Company Name: Symphony Services
Company Focus: Symphony Services is a global provider of product engineering outsourcing services dedicated to helping clients compress time to market, achieve higher innovation yields and improve productivity to increase the value from their R&D investments. Symphony brings domain-specific expertise and deep commercial-grade software and embedded real-time systems capabilities to its partnerships with independent software vendors, software-enabled businesses and embedded companies.
Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA, USA
Office Locations: Offices in North America, Europe and India
Web site: www.symphonyservices.com
Founded: 2002
Number of Employees: Over 3,000
Hiring Leaders:
C. Mahalingam, Senior VP and Chief People Officer, has more than 23 years experience in the field of human resources and has held senior executive positions with leading organizations. Prior to joining Symphony Services, Mali led HR for the India operations of IBM and Hewlett-Packard as well as Philips Software Center. At these companies Mali helped drive total employee delight to attain a position among the best employers. Mali is currently the president of the IT Industry HR Association, Bangalore and is on the National HR Committee of the Confederation of Indian Industry, New Delhi. He is a recipient of the prestigious Golden Jubilee Gold Medal for the Masters in Personnel Management & Industrial Relations, Loyola College, Chennai.
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Are you looking to hire on more IT staff this year, and if so, how many and in what skill areas?
Symphony is focused on high-end product and software engineering, software chain management and business performance management. These positions need special skills sets. Therefore, Symphony is always on the lookout for new talent and has an aggressive hiring plan. Symphony is constantly looking to hire employees who have at least two or three years of experience in Microsoft and Java programming, software change management, ERP, systems storage, CRM, quality assurance and testing.
Given all the news about the talent crunch, have you or are you finding it more difficult to find qualified IT professionals? If so, is any particular skill set in big demand or very scarce?
This is a very interesting question as I feel there is a supply of talent in India but the "crunch" is that this talent is not ready for deployment. This is where the "shortage" comes in. Therefore, this calls for a very strategic approach for sourcing talent. Everyone knows that India is a magnet for talent but the issue is where to look within India.
Symphony Services has an internal referral program called the High Five Program, which is a way for current Symphony employees to refer colleagues and friends to work under the Symphony brand. This is a great way for Symphony to qualify those who are applying to work at Symphony Services and to seek out high quality talent from the market. Almost 100% of employees end up staying on at Symphony Services.
Also, Symphony is unique in that even the president and CEO, Gordon Brooks, sits in on a council which was created to discuss what talent there is, how can Symphony can attract the best talent, how to improvement the program, and how to leverage the web site to attract the best talent.
What are your primary recruiting strategies? Do you work with recruiters, post jobs online, etc?
Symphony has a very holistic approach to recruiting talent. In addition to the High Five Program, Symphony also has Symphony University. Symphony University is a way to transition the recent grads to the high performance talent of a seasoned Symphony employee that Symphony clients have grown to except.
In addition to the High Five Program and Symphony University, Symphony uses a rigorous interviewing process, as well as posting jobs on sites such as Monster.com and on the Symphony web site.
What is the hiring process?
Symphony has a multi-step, rigorous hiring process. The first step is an initial screening of the applicant by a recruiter. Next, there is a thorough HR screening process. This process is to ensure that there is a cultural fit and to judge the seriousness of the applicant to the position of interest. This is one of the most important steps because Symphony makes an effort to recruit the best engineers and IT workers possible. They want employees who are passionate about the experience they will be getting at Symphony Services not just working under the Symphony brand.
After the HR screening process, the applicant is put through two rounds of technical interviews. This is where the applicant can shine in describing the experiences they have in the given field as well as their knowledge of the technology. After the technical interviews, the applicant goes through the final interview with the management team, usually with a project manager (or managers).
What makes for an outstanding potential hire?
A potential hire must have unmatched knowledge and skills in the given expertise area. They must demonstrate an absolute product mindset and use this mindset with the creation of high level products and by thinking "outside of the box." Along the same lines, Symphony employees must have the ability to innovate. This is a very important part of the culture at Symphony Services.
What are red flags you look for when reviewing resumes, doing interviews?
If a candidate is not able to specify significant accomplishments in their career, this means that the candidate might not have done high-level work at the previous position. This is a red flag we look for when hiring. Other red flags are frequent job hoping, inflated confidence, and inflated salary requirements.
I believe applicants can get frustrated on an interview if the interviewer is not one who is experienced in interviewing and is not asking the right questions.
All interviewers at Symphony Services go through a precise training program which allows them to ask the right questions, as well as have the answers to questions which may be asked by the applicant.
What kind of non-IT skills do your IT team members need, if any?
At Symphony Services, we believe the ability to innovate across all areas is the most important non-IT skill an employee can have.
How important is the cover letter in job queries?
I believe a cover letter can be useful to get an initial impression of the applicant but they are not a very important phase in the interview process.
Is the company's IT organization looking for certified skills?
In most of our recruitment efforts, we are looking for employees with Java or Microsoft certification. This technology needs proper certification. Also, to become a project manager at Symphony you must complete the certification which allows you to manage other employees.
Does the organization hire 'newbies' and invest in training and how well does that work, and if not, why not?
Symphony Services frequently hires recent graduates and enrolls them into Symphony University. This is program is vital to close the gap on the difference between recent grads and Symphony engineers. We have found that this process works very well in training the Symphony engineers of tomorrow.
What characteristics or personality traits do you want in a hire, and don't want?
A Symphony employee needs to be able to trust themselves and other teammates. Teamwork is a must. When you work at Symphony, you become part of a value system. Communication, collaboration, networking skills and eagerness to learn are also attributes which are important in a Symphony employee.
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