands, but also a few roles in the Polish market), Professional Services and Platform and Tools (specifically in this case it was a Polish team) departments.

Scaling of the Tech Team in Nordcloud – results of our Recruiter’s activities

During this year of collaboration between Humeo and Nordcloud, an IBM Company, there were numerous roles to be filled and quite a few challenges. However, it truly was a team work in its finest form, as our recruiter worked alongside with the TA team as an inhouse recruiter and an outright part of the team. Was this work fruitful? Most definitely.

It all started with acting as the only recruiter for the Netherlands, but then there were also multiple chances to work on the Polish market and source on Norwegian, Swedish and Danish markets once on behalf of Nordcloud. 

During this year there were:

Client’s Review

We received professional and solid support from Humeo by RPO services. It was a perfect solution that brought flexibility, professionalism, and expertise during hyper-growth in the IT market. Our needs were taken into account and addressed adequately. I appreciate the clear and open communication, regular feedback, and fair collaboration. I can only recommend working with Humeo.

What influenced such a high efficiency of IT recruitment in Nordcloud?

The recruiter was fully integrated with the internal teams and truly was a part of the team and the Talent Acquisition team was working together on a shared goal and targets in a hyper growth period. The key point was to find, as usual, the best talents that would join Nordcloud ranks in supporting clients and creating new solutions for them. 

In order to find the right people, Nordcloud team created the process that worked best for them, after the official application there were these steps: 

The role of the recruiter in the whole picture was briefing with the Hiring Managers to determine the right profile, choosing candidates from either sourcing or applicants, guiding them through the process and assisting them, consulting the Hiring Managers on the positions, processes and priorities and sending offer letters to the chosen candidates, then closing the process. 

Conducting the recruitment process on the example of the Cloud Architect role

At the end, we would like to show you how the recruitment process looked like in practice.

A good exemplary role would be a Cloud Architect one, as it is quite common throughout the whole company and the requirements for it are quite unified. It was present in the Dutch portal too, of course, but what were the key factors?

Overall, it is a highly technical role where they concentrate on creating a functional and stable architecture. They focus on solving business challenges, either multi cloud, or single cloud. Ideally they should also be able to communicate to C-level executives and translate technical requirements to business and vice versa. 

From the technical perspective, obviously, there ought to be experience in creating the design for the cloud architecture, advanced knowledge of one of the public clouds (AWS, Azure or Google Cloud), building and delivering IaaS, PaaS or SaaS offerings, knowledge of containers, scripting or coding languages.

Does not seem like an easy task, therefore the recruitment process from Nordcloud that is used, definitely comes in handy to check the relevant factors!

How to scale a Tech Team with RPO – summary

The recruiter from the Humeo team who was working with Nordcloud was Mariia.

What does she think about this year? Let’s summarize this case study using her words: 

Frankly, it was a completely new experience for me, where I got to try working with a large team and on a completely different scale than I previously used to! There were, of course, some aspects that were completely new to me both from the technical and recruitment sides, but the Nordcloud Talent Acquisition team made it possible for me to adjust quickly. For instance, the public cloud environment was present in other recruitment processes, but I’d never had a chance to dive this deep in the topic before I joined Nordcloud, and the TA team together with tech teams were super helpful in the matter.

I like to think the cooperation was useful for both parties, also according to the feedback that I received from Nordcloud, the feeling is mutual. From my side, I was constantly sharing my thoughts regarding how the process or job descriptions could be improved. I’d like to add here that the hiring managers were open to receiving such insights and would adhere to them. 

So, in my humble opinion, it was a nice year and a truly great time that I spent with the Talent Acquisition team at Nordcloud, that I will remember warmly. As well as, the recruitment processes that I was working on, the technical teams that we collaborated together and the candidates that I had a chance to guide through – all these elements made my time at Nordcloud quite unique.

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