I love this phrase. It's just the perfect amount of cringe but also really true. It's also incredibly difficult when you're a startup when every mistake could put the company at risk.

LEAD DEVELOPER

When we started REX we knew we would have difficulty in finding the right person as our requirements were difficult enough to fill individually and almost impossible altogether. We needed someone with:

• A strong software development background who could lead the development of a new product
• A strong security background. As a security tool being released by a security company we had to make security a priority
• An understanding on why something like REX would be important
• Ability to help with other company work
• Willing to take a risk. We were a new company and had no idea what the future would hold

How on earth could we find this unicorn especially since someone with this skillset would want a higher salary than we could afford at the time.

I wish there was some specific answer I could give, but really we got lucky. As part of running Manchester Grey Hats I meet lots of super smart people and one was quite unsatisfied at his current place of work and came on the market as we were looking. By listening to the issues he was having at his current workplace, we did our best to create a working environment which suited him. If you're interested in specific policies we created, we can talk about that in another post.

JUNIOR DEVELOPER

Finding a junior developer was difficult but in a different way. There was too much choice. When we announced we were looking, we received over 200 CVs in a few days. These needed to be reviewed and sifted though (and feedback sent to as many people as possible). This was our first time hiring someone for a junior developer role and to make things worse, this was right in the middle of lockdown which must be the hardest time for someone to start a brand new industry.

For us, we were looking for someone that could hit the ground running (although not necessarily experienced, someone that could demonstrate familiarity with out tech stack). We also wanted someone that we felt could work well during lockdown which meant someone that could communicate well and could fit into the team dynamics.

As there were so many CVs to look though, we decided to remove any that could not demonstrate experience, either though a public repo or previous work. This meant we didn't need to ask for coding demos which I'm not a fan of.

We also made sure to look at people looking to move into development from other roles meaning they were already able to demonstrate professional skills. The thing that really won us over on the person we finally selected was a charming web based game she made to demonstrate her CV using pixel art. We're all big retro game fans here so knew she'd fit right in.

LEADERSHIP

Without a good leadership team, any company is doomed to fail. Me and Saskia have different but complimenting skills and we often balance each other out. She's really fun and I'm super boring. She's organised, my brain is chaotic. Early on we decided to exactly which part of the company each of us would focus on (me coming up with the ideas and providing the technical support and her doing the operations and management). Not much else to say here but I'm convinced REXScan and Digital Interruption wouldn't exist without Saskia.