We’re looking to invite around 150 new people to our Tech team in 2021. We’re growing fast and there are lots of exciting projects and product teams to consider joining.
I’m Louise and I work in the BA function. My blog is a breakdown of how we recruit BAs but there are lots of positions that we’re hiring for at the moment and who knows, maybe one day we’ll end up working together.
If you were thinking about applying to be a BA what could you expect? For a start we have our own internal recruitment team, they really know us and can answer those initial questions that you have. The answers they give really represent what we would say ourselves.
We get together before recruiting for a new role and talk about the sort of skills we need, what experience they should have and consider the other teams or people they would interact with. Obviously, it’s important to get someone we all get along well with but we also want someone who is going to love working at AO. We always look for people who are excited about helping us grow aswell as someone who can do “insert name of technique here”.
Step 1
You send in your CV and this is reviewed by our dedicated recruiter. They deal with all BA recruitment and will look after you throughout your journey. Whilst they pull together a shortlist of candidates, the BA team are preparing.
For every role we recruit, we pull together a group that will own the recruitment process and represent our BA community.
The BA community is really important to us and we apply the same community approach to recruitment as we do for our projects.
The group will review the CVs by getting together quickly and talking about who we want to move to the next stage and why.
Step 2
The next stage is the telephone interview. This is a chat with our dedicated recruiter. During this they’ll talk about your experiences, what you want out of your next job and understand your long term career goals. You’ll get the opportunity to get across all the information you want in order to sell yourself. The BA group will then review these interviews with the recruiter and decide who they want to see face to face.
Obviously face to face is a bit different at the moment. We’ve been remotely interviewing for nearly a year now and we completely understand how difficult it is for you at the other end. Not only do you have to sell yourself, you have to cross your fingers that all the technology works. Don’t worry about it! We’ve had people who’ve lost connection, we’ve had kids join us and animals – All of which we love as we get to see the real you!
We have issues on our side too – people desperately rebooting their laptop, hoping that would fix their camera, people dashing out of the room to stop their dog running out of the house and lots of misbehaving microphones. We try to make it as relaxing as we can and if we ever get the chance to meet, you’ll probably get to see some of our pets or families too.
Step 3
Before every Face to Face Interview, we set a task – We present you with a real-life BA scenario and ask you to tell us how you would approach it during the interview. We find that more useful to get a feel for how you work than just asking questions. After the task, we’ll talk to you about our values and get a feel for how well AO is a fit for you. That is much more important to us than how many process maps you’ve created.
We really like to look at the recruitment process as a way of getting to know each other rather than a test and hopefully at the end of it you’ll want to come and work with us and make us even better. We can’t do this without our recruiter and they can’t do it without you so why not take a look at our opportunities and let’s have a chat!