In our previous blog posts, we mainly focused on external recruiting. This time, we want to change the perspective and look at our internal recruiting process while also showcasing what career development at Greentube looks like.  

In most of our interviews, we address the question or talk briefly about the development – and further career plans of our applicants. There are many opportunities when it comes to progressing down a specific career path: Short-term and long-term goals, management career or expert career, working in a big team or small team? All of this and more needs to be discussed.  

As much as we love hiring motivated and driven people externally, we are also extremely proud of our internal success stories. Over the last few years, we have evaluated and redefined our internal recruiting program, making our internal development opportunities more attractive and elaborate to encourage more internal applicants. This smoothly running internal recruiting process is a result of extensive testing of different opportunities, lots of feedback discussions with our employees, and simply considering our own observations and experience. This, along with another major milestone in our journey, the dual management system, is what we would like to share with you in the following sections.  

Greentube’s Internal Recruiting Process  

Firstly, as mentioned, we managed to set up an internal recruiting process which is used whenever one of our employees is interested in changing jobs internally, irrespective of whether it is a horizontal or vertical change. We take this process as seriously as our external recruitment process in order to make it a pleasant and professional experience for our employees. Of course, it can be ideal if this candidate turns out to be the perfect match during the first interview, and the skills and the personality of the employee is a tailored fit for the team’s requirements, and all parties are happy. In this case, one longer appointment can be sufficient to clarify the expectations of all parties and talk about administrative topics.  

However, it’s a different story if the employee’s wishes cannot be fulfilled, or the employee’s profile is simply not a fit for the vacant position. If another strong external candidate is favoured during the selection process or the employee’s expectations and the team’s or manager’s expectations don’t match, then it can be a frustrating situation for both the applicant and recruiter. 

Regardless of the reason, a rejection in this situation can be unpleasant for all parties involved.  Therefore, to avoid anyone losing face, we are extremely careful and try only to make internal processes official once all details have been discussed and the placement was a successful one.  

Based on our experiences, our advice to recruiting professionals looking to implement this in their company is to get backing from management first before planning any further steps. It is essential to find out if, these internal change processes are appreciated or not. It’s very important to be transparent as much as possible and talk about fears – like losing team members to other teams or getting rid of the idea of “internal” headhunting between existing departments. The wish to change should always come from the employee, not from managers who are trying to find internal candidates for their vacant roles. Avoiding misunderstandings and being sensitive and discreet on the HR side is crucial for such a process.  

Dual Management System 

At Greentube, we are currently making progress on our project to decouple our management career path from an expert career path within our company. Especially in a fast-moving and agile environment such as ours, it is important to adapt to the needs of the organization and also to the needs and strengths of employees. As a result, we decided to go with a dual management system in those cases when it really makes sense. Usually, this is the case in technical teams where having someone who is really the leading expert in his field for the team is a big help. Of course, not every team at Greentube needs such a structure – this is also important to understand and accept. But in some cases, particularly in our development teams, it makes sense to split responsibilities and have one ‘People Lead’ supported by a ‘Tech Lead’.  

The most important thing we’ve learned is to have the responsibilities clearly defined and announced and outline that collaboration and communication between the two leads are relevant for gaining such a structure. While the People Leads take care of people management and administrative tasks, the Tech Leads focus is on guiding the team on a technical level with their expertise. Decisions such as salary, employee development, etc. are always to be taken in liaison between the two team leaders. Establishing such a dual lead system for us is also a signal that Tech Leads are equally valuable to our company as are People Leads. Apart from splitting clear responsibilities of these mentioned leaders, we wanted to give experts the chance to reach a higher level in the hierarchy, but without necessarily having this progress coupled with people management tasks. We feel that this system takes the pressure off our leads’ shoulders and supports them with their strengths. By having such a structure in place these people are not forced to work against their personality traits or focus too much on the business aspect of things. They can simply continue working in what they are best at and additionally have the lead responsibility.  

That both of the mentioned processes and business structures work that well in our company wasn’t the case from the beginning. It was a learning process that both, we from the HR side, and also our employees had to go through. Over time we garnered experience and learned step by step and adapted to the ideal framework that is set up now.  

After investing time and energy into these topics, we can really proudly say that we now have them tailor-made to best fit Greentube’s working environment, structure and culture.  

By focusing on our employees’ strengths and value-adding traits, we always try to make the best out of the situation and shape internal processes according to our internal needs.