It Staff Recruitment: How to Find a DevOps Evangelist in 3 Weeks?

Finding the rarest talent in the market is a challenge we enjoy at Lucky Hunter. Our IT recruitment agency recently secured a true crown jewel — filling the DevOps Evangelist position for CloudLinux. This unique case highlights our expertise in IT recruiting, and we are excited to share this story with you.

Technical Recruitment: The Task

The requirements for the position were demanding — the candidate needed to have an excellent technical background and vast professional experience, as well as:

1

Linux kernel expertise.
2

Good communication skills. It goes beyond simply finding common ground with others — it requires proficiency in negotiation, participating in conferences and meetups, and having polished speech.
3

Proficiency in the English language.

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IT Staffing: Difficulties

CloudLinux’s HR team struggled to fill the vacancy for a long time. They encountered several difficulties:

1

The experts couldn’t find a candidate with equally strong hard and soft skills. The role demanded a person who could speak professionally about the company’s product, communicate a lot and train others while also having a strong technical background. This combination of skills is quite rare in the DevOps world.
2

In-house specialists struggled to find DevOps Evangelists with the necessary English fluency. They set the bar very high, which proved to be a rare skill in the market.

No suitable candidate seemed available, but tackling challenging tasks is our passion, so we took up the work with enthusiasm.

Hiring DevOps: How We Have Filled the Position?

We solved the client’s difficulties

The difficulties experienced by the client’s team helped us quickly identify bottlenecks in the selection process. We determined that the main problem was the limited availability of suitable specialists in the market. So, we decided to expand the search area and look for IT talent worldwide.

We expanded the candidate funnel by shifting focus to the global market, solving the problem of limited local specialists.

2. We built a candidate’s profile

Our ideal candidate had a strong DevOps background, international work experience, and was based in Europe.

We excluded the USA from our search, as the salaries of specialists from there tend to be significantly higher than the average market rate, exceeding our client’s budget.

We also determined that the ideal candidate should have either a PhD in a technical field or a master’s degree. An education in the scientific field provides strong technical skills but also develops a person’s communication skills.

3. We started the search

We were looking for specialists throughout all existing recruiting channels (LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, our database, and services for tech recruiting, such as Podbor. io, AmazingHiring, CVHub, GitHub platform etc).

Overall, we reviewed 254 CVs, sent over 234 emails, and conducted 7 interviews, leading us to find the long-awaited specialist within three weeks.

4. We built a motivational strategy, focusing on two main aspects:

1

The position
It was a rare role that stood out from other vacancies.
2

Unique tasks
We emphasised that there was no need to sell anything (this was what many experts were afraid of).

In addition, this role would allow the specialists to improve their communication skills and English proficiency. We specified that communication included more than just participation in conferences, meetups and team interactions.

The specialist would gain a unique opportunity to communicate with like-minded people in the field.

We also highlighted that since this was a newly created position within the company, the specialist would have a chance to implement their ideas and vision.

DevOps Recruitment: Result

As a result, we filled the role within three weeks after the job discussion. The profile of the hired candidate aligned with ours:

1

The specialist had experience working at the university for 15 years as a DevOps Engineer.
2

He was pursuing a PhD degree (technical field) at that time.
3

The candidate often spoke at conferences.
4

He knew Linux.
5

He had excellent English skills: the candidate was from Portugal and spoke English at a high level.

Success Factors

We:

Quickly understood why our client was unable to find a specialist for a long time;
Accurately defined the candidate’s profile;
Identified the key advantages of the position.

Like with every case, the professionalism of the Lucky Hunter team made a big difference, as did the principle of partnership — the core principle we follow in everything we do.

Review of Our Partnership

Misha Pobirsky

VP of Engineering, CloudLinux (Palo Alto, California)

Thanks to Lucky Hunter, we quickly filled several critical positions within the company, enhancing our teams' efficiency and performance. Lucky Hunter demonstrated excellent communication, responsiveness, and a strong understanding of our technical needs. Moreover, their commitment to results was truly impressive.

Read the full review on Clutch

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