Usha Dewasi is a Java and Kotlin developer from India with 8 years of experience in building scalable systems. Now she works as a Senior Soft Engineer at DKB Code Factory GmbH. Usha told us about her experience of being a job candidate and shares her views on how to make the recruitment process more effective for all concerned.


Experience in Berlin
You are now over two years in Berlin. Do you feel that you learned something new?

I've been a Java developer for a very long time but I learned a lot when I came here, for example, making things from scratch. It was not just about the back-end but about everything: how to deploy, and how to manage the whole infrastructure, etc. It was only me who had to make a complete application and that gave me confidence.

Candidate Experience
You've been through many hiring processes in Berlin. What would you change in the way how companies conduct them?

First and foremost, I would like both agencies and companies themselves to always give a response. It doesn't matter if it is good or bad feedback. Just be transparent about what is actually going on. As for recruitment agencies, it is important to give the candidates the profiles which are suitable to them but not just any random ones.

Finally, many companies don't properly provide the details of the coding task. The instructions are often not clear. A company can say that formatting is not necessary and won't be checked. However, when it comes to your technical interview, they can make this point. They tell you that your coding task was amazing and your logic was good, and the code was not formatted. Such things should be specified at the very beginning.


When you're in the recruitment process, do you fully understand what your job specifications will be?

Companies often give very logical сoding tasks that graduates with proper computer knowledge can complete but they are not at all related to the real projects which you will need to work on. Once there was an assignment that I liked. It was very clear because if I had been selected, they would've made me work on microservices and the task was related to microservices as well. It was very intense but gave me a perfect understanding of what I was going to do there.


What is the best kind of face-to-face technical interview set-up that you feel comfortable with?

At this point, companies should assess a candidate not based on what he or she coded. You've already taken a lot of the person's coding task, but when it comes to face-to-face interviews, it should be more intellectual. Try to understand whether the candidate will fit into your team.

Experience with agencies
What do you dislike the most about recruitment agencies?

Above all, I don't like recruitment agents to call me from random numbers and not start with their names or their companies' names. They just say, "Hi, Usha, how are you? I saw your CV…" and so on. Also, a lot of people contacted me saying that there was a job opportunity but after I'd shown some interest in it there was no further response. I felt like they just wanted to have my information in their database.


What was your experience while working with us?

I had a really different experience with Recruitty and that's why I'm continuously in contact with you. It was you who reminded me of my application status and checked what was going on. I don't think that any other recruitment companies are doing that much so this is far from average.