FAQs: Recruitment at 123FormBuilder

Who is 123FormBuilder and what are you doing?

We are a product company born in Timișoara, Romania in late 2008, currently working with distributed, fully remote teams across Romania and beyond. At 123FormBuilder, we help users collect data with the aim of improving and automating business processes, also helping companies work smarter and make informed decisions. We have developed a powerful online form builder that allows users to do just that in a simple and secure way. Our forms are a vital puzzle piece in the flow of data collection within any organization, and we currently have over 2 million active users spread across 180+ countries.

Upgrade the way you collect and manage data. Get actionable insights and conquer productivity through smart online forms, fully integrated with your digital tools. Try our product for free!

In 13 years on the market (and counting) we’ve reached several milestones, most of which are highlighted here. The next milestone is being written as we speak, as we are working hard on bringing key improvements to our product in order to help up grow and reach even more users.

Are you a product company? How are you structured?

Yes, we are a SaaS product company and we’ve grown in time from a handful of people in the late 2000s to an awesome team of 100 team members that develop kick-ass products together. From designers to product managers, marketing professionals, and an awesome team of engineers we have built a lean organization around a flat hierarchy that fosters innovation and supports growth. We are structured into 6 departments – Engineering, Product, Marketing, Sales, HR & Operations, and Finance – that work together to achieve common goals.

We like to empower our colleagues and give them the space to innovate and put their expertise to good use. This often requires them to have a highly specialized skill set in order to be fully independent, and we look for this in our candidates. In our Engineering team responsibilities are split between backend, frontend, QA, and DevOps roles, but no full-stack. The same principle applies to all other departments, including Marketing and Product where we look for expertise and know-how.

What technologies are you using to build your product?

Thanks for asking! 🙂 Happy we got your attention.

First of all, we are improving our software architecture in order to deliver on our promise of delivering value to as many users as possible for the next 10 years. Our product is built using PHP (Laravel / Lumen) on the backend, React with TypeScript on the frontend, automated testing (CI/CD and everything), and a scalable infrastructure (build with Docker and Kubernetes) hosted on AWS. We are using microservices more and more to help us scale better, deliver new features faster and decouple critical parts of our application. We care about quality and invest in doing things right, from test-driven development, to clean code, static code analysis, applying SOLID principles, and more.

In essence, we want to be able to scale and deliver new features easier and faster. We’re also building a new design system and listening to our users, analyzing what brings value to them, what are the areas where we can deliver more value than our competitors, and how we can measure that impact. We also want to appeal to larger users and mid-size to large enterprise clients, whose needs are different than our typical SMB clients that currently use our product.

Do you have physical offices and can I work remotely?

Yes, we have physical offices in Timișoara and Bucharest (Co-working space at Impact Hub), but we have plenty of people working remotely from a variety of locations in Romania and not only. Generally speaking, if we have more than a handful of people in one location, we’ll be looking for a space (A co-working hub at first, until the size of the local team, increases considerably) to provide our colleagues with the option to interact physically with the rest of the team.

However, we are a fully remote company meaning that our colleagues can work from anywhere, regardless if they are in Timișoara, Bucharest, or any other location. Remote is here to stay and we believe the future of work post-COVID is remote first. We do value face-to-face interaction, both on a work level, but more importantly on a social level. We try to get everyone together for social events once or twice per year (usually in Timișoara) and teams are encouraged to set up smaller team gatherings and be independent on the setup and scope of these gatherings. While presence is not mandatory we would love it if people could join as it helps develop synergies and you get to know your colleagues better in person when your laptop lid is closed.

Remote work is built on trust, good communication skills, responsibility, and reliability. The remote worker needs to self-manage himself and his workload and find the right balance between figuring something out by himself and asking a colleague to jump on a call with him and do pair programming. At the same time, we acknowledge that remote work is not for everyone. We use a number of online tools and services to foster collaboration, conduct meetings, share information, and work on projects together. It is important to have a strong consistent internet connection, to be reliable and on time for meetings.

We do not have a strict work hours policy, but we have a core-time policy and expect everyone to be online, working, and responsive on Slack from 10 AM to 4 PM (Romanian time). We only have full-time (40 hours/weeks) roles in the company and while in the past we have experimented with part-time roles, the overhead was too high and there is little impact someone working part-time can have on a team.

Lastly, although we are fully remote, we can only consider candidates from the EMEA region. All our teams are located and are working from this geographic area and time zone. We cannot consider your application if you are not located in EMEA or have plans to move soon. We’ve had members of our team try this and it has never worked in the long term. Working during the night, in different time zones does not support a healthy work-life balance.

You mentioned core time. Can you tell me more about your way of working?

Yes, we have a core time as stated above (from 10 AM to 4 PM Romania time). It starts with the daily meeting and ends at 16:00. This does not mean we cannot have meetings sooner or later in the day, but we discuss them in advance to make sure people are available and can join. We work 40 hour weeks, but believe balance is key, therefore we expect everyone to work 8 hours/day, flexible around the core time. Much of our work is done collaborating with other colleagues, and in most cases, some of them need input from you. Because of this, it is vital to have a core time.

In terms of methodology, our engineering teams work in an Agile Scrum methodology, on two-week sprints. We keep standard Agile ceremonies like daily stand-ups, planning meetings, backlog refinement, and retrospective meetings. We use Jira for task management and issue tracking, Confluence for documentation, gSuite for email, calendars, video conferencing, and Slack for internal communication. Some support teams prefer using Asana for task management, but everything related to our product is tracked using Jira.

We use Hibob as our internal Human Resource Management System where we announce company updates, welcome new colleagues, send kudos to celebrate achievements. We also use Hibob for vacation requests, benefits tracking, performance reviews, and many more. Performance reviews happen once per year (January) with a mid-year check to keep track of objectives and feedback.

Have you been impacted in any way by COVID?

We have been experimenting with working remotely before COVID started and shifting to a full remote setting has been, not without its challenges, but smoother than you would expect. We worked hard to digitize our HR processes and onboard remote colleagues seamlessly. Worth mentioning here is implementing digital signatures, moving social and team events in a virtual setting, sending equipment, 123 swag and presents to our colleague’s doorstep, and more. We never closed our offices but managed to implement a rotation schedule where people could still come and work from the office, but feel safe to know that they could social distance. Not everyone was used to working remotely and here we tried to provide support for everyone struggling with this.

As a company, we cannot say COVID has impacted our business model, as it always relied on companies automating internal processes and using tools like ours to add value. It has in fact accelerated the digital transformation trends we have seen happen across the world. This has opened new opportunities that we are trying to take advantage of.

We’re also trying to help out as much as we can. We have made our platform free for those working in the frontline, such as NGOs, governmental institutions, and health organizations fighting to stop the spread of COVID.

What is it like to work for 123FormBuilder?

You don’t have to take our word for it. We encourage you to read what others say about this. Many candidates and past or current colleagues have left their thoughts on Glassdoor and Undelucram and you can read them. We also encourage you to get to meet us and find out for yourself.

From time to time we ask some of our colleagues how they view things and put them in the spotlight. Here’s what one of our developers had to say. We also try to stay true to our company values and have them reflect in everything we do.

Sounds good so far. What’s next and how do I apply?

We’re glad you like it. There are plenty of ways you can apply, our jobs are published on our Careers Page, on LinkedIn, and on several job boards. After you apply, we’ll evaluate your profile and be in touch soon. We respond to all applicants regarding their submissions, our average time for doing so is about 1 week (5 working days).

What are the steps in the recruitment process?

We’re always looking to improve our recruitment process so the steps can vary as we try out new workflows. We’ve summarized the most common steps in our process in the graphic below (they depend on the position you have applied for). At each stage, we review each candidate to determine if it makes sense to move to the next stage in our process.

The recruitment flow varies from position to position, but generally, there are two big differences. The scenario where we only have an interview or the scenario where we also give out a home assignment and ask candidates to solve a challenge or conduct a case study. The interview length can also vary from 1 hour to 1 hour and 30 minutes, depending on the complexity of the role and hiring process. Some management positions also include a personality assessment that we send out before or after the interview.

We try to keep things simple, but in case we have you confused, when you apply, you will receive an automatic email with extra details and a description of the process for the position you have applied for. You will also receive any other relevant information that is related to the role.

Who will I speak to during the interview?

In the early stages, you will speak with a member of our hiring team who can give you all the relevant information regarding the company, the role for which you have applied, and also answer all of your questions. During the interview you will also speak with the hiring manager (usually the team leader for the team you are applying) and another member of the team, usually, a technical person, that will walk you through the technical details and who will also ask you about your relevant experience, challenges you have faced and what was your approach in solving them.

What is the DiSC profile and why do I have to take it?

This applies to management and leadership positions, but we might also extend it on occasion to other roles. We send candidates a personality assessment so we can understand them better. DiSC® is a personal assessment tool used by people and organizations to help improve teamwork, communication, and productivity in the workplace. We are using it to better understand how people interact and work together in different scenarios and team settings.

How long does the recruitment process usually take?

Usually, it takes about 2-3 weeks to go through the entire recruitment flow from the candidate’s perspective, from the moment they have applied, gone through screening, interviewed with us, and up until we have a final answer for them. This can vary however depending on the position, the candidate’s availability, and if there is also a take at home task involved. We generally like to have the process as fast as possible, try not to keep candidates on hold and if we feel that we found the right person for the job, we make a decision. We do not need to see 3 or 4 candidates and compare them to one another. If we have found the right person, we follow up as soon as possible with an offer or reject the candidate if it is not the case.

I recently applied but the role is closed off already. What happened?

We have a rolling recruitment process, meaning that we keep assessing candidates until we’ve found the right person. After he has accepted our offer we then close the role. This is different from the process some companies follow of shortlisting a set number of candidates per stage, before moving to the next one. For this reason, it’s possible that someone may have applied shortly before we closed the position. We will tell you if this is the case and we would love to keep in touch with you for future roles.

It’s been a while and I haven’t heard back from you. Why not?

We respond to all candidates to let them know the outcome of their application at each stage of our process. Sometimes it might take longer than expected, because of peak recruitment periods, but you will always hear back from us. Sometimes, unfortunately, our emails can make their way to your Spam folder. If you haven’t received an email confirming your application or there are delays in our response rate please check your Spam folder or get in touch with us.

What benefits package are you offering?

We offer lots of benefits, including meal tickets, private health insurance, 7card subscriptions, and lots more. Our vacation day starts from 23 days and increases over time. In addition to this, we also offer extra vacation days on Christmas / New Year’s Eve as well as half-day off, to celebrate International Women’s (March 8) or Men’s (November 19) Days. We don’t stop here, you can review all our perks here and can find most of them in every one of our job descriptions.

Social activities are also a topic that we like to touch upon. Benefits don’t only mean lots and lots of perks, but also feeling at home and working in a positive environment that rewards people based on their involvement. We organize lots of social and team activities (physical when we can, if not virtual) in small or large groups, we reward colleagues who have had an impact on their teams, and we celebrate special occasions and holidays with gifts, and we try to keep a healthy work-life balance.

If I am offered a role, how much time do I have to decide?

It’s often the case that we interview many candidates and like more than one. We could consider hiring two or three candidates from the ones we interview, but only have one position open. If that is the case, we proceed on offering our number one pick and keep the other candidates waiting. We do not know whether the position will be closed or not. Therefore we understand if a candidate needs a couple of days to consider our offer and make his choice, but we cannot offer him more than that. We need to prioritize closing the position and also picking up with one of the other candidates if we do not have a firm answer within that time frame.

I have accepted your offer. What’s next?

Congratulations! It’s great to have you onboard 🙂 The next steps are mostly formal, related to gathering documents, signing the contract, and agreeing on a start date. This can be done fully remote via digital signature. The onboarding process will start when we have a formal written acceptance of our offer, after which our recruitment team will inform you of the next steps.

Other things to be discussed here would be choosing the equipment you will work on, preparing and sending the laptop together with the welcome package. Creating your 123FormBuilder email account and granting you access to all our internal tools. You don’t need to worry about anything, all of these will be created and sent to you a few days before you start, you don’t need to do anything before that.

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