Building Your Talent: Nakov at Webit Unconference - Razlog, June 2022 In this session Dr. Svetlin Nakov explains how to build exceptional professionals, instead of hiring them from another company. The train-to-hire model for building exceptional talent: Offer a trainee job position --> Selection (assessment + interviews) --> Hire a few trainees (trial period) --> Training (job-specific skills) --> Hire the best graduates (permanently).

1. Don't Hire Your Tech Talent. Build It Instead!
How to Build Talent?
Software University
https://softuni.bg
Svetlin Nakov, PhD
Technical Trainer and Inspirer
Co-Founder @ SoftUni
https://softuni.org

2.  Software engineer, trainer, entrepreneur,
inspirer, PhD, author of 15+ technical books
 3 successful tech educational initiatives (150,000+ students)
About Dr. Svetlin Nakov
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3.  Alumni in LinkedIn:
 Software engineers:
16 300+
 Digital marketing
experts: 1 400+
 Design and UX
experts: 900+
 300K learners in 7M
Bulgaria
19K Graduates in LinkedIn
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4.  The traditional hiring process:
 What's wrong?
 Exceptional candidates are hard to attract
 Exceptional candidates already have a job
 Exceptional people are very expensive
Hiring People: The Wrong Way
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Offer a
senior
job position
Selection
(assessment
+ interviews)
Hire the best
candidate

5.  Train-to-hire: building exceptional talent
 Hints:
 Attract exceptional pre-juniors: universities, contests,
hackathons, events, LinkedIn, SoftUni
 Training can be effortless: Udemy courses / books + practical
assignments / exams
Train-to-Hire: How It Works?
5
Offer a
trainee
job position
Selection
(assessment
+ interviews)
Hire a few
trainees
(trial period)
Training
(job-specific
skills)
Hire the best
graduates
(permanently)

6.  When does the "train-to-hire" process work best?
 Tested many times for 20 years for tech jobs
 Specific niche technology, e. g. Salesforce or Magento
 Hire many people with the same skills, e. g. 50 Salesforce devs
 Junior positions only (you cannot build a senior engineer)
 Exceptional juniors are better than experienced average
performers (long term)
 Better performance / cost ratio
Train-to-Hire: When It Works?
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7. © SoftUni – https://softuni.org