Createment and Info Support Help Tax Office Recruit Java Developers

When Patrick Biesheuvel and Jeroen van der Made worked at an IT training company several years ago, they had a lot of ideas for improving the market. But because they did not have enough say with their employer, they could not put those ideas into practice. So they decided to start their own company together to train the best people: Ontwikkelaars in Ontwikkeling (Developers in Development).

“We have seen a shortage of IT professionals in the labor market for years because the demand keeps increasing and the supply of good IT professionals lags behind. Especially developers are very scarce,” says Patrick. “At the same time, there is a surplus of people with a college or university education who have a great affinity for IT. We have developed a methodology with which we test that affinity and thus find the best candidates. That way we can create our own supply that matches the demand in the market.”

That methodology is called Createment and consists of five phases. “We call it the five O’s,” explains Jeroen, “Discovery, Research, Development, Support and Transfer.” Working with Info Support, the IT training company applied its methodology to train Java developers and Solution Engineers for the Tax Office.

In the first phase, Discover, we look for the perfect candidates through various channels,” says Jeroen. “We look not so much at IT knowledge or specific skills, but at the person. In a workshop together with the Tax Office, we first discussed what type of person they were looking for. Such a workshop also forces our client to think about exactly what kind of employees they need. With that information, we start looking specifically for candidates that fit the client.”

Then comes the second phase, Investigate. “We then determine whether the candidates are suitable for IT training,” Jeroen summarizes. This is a tough phase for the candidates: only one in ten succeed. “In addition to two online assessments, the Personal Profile Analysis and the General Intelligence Assessment, we also take a Technical Assessment,” Patrick adds. “That’s a three-day program in which we gauge candidates’ ability to learn programming. The candidates are then required to solve problems independently. From the questions they ask and the way they approach those problems, we can properly gauge who has the right mindset for IT. And, of course, we also conduct a job interview, from which we want to learn, among other things, why the candidate wants to work in IT.”

The goal of the third phase, Develop, is simple: to prepare the candidates so that they can contribute as software developers right at the start of their secondment period. “In this phase, we called on the expertise of Info Support,” says Jeroen. “Info Support gave the trainees four months of training to become Java developers and solution engineers, so that they could then start work at the Tax Office.”

Of course, the trainees were not alone once they started working at the Tax Office, Jeroen stresses, “In the Support phase, we kept our finger on the pulse, both with the trainees and with our client. For example, every two weeks we discussed progress with the Tax Office. Do the candidates fit into the team? Is the workload okay? What trainings do the trainees still need to attend?”

The final phase is the Transfer. Jeroen concludes, “After a year in the previous phase, we transfer the trainees to our client as junior software developers. In the meantime, the Inland Revenue has given the first ten trainees we hired from them all a contract. This proves that Info Support’s training is thorough and our Createment methodology works.” The brand-new employees are also given a training plan for the next two years so that they can continue their development.

Patrick and Jeroen are very pleased with their cooperation with Info Support: “We have experienced Info Support as a highly professional club: they keep all agreements and they are open to our comments,” says Jeroen. Patrick adds: “We had a good contact with the teacher at Info Support. We sat with Info Support and the Tax Office regularly to fine-tune the training program.”

About that training itself, both men have nothing but praise. Jeroen: “We both come from training companies, so we know the world a little bit. We know that Info Support’s training programs are the best. So we thought it made sense to work with them.” That was also the opinion of the trainees: they described the training as a good mix between new material and practice, with clear objectives and a thoughtful instructor.