😖 🗝️ 🤳 Mass recruitment testers recipe 👨🏾‍💼 🍓 ™️

At the end of August last year, our company launched a new line of business - gaming testing. Since we were talking about manual testing in ready-made repetitive scenarios, we faced the task of mass recruitment and staff training. We needed to attract and train 30 employees within 3 months! For everything about everything, we had 0.5 HR and the head of the training center (she is also a methodologist and a teacher of courses). Next, we will tell you how we dealt with this.

The essence of the task was to attract interns to the newly opened QA center and teach them the basics of testing. Let's start with the involvement, and then we will tell how we organized the preparation.

Attraction

To search for candidates, we used the following sources:

Headhunter Vacancy (Our and Neighboring Regions)
Announcement on the forum and on the pages in social networks of the game that we were going to test
Announcements in the groups "Looking for work
Referral program (monetary motivation of current employees to attract their friends to the company)
Advertising on Instagram!
Yandex.Talents

Looking ahead, we’ll tell you that most of the employees who passed the probationary period, of course, came from Headhunter. But the rest of the sources in total gave quite a few. For us, this is relevant due to the fact that we continue to recruit.

After the start of the advertising campaign in a few days we received about 300 profiles. It seemed that there would be no problems finding candidates ... until we eliminated 90% of the candidates. Quite a lot of people did not suit us because of inadequate expectations (from work, compensation or other conditions), lack of technical and gaming background, or due to cultural differences (lack of social skills, aggressiveness).

Selection process

Online tests

For the input selection, we developed several tests to test the general knowledge of candidates at the high school level: a test for knowledge of the Russian language, an arithmetic test in which the ability to count, multiply, divide, perform simple mathematical operations, make simple equations, etc. Also, tests were compiled directly related to the gaming industry and to the knowledge of the game_Pro_Tanki , which was to be tested. For incoming control of our candidates, we invited them to the office and gave an hour to complete the four described tests in Google forms.

Since collecting all potential employees in the office, providing them with a workplace for the test was rather expensive in terms of time and free space, it was decided to transfer the testing to the online format, leaving the candidate to choose the time to complete the test. In order to exclude the possibility of using external sources to search for the right answers to questions, all tests had a time limit of 10-20 seconds per answer, depending on the type of test.

Assessment

Despite the fact that candidates passed the entrance control, the conversion of employed candidates remained small: only 15% of those who successfully passed the entrance testing were employed. In order to somehow increase this percentage, it was decided to supplement the online testing with a full-time business game.

Candidates were invited to the office and given a team assignment. While they performed tasks, observers or assessors recorded actions, words, participants' behavior, allowing to evaluate such qualities as orientation on quality, teamwork, initiative, self-development and stress resistance. At the end of the event, the assessors shared their observations and concluded whether to invite the candidate for training or not.

Assessment really helped increase the percentage of employed to 45%, but the labor costs for this event were too large and considered inappropriate. So, for example, for a flow of 20 people it was necessary to invite at least 5 assessors and spend 4 hours of their time, i.e. 60 minutes were conventionally spent per person, and 15 minutes is usually enough to determine at the interview that the person is not suitable for the company.

Training

When the course was drawn up, and those who wanted to replenish our ranks were found, we began to train candidates in full-time format. The main problems in full-time education were the cost of renting a room, a large load of a teacher and a not quite rational waste of time from the point of view of candidates: I wanted to see and comment on the implementation of the practice of each student, and those who had already checked were idle, losing interest in the tasks of others .

The teacher spent 20 hours learning one thread, and candidates spent the same amount. In addition, some of the candidates refused a job offer, not reaching the end of the training, since it was unrealistic to combine current work with a weekly testing course. Therefore, we decided to make an online course that would allow candidates to complete tasks in their own rhythm and study materials at their convenience.

Having started organizing an online course, we began to study what tools are and which ones are better suited to our project. Therefore, the first course was done in Google Classroom. It turned out pretty well.

The course was based on a full-time study program. The developed practices were transferred to the online format, and to test how carefully students listen to the theory, tests on lecture material were developed.

After switching to the online format, we significantly optimized the learning process: now the candidate spends 2 hours for 4 days, and the teacher ~ 1.5 hours per candidate. And all this at a convenient time!

After several streams, it became clear that the most important thing in online learning is maintaining motivation. The human brain resists everything new, and at some point the candidates apparently thought: “Oh, I don’t really need this job so much” and left the online course without completing the first module. For us, this was also a dropout factor: if a person is not able to spend even 4 days studying a subject, then maybe he should not hold on to it?

At the moment, we have already tested three platforms for organizing online learning: Google Classroom, GetCourse and Stepik. The first thing that was taken into account when choosing a platform was the opportunity for personal communication between the teacher and the student. It is not very convenient for answers to questions that, for example, arise in the course of practice, switch to other tools, as you have to do in Stepik. It was also important not to frighten the candidate with a complex interface, yet we really wanted them to get to the end. And of course, a good test designer with different types of test tasks was required, which, for example, GetCourse cannot boast of. The strength of GetCourse is the possibility of monetization (which is not relevant for us). On this platform, it is possible to use the integrated payment system, which is undoubtedly convenient for paid courses.In the end, we chose Google Classroom, because this free tool gave us everything we wanted. Classroom uses Google Forms to organize tests. They are quite diverse and allow you to create different types of questions, communication with the candidate is carried out in personal messages, and there is an excellent summary table with the results of each student's course.

Conclusions and Results

Although the transition to online learning has paid off in the form of significant time savings for all participants in the learning process. However, problems also appeared - information began to be absorbed clearly worse. Full-time classes allowed repeating the theory several times so that it remained in the head, and literally knocking out questions from students to help them sort out incomprehensible topics. And when a person goes through training on his own, it is impossible to vouch for the fact that he will understand everything and really learn. But we found a way out here. Now, in addition to online training, we hold face-to-face meetings where you can ask questions and focus on the most difficult issues. At the end of the course, a test and an interview are conducted, and based on their results, a decision is made on employment.

As a result of our approach, we coped with the task and recruited the required number of employees.