How the Wise Recruitment Team is adapting to the Coronavirus challenge
I’m Ben Craig, Head of Recruitment at TransferWise and I want to share an update for those thinking about, or in the process of applying for, a new role at Wise.
This is a very unsettling and challenging time for us all. Our main priority is the wellbeing of our team and offering a disruption-free service to our customers.
We’re still hiring
We still have a number of open roles, but we’re not going to pretend the situation is entirely business as usual. Coronavirus is impacting the number of new joiners we can practically onboard and sometimes relocate, while all working remotely.
This blog outlines the hiring situation as it stands for us today. Still, like all people and businesses, we’re closely monitoring the situation. We may have to make adjustments in future as we learn more.
Our team
We’re keeping a close eye on the situation and following government guidelines in the countries we work in.
All our employees are working from home to protect their own health and that of the wider community — we’re fortunate to be able to do this. Remote working has always been part of our culture, so we’re already set up to be operational for the long term.
We’ve been coming up with creative ways to stay connected and keep smiling such as our daily Yoga and meditation Zoom classes and workshops such as ArtWise, photography, cooking classes, virtual pub and Salsa for beginners.
Our Wiser cooking class run by one of our Engineers James
Our new starters
We currently have lots of new people joining us on our mission. We want to make sure we set everyone up for success from day one.
These are not normal circumstances, and there are lots of practical things that are challenging. Our teams have been working on the details. Things like couriering laptops to people’s homes, setting up relocators who have handed in their notice but are unable to move country, as well as shifting our in-person interview process and onboarding sessions to Zoom.
It’s been going smoothly – so far! In some areas, we’ve slowed down hiring as a precautionary step, in what is an unpredictable situation for all businesses.
We’ve also been coming up with inventive ways to help our 70+ remote new joiners get to know people and feel welcome, like our #borderless-meetwise Slack-bot which pairs people across the company together for a virtual chat!
Remote onboarding will continue while social distancing measures are in place.
Our graduate programme and internships
Our 2020 graduate programme will largely go ahead as planned in September. Whether you join us remotely or in-person depends on the status of the coronavirus situation at the time.
However, we’ve made the hard decision to postpone a number of graduate roles as well as our 2020 summer internship programme, as we don’t feel we’re able to offer the valuable in-person learning experience our candidates deserve.
We thank everyone who applied to our graduate programme and internships this year. Our recruiters have been in touch with all successful applicants, and we’re hoping some of you can instead join us for future opportunities and a Hackathon later this year.
We’re welcoming applications for a number of roles
You can find all our current open roles on our careers site here, and if you don’t see anything open for a specific team at the moment you can create an alert and we’ll email you as soon as new roles become available.
If you’re successful in your initial application, one of the recruiters will be in touch to begin a remote interview process.
One thing to bear in mind is that with current restrictions on global travel, it’s looking more and more unlikely we’ll be able to relocate any new joiners over the next few months. So we would encourage you to think about your current situation when applying for any of our roles overseas.
We recognise that remote working can be tough
It can be hard to work outside of our typical environment and routine. Some people feel isolated without their colleagues around to bounce off, and others (like myself) are juggling our jobs and childcare. I’ve had to adjust to my 3-year-old wanting to show me some worms during a Zoom call, and my 1-year-old pooping on me during a performance review! Thankfully I have a wonderful team who have been more than understanding.
We also have a dedicated Slack channel for #parents_and_carers to share tips and experiences. And a new HelpWise initiative where people can volunteer to support their self-isolating colleagues get things they need like food and medicine.
What’s important is that we have learned to be even more empathic and appreciate everyone’s situation.
A couple of cheeky visitors to our team daily standup!
We thank everyone for their understanding
We know this current situation is far from ideal and we’re proud of how well our teams have adapted and continued to focus on what’s best for our customers. In our most recent all team health survey, 96% of our Wisers felt confident in how we’re adapting to the pandemic for both our customers and our team. We’re definitely learning a lot along the way.
If you’re currently in our hiring process and have questions, please reach out to your recruiter who’ll be happy to help.
Take care,
Ben Craig and the Wise Recruitment Team
