A very special and eventful year for all of us lies behind us. A year that seems to have passed very quickly and for probably all of us, turned out very different than expected.
A year that presented unprecedented challenges that forced us all to rise to the occasion. In this article we want to reflect on the past year and how we at expertlead dealt with the turbulent 2020 year.
For us the year started with a move to a new office and in a different area of Berlin. Our team had grown, the office space in Berlin Mitte had become too small. With our belongings and our vision in our luggage we set off for Neukölln.
Covid-19, Switch to remote setting
In March, with the rise of the first Corona wave, we suddenly had to switch to a fully remote setting (some of our team members were working remotely already prior to Corona). Flattening the curve and the health of our team were paramount, so it was clear that we would all work from home for the time being. For us as a tech company, this change was comparatively easy to implement, but it also brought new challenges for our team. Our HR team was very engaged to keep up the team spirit: We introduced virtual coffee breaks and maintained communication within the team through various virtual team activities. Looking back, we can say that this situation brought us even closer together as a team.
The second move & a bit of normality
In July we moved again. We finally found a new home with sufficient space to accommodate our further growth. The new expertlead office is located on the banks of the Landwehrkanal in Berlin Mitte. Our team at this time was still working partly remote, but since the office is very spacious, some of us could finally meet in person again after a long time and actually it was great!
Unfortunately the second corona wave arrived and we had to temporarily say goodbye to our new office in order to avoid contacts and not to endanger general health.
Observe, Adapt, Grow
For the second time we were forced into a remote setting. The experiences gained during the first lockdown enabled us to transition smoothly. The required processes and tools had already been set up, and as the first lockdown had proven, the team's productivity even increased significantly. This outstanding performance was reflected in the generated output. Our community grew to record numbers, the tech team launched numerous new tech products and we acquired terrific new customers.
The expertlead tech team worked hard throughout the year to further develop the tech tools at the foundation of expertlead’s operations. Every phase of our process: find, assess, hire, is supported by innovative technological products, developed in house. The search phase of our process is supported by autonomous pre-qualification algorithms. These can automatically pre-select candidates based on the chosen parameters. The assessment phase saw an increase in usability as further programming languages and IT professions received their rigorous Peer to Peer quality screening process. Further, to increase speed, a new feature was added that enables automatic scoring of candidates. Also the matching phase saw a significant improvement through the introduction of automation. Projects and interviews are now matched fully autonomous based on critical variables. This increased matching speed, reduced errors and ensures we only match the best suited candidates and projects with one another. And lastly, based on feedback provided by our community, we added new functions to our portal. This platform enables our community members to manage all their personal information in one spot, update their profile and get an overview of the current partnership programs.
As part of our community program, expertlead had planned a myriad of live events. Ranging from meetups, over symposiums, to workshops. Sadly Corona did not agree with our plans and forced us to pivot towards online events. We were thrilled but how well the community reciprocated the webinar series. Since the lockdown started in March, our virtual events have brought together a variety of different experts to discuss and exchange knowledge. This provided the community with a space to continue to network and learn throughout the pandemic. Furthermore, the online events have given us the exciting chance to work together with other companies that are fostering the tech community. Our latest partner, ReDI deserves a closer look.
ReDI - School of Digital Integration is a non-profit digital school for tech-interested refugees and migrants, which assists young, thriving professionals to integrate themselves into the tech sector. To support students on their tech career path, ReDI utilises a mentorship program consisting of highly experienced industry volunteers. expertlead is supporting ReDI’s cause by recruiting mentors from the community to help individuals integrate themselves into the german tech sector. We kindly urge you to have a look at the ReDI mentorship program and consider joining. You would not only be helping someone else, but also taking a step to progress your own career.
In our monthly newsletter we inform our community members about everything that is going on at the moment. By working closely together with the community, the newsletter is dedicated to providing useful information related to the tech freelancer profession. You can check it out here.
expertlead is becoming a hybrid company
Even before the Corona Pandemic, some of our team members - especially the tech team - worked completely remote. Recently, we decided to introduce a hybrid working model across all teams. Why? Because we see many advantages to this approach:
- More flexibility for our employees
- Better conditions for a diverse team
- Native perspectives and insights into local markets
- Access to the global talent pool
From now on, all employees are free to decide from which location they want to work. Some of our team members already relocated to for example, India, Netherlands, Switzerland and Russia. We love our new office, and together with our belief that personal interactions as well as face-to-face communication will always stay important, we are keeping our Berlin Mitte office as our homebase.
Even though 2020 turned out to be even more challenging than initially anticipated in 2019, our customers showed an immense dedication to achieving their goals. We feel immensely thankful for so many of you placing your trust in us to help you achieve your tech roadmap. This trust encourages us to continuously strive to provide you with the best products and services. We do not take this trust likely and promise to keep improving to continue to deliver you with the best IT talent on the market.
The close collaboration with our customers also led to the development of our new service expertview, where we offer our testing as a separate service for companies that want to use our peer-to-peer evaluation to test their applicants for permanent positions. We have intensively used this year to develop our product range. Our tech team, without a doubt, had a very busy year…
In addition to working with our existing customers, we were also able to acquire great new customers such as Check24, Deutsche Flugsicherung, Trade Republic and many more.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our customers and freelancers for the trust they have placed in us and the strong cooperation we have had over this past year. Obviously this would have all not been possible without the fantastic and diverse expertlead team, that by now already consists of 62 amazing individuals from over 20 different nationalities!
We look back on an exciting year and can’t wait to continue on this journey with you.
To kick off the new year we have given our webpage a completely new look. We look forward to an exciting new year!
Jan 2021 - 5 min read
