| | JULY 20228CIOReviewIN MY OPINIONHOW T-MOBILE BROUGHT AN UN-CARRIER APPROACH TO TECH HIRINGBy Brian King, CIO, T-MobileDuring the thick of the pandemic in 2020, T-Mobile revamped its approach to recruiting and hiring tech workers. In just two short years, the company has seen tremendous results. Graduations are special, and this one felt particularly so. The nine members of cohort 33 of T-Mobile's Enterprise Technology Solutions (ETS) Software Engineer (SWE) Laboratory Program were set to present their capstone projects to their managers, peers and other stakeholders. The virtual presentations were the culmination of a five-week program that introduced them to the basics of software development at T-Mobile."It's like graduation day from school--I feel a sense of accomplishment," says Pravin Alhat, an incoming senior software engineer based in Overland Park, Kansas, T-Mobile's second headquarters. "I got the chance to learn new ideas, new things and a way of thinking about doing things differently."Other members of his group echoed a similar sentiment as they introduced themselves. "I learned a lot these last few weeks," says Biniam Tesfamariam, an incoming engineer based in T-Mobile's Bellevue, Washington, headquarters. "It was a great opportunity, a great learning experience and I'm glad I joined T-Mobile. I can't wait to show you what we built."Cory Pease is a software engineer and teacher at Seattle-based coding boot camp Galvanize, the organization that leads the program. He gave some final words before the group dove into their project. "This whole process is about empowering engineers," he said. "Now, let's get started." Turning the pipeline into a funnelAll newly hired engineers go through the program, which includes projects that immerse participants in the standards, tools and infrastructure they'll use when they join their teams. Working in small groups, the engineers solve a problem and then present their findings to the group on the last day of training. The laboratory is part of a broader set of changes to the way ETS recruits, hires and trains employees for software engineering jobs at T-Mobile. Known collectively as Workforce Transformation, ETS adopted and implemented these changes in 2020--right in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.The changes were born out of a few key realizations, explains Craig Thomas, vice president of IT Development. First, there was a desire to bring software and applications built by third-party contractors back into T-Mobile."We didn't build a lot of tools in-house, and we relied heavily on third-party builds," he says. "It's hard to maintain continuous improvement on your tools when someone else is doing that work." In order to take ownership and control over building IT infrastructure, Thomas says the organization shifted away from "replacement mode"--hiring to stem attrition--and toward a proactive, skills-based approach to build new teams. This allows ETS to rapidly increase the number of hires each quarter, which is critical to supporting in-house projects and activities. We've seen a shift in how companies attract and retain top tech talent in the past few years. As the Un-carrier, we knew we needed to be responsive and adaptive to stay competitive. I'm proud of the transformative changes we've made so far within ETS, and we're already seeing tremendous results through Workforce Transformation.We write job descriptions to attract a wide range of candidates, and a hiring committee chosen from a pool of more than 300 current team members interviews qualified candidates. Jennifer Kronberger, director of Workforce Transformation and the Laboratory program, describes this as a pipeline approach. "This approach takes the heavy lifting off the hiring manager because by the time a candidate gets to that interview stage, they've already been vetted by a group of Brian King
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