IT Governance - Cloud Employee Review

"Like most organisations, we were struggling to find good candidates locally to build our software development team. Recruiters are expensive and we were competing against everyone from Microsoft to AI start-ups for talent. Even if we got the applicants, getting them to sign on the dotted line was always a competition. We started to think creatively about how to solve the problem but we knew we didn’t want to use a body-shop, where we’d get sold on the A-team, only to have star players poached for other clients and end up with the Z-team. We wanted control over the recruitment process to get the skills we needed, to be able to retain our new-found stars and to minimise any cultural hurdles.

Having looked around, CloudEmployee stood out as having a different attitude and we both wanted the same thing, to develop and retain a great team. We paid them a visit and it was clear that they want not just to look after us as a client but also the staff they provided - it’s sensible because happy staff are productive but also just because it’s the right thing to do.

Having taken the plunge, we initially recruited face-to-face in Manila to get a better sense of the calibre of candidate being proposed and to get to know CloudEmployee better. Once the first few recruits proved successful we had enough confidence in their support to start recruiting remotely. CloudEmployee engage with our staff on a regular basis and as the team has grown they’ve have helped us identify key individuals who can move up and provide local management, a critical step in scaling from a few individuals to something bigger. Meanwhile, CloudEmployee’s management ensures any staff concerns are addressed promptly and generally smooth over any issues before they become serious. On the rare occasion our recruitment process has failed us and employees have subsequently underperformed, they’ve helped us deal with the consequences painlessly.

The Filipinos we’ve recruited have proved hardworking and capable and we now have a highly competent team in Manila who can be relied on to deliver enterprise, commercial software on a regular basis.

Using CloudEmployee has largely removed our developer recruitment problems and saves us a significant amount of time and money in the process – the overhead of having a remote team is more than offset by the financial benefits – something easy to measure in the bottom line. We’ll continue to use them – having technical resource available that doesn’t cost the earth enables us to take on projects that we might otherwise think twice about. The relationship works because our interests are aligned and they’re able to deal with us openly and honestly."

Neil Acworth, Group CIO, IT Governance