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Leading with Innovation: Donald Lika's Journey as Engineering Team Lead at SmartRecruiters

Posting date: 10/09/2024

In this interview, Donald Lika, Engineering Team Lead, shares how his team balances innovation, teamwork, and customer impact to create seamless candidate experiences. 

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Your role & team

Q: Can you describe your current role at SmartRecruiters and the team you work with?

In 2022, I joined SmartRecruiters as a Senior Software Engineer on the Apply Experience team, and now I serve as the Engineering Team Lead. I lead a team of four engineers focused on delivering a seamless and scalable candidate application experience across multiple platforms, primarily through public APIs. We also focus on maintaining and improving the screening question process to further enhance the overall candidate experience.

Q: What do you enjoy most about your role? Can you share three key aspects and why they stand out?

Here are some of the key aspects that make my role enjoyable:

  • Shaping the Team’s Strategic Impact: One of the most rewarding aspects of being an Engineering Team Lead is ensuring the team’s work aligns with the company’s broader goals. I enjoy guiding the team to work on projects that not only enhance our product, but also have a long-term, strategic impact on the company’s success.
  • Collaborative Problem-Solving: I actively work with engineers to brainstorm and challenge each other technically, always striving for the best possible solutions. Our team culture emphasizes transparency, open communication, and shared responsibility. Whether brainstorming potential solutions or executing plans, we do it together, celebrating wins and learning from setbacks.
  • Enhancing Customer Experiences: Leading a team that directly influences customer outcomes is incredibly fulfilling. Working closely with engineers to improve features that make the candidate application process smoother and more efficient, and hearing customer feedback, really reinforces the impact of our work.

Life at SmartRecruiters

Q: What do you appreciate most about working at SmartRecruiters?

  • People: What really caught my attention during my interview at SmartRecruiters was the genuine openness and the emphasis on people and culture. After nearly three years here, I can say that everyone genuinely values and respects each other's opinions and perspectives. This culture of listening and collaboration is at the heart of what makes SmartRecruiters successful.
  • Remote first company: SmartRecruiters’ flexible work environment is something I truly value. I work remotely from Hamburg, and when I visit my hometown, I can continue working without any issues, which gives me the perfect balance between work and personal life.

Innovation and Project Impact

Q: Can you share a project you've worked on that made a significant impact on our products or services?

  • New candidate portal: One of my key projects was leading the backend effort to replace the Old Smartr portal with a simpler candidate portal. We aimed to streamline the process by enabling easy email login without a full profile and adding one-time password (OTP) authentication. This redesign has significantly reduced maintenance costs and enhanced the user experience, with the project already showing notable benefits in production.
  • Introducing Conditional Screening Questions: One project that stands out is the introduction of Conditional Screening Questions, driven by customer feedback, to simplify the screening process. We faced architectural and product challenges while aiming for an intuitive interface. It was crucial that our public API consumers could adopt the feature at their own pace without disrupting their workflows. Ultimately, we delivered a solution that enhanced usability and allowed customers to customize their screening processes, making a significant impact on their hiring workflows.

Tips for future candidates

Q: What advice would you give to someone considering joining your team?

  • Stay curious. Curiosity drives innovation, and asking questions or exploring new ideas will help you find better solutions to complex problems.
  • Challenge assumptions and always seek answers. Don’t be afraid to question the status quo or pursue a deeper understanding; this mindset fosters growth and continuous improvement.
  • Be customer-centric. Always keep the customer in mind and think about how your work impacts their experience, as solving their problems is at the heart of everything we do.

Finding joy in solving customer problems and putting yourself in their shoes are two critical aspects of being a successful product engineer. Our team thrives on discovering innovative projects, conducting behavior analysis, and always considering how to make life easier for our users.

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Posted byAlicja Spizarska
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