Why we are believers in a pre-employment work experience

The success of most companies hinges on their people. Yet, as anyone who has played a role in hiring knows, finding people who are the right fit is hard - really hard. Layer on the complexities of the last year at work and the demands of a startup, and at Valence we knew our hiring practices needed to evolve.

That’s why this past October when hiring a Product Manager, we added a step to our hiring process: a pre-employment work experience. This concept, developed by Automattic, is just as it sounds - prospective hires go through a short, time-bound, paid work experience, working alongside the team to gauge mutual fit before signing on full time.

“Before we started doing pre-employment work experiences,” says Dominik Strohmeier, Head of Product and Data at Valence, “we often found that candidates would seem a good match based on their interviews, but when it came to doing the work in week 1 - to apply creative thinking, to get their hands dirty - the fit wasn’t there.”

Our first pre-employment work experience was for the Product Manager role and was overseen by Dominik. We structured high-value projects for the candidate with clear success metrics, then ran a 2-week pre-employment work experience that included daily feedback. The process demanded a lot from both the candidate and Dominik, but the return was invaluable. Dominik quickly learned how the candidate worked, along with strengths, blindspots, and growth potential. Meanwhile, the potential hire got a real sense of what it’s like to work at Valence.

“The pre-employment work experience was my greatest professional development experience to date,” says Kirsty McLaughlin, Product Manager at Valence. “I received so much feedback and quickly understood what would be  expected of me at Valence.”

We’ve undertaken a series of pre-employment work experiences since our first experiment with Kirsty last October. Here’s what we’ve learned about making pre-employment work experiences a powerful step in our hiring process. 

1. Make it mutually beneficial

We are explicit about why we have pre-employment work experiences following the normal recruitment process. A lot of candidates are initially taken aback and want to know why, after a rigorous, multi-step recruitment process, we aren’t yet confident they’re the right fit. We speak to the importance of working alongside each other to really understand if it’s the right fit - for both of us.

Knowing this, we are quick to jump in with our take on the mutual benefit - saying things like ‘we want you to give us a test run - we don’t want any surprises for you on day 1’. When clearly positioned, candidates can immediately see that this is an exciting opportunity to try a company and a role before signing on. 

Ryan Ackerman, now a Client Solutions Associate with Valence, completed his pre-employment work experience in January 2021. "I admit that at first, I was slightly skeptical of the pre-employment work experience period,” he says. “Yet, that time built my confidence that while the responsibilities were different from what I'd done before, I would be able to step into the role and knock it out of the park.”