What abilities should a student or candidate have, if they want to start a career in IT?

The youngsters who wish to pursuit a career in the IT field should be flexible, open to new collaboration methods, willing to change fast and to look for changes proactively. They are eager to receive feedback in order to grow and learn, they are creative in dedicated.

What are the features that make a candidate the right employee for your company?

The desired qualities are flexibility, innovation, open mind-ness and proactivity. Since we are talking about IT, keep in mind that technical abilities and experience in working with programming languages are very important, as well as learning potential and speaking a popular foreign language.

How long do people stay at EXE Software? Can you tell us about your oldest employee, how did they arrive in the company and what was their evolution?

Normally, people stay in our company for about 5 years. However, our oldest employee has been in EXE for 16 years. He came as a junior programmer, but has since become a key team member and an example for everyone, due to his solid background and strong desire to learn, his openness to new technologies, his diligence in every project, his team spirit and loyalty, plus a strong attention to clients’ needs.

How can a company stand out, given the competitive field of IT?

We have strong values and high standards, which work together in order to create a positive atmosphere. In our daily activity, we are focusing on collaboration and trying to build small communities of people who share the same interests. We encourage innovation and provide our colleagues with learning opportunities and personal development options. All in all, we want to create a pleasant working space, where each individual can feel appreciated.

What differences have you noticed between candidates who apply for a job now, and the ones who applied, say, 10 years ago?

Attending the IT&C Fair organized by Students in the Automatics and Computer Science Faculty from Bucharest has confirmed that, in Romania, there is a promising young generation that deserves to be encouraged and involved in as many activities as possible. We met gen Z members, who have been in contact with technology since a young age, have already acquired digital competencies and have a native inclination for programming.

Besides that, we are also noticing a change in candidates’ expectations. The ones who want to work in IT expect greater flexibility and diverse experiences. They are not willing to spend a lot of time in the same company, especially during the first years of their career, because they what to test various domains and learn more than one area of the industry. So, it is up to us, HR people, to manage their expectations and help them find the most suitable role in the company.

What are the positive aspects of this rather unfriendly period (in terms of planning the future)?

It has actually been impressive to see how fast all our colleagues have adopted the new working conditions. Basically, in just two days, all out colleagues have started to work from home and there has not been any issue in developing all current activities. In a way, globalization has contributed a lot to this, since working with people from other countries (hence, remotely) was already a common thing in EXE. Because of this, we have already had the necessary infrastructure to support remote working and communication systems have been performing excellently ever since the beginning.

As far as the global economy is concerned, we will face a tough period, a lot of people and businesses will be affected, but we’re sure the situation will come back to normal soon and we will all learn something from this experience.

What changes do you expect in terms of digital tools, since at the moment these are the main operation channels in business?

The future of Human Resources will bring digital transformation and this will include a wide variety of tools, from online learning platforms, to solutions that can automate processes and a change in the selection process.

Using the digital environment more will bring a lot of changes, from choosing the most suitable recruiting channel, to actively approaching candidates and offering them a personalized experience. During these times, interviews have taken place exclusively online and the main benefit I have noticed is that this has shortened the selection process. On a long term, this could become a strategy that helps us attract talent faster.

What would you recommend young IT professionals to learn, during this “stay at home” period?

There are plenty of available platforms where IT people can find classes and learn new things that they can later put into practice, in personal work projects. For a Junior Web Developer job, the candidate should be familiar with OOP (object-oriented programming) and basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C# and SQL Server data base.

Freelance projects are another efficient learning method during these times. By participating in these, candidates will have the opportunity to get used to real work situations and see how development projects work. Besides that, open source projects allow them to work in a team and share knowledge with other team members.