Across the tech industry, employee turnover year over year stands at a stiff 13.2%, a high among verticals that reveals how volatile finding and keeping the right talent can be¹. It only gets more difficult when capturing developers in specialized fields like eCommerce given that the space requires individuals well-versed and certified in the wider platform ecosystem. As an agency, we soon realized the challenge in matching our rapid growth with an equally rapid hiring process – there were only so many developers that were certified for the use-cases we needed. 

That’s why we here at BORN Group have developed the Associate Training Program to cultivate talent internally and broaden our hiring capabilities. The program found its beginnings with BORN Group’s Head of Recruitment, Tiffany Ingersoll, who felt the acute pain of trying to cultivate a consistent stream of eCommerce-versed developers. Prior to BORN, she and Chris Connell, BORN’s SFCC Technical Lead, and Davis Devries, BORN Back End Developer, had experience in building Associate programs to hire and train more general developers to fill needed roles.

With the support of BORN Group’s Managing Director, North America, Minna Rhee, we were able to launch the program at the end of Q4 basing the initial launch out of BORN’s headquarters in New York, with a goal of welcoming new hires biannually. Prior to joining the program, our new team members were well versed across JavaScript, React, and other baseline skills, and then engaged in workshops to further their knowledge across the platforms we focus on.

With over sixty applicants, we ultimately hired 8 to participate in the program. Our new team members are a collection of curious and talented individuals, driven for the chance to polish their skill set and learn from BORN. The new program has proven to be an invaluable success that we look forward to replicating across other sectors of our business.

One participant of the Associate Training Program, Adam Weissman, spoke highly on the new opportunity citing, ‘I could not have imagined a more awesome kick-off to 2021 than this; since the moment I first learned about BORN and Tech Mahindra, what they’ve done, what they do, and the trailblazing work they’ll do in the future… I viewed them not only as a company but as something of a destination.’ BORN was a place that Adam felt he could be a brand evangelist from the get-go, and it is thanks to the Associate Training program that we have him with us today. 

With the Associate Training Program accepting its first round of applicants, we’re excited to see how we can better foster talent throughout the greater developer network. Adam’s words as well as the work of the team at large have proven to be a great milestone into fully fleshing out a process for internal hiring and education. We’re looking forward to the next round of our Associate Training program, slated in Q2, to cultivate new Business Analyst talent for the year.

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Footnotes:

¹ Employee Attrition Rate, March 25th, 2020  https://devskiller.com/attrition-rate-in-tech/