Initially founded as Relay by veterans of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, GetThru is a progressive communications-focused company that offers messaging products ThruText & ThruTalk for use in political campaigns, colleges/universities, nonprofits, government agencies, mission-aligned ‘for profit’ organisations & more.

GetThru is a remote-first company, their core team is mostly distributed across the US & Canada. Their engineering team has set out a clear structure for remote working that allows employees to work independently whilst also having colleagues on hand for pair programming when needed.

Given the nature of their work, it was important that applicants were aligned with the direction of the company & the values of their clients, as well having the right technical capabilities to work as a Software Engineer within a remote team.

With BEAM’s fault tolerance & scalability, building out their products in Erlang & Elixir was an obvious choice to support a platform that would handle large volumes of activity concurrently.

With the offer of remote work in a mission-driven company, there was a fair amount of organic interest but it had still been difficult to find candidates specifically with previous Elixir experience that would allow them to hit the ground running.

How did Beam it Recruitment assist GetThru?

GetThru had previously relied on ongoing resources from tech consultancies, leaving them without full control over recruitment, retention & availability, the goal was to screen & hire an in-house team following a successful campaign period during the 2020 US Elections.

The plan was to expand the team by hiring 8 Elixir-focused Software Engineers, this would eventually be extended with a final total of 10 new hires, with a need to backfill other positions during our time there.

In order to add maximum value & have a full overview of the hiring process, we were integrated as part of the internal hiring process. With the existing team under pressure to deliver on key projects, they were able to delegate hiring-related tasks to us. 

Using the FreshTeam ATS, Beam it took care of the following tasks:

• Helped to create email templates 

• Screened resumes

• Contacted candidates to reject/progress their applications

• Scripted interview questions & created a scorecard specific to the requirements

• Scheduled/conducted first-stage interviews

• Wrote detailed notes along with recommendations for later interviews

• Scheduled technical interviews & take-home assignments for candidates

• Assisted with delivery & negotiation of Offers of Employment

Using our own external channels:

• Shared job postings on our website, social media channels & BEAM-specific newsletter

• Created infographics for live roles

• Headhunted skill & domain specific profiles

• Advised on ways to better engage with the Elixir community

• Introduced GetThru to contacts & platforms that can help with diverse hiring

Commitment

We committed to all of the above on an ongoing job order of 15-25 hours per week, this could vary depending on the required workload of any given week. This would be reviewed on a monthly basis & amended in weekly hiring meetings if necessary.

Our work would be billed on an hourly basis as well as (reduced) fees for any hired candidates that we sourced via our own channels.

Results

As mentioned earlier, the final result was the successful hiring & on-boarding of 10 in-house Engineers across a 9 month period.

Are you interested in discussing how Beam it could bring value to your BEAM hiring? Book in a call to discuss details here: https://calendly.com/beamrec/hiring