Some people’s dream job consists of coding and developing all day, while for others, it’s all about playing games. At Tiggly, a connected play and learning toy company founded in 2013, it’s a mix of both.
Tiggly was founded by three partners with backgrounds in business and early childhood development, and currently has 12 employees. The team of designers, programmers, early childhood learning professionals and business/marketing experts create fun, learning toys that interact with apps that young kids play on a tablet.
So what do you need to know to work at Tiggly? For starters, says co-founder and Chief Learning Officer Azadeh Jamalian, you need a passion for play.
What do you look for in a new hire?
Shared passion, having the right skill set, being excited to constantly learn and improve, and having an attitude that fits within the company’s culture. We also look for people who bring different skills to the team. Our three programmers for example each have different styles of working, prefer different type of coding challenges and approach coding problems differently. This allows them to collaborate really effectively.
Tiggly is a company that makes toys and apps for kids. When you look for developers and coders, is the joy of creating “play” an incentive?
Absolutely. In our interview process we ask for the candidate’s favorite game/app – not just games for kids but games they had actually played for their own leisure. That helps us to learn about the candidate’s passion about play and their insight into the industry. We also ask them to critique our games and share with us ideas for future products. A golden candidate is the one who provides insightful critiques and is excited to build the future of Tiggly with the rest of the team members.
What makes someone's application stand out?
Having experience in the relevant field which in our case is children’s interactive design and media. We do not necessarily look for minimum job experience – in fact some of our best engineers joined Tiggly right after they had completed their master’s degree. What’s more important is a playful portfolio that demonstrates excitement about children’s learning and play.
Another important factor is having complementary skill sets to what our team already has. Every team member should bring a fresh viewpoint into the process, challenge our norms, and strive to build something even better.
We also put emphasis on a take-home coding challenge that we give each engineer. By looking at what they are actually able to build we get a sense for skill-set, attention to detail and motivation. We do not judge based on how well people followed the instructions, but instead how much love and passion they put into the project.
Do most engineering and developer jobs require a specific degree?
Most of our hires have a degree in computer science and interactive design. That being said, we do not disqualify candidates without a computer science degree if they have experience in designing playful apps and are excited to build their next best thing.
What are some of the most in-demand skills needed to work at a tech company today?
Be a fast learner, have an adaptive personality, and be able to work with people with diverse background and with different expertise.
How do you spot an innovative thinker?
Asking them questions that require them to think on the spot, and then evaluating their thought process instead of their actual answer.
What's the #1 thing you look for in a resume?
Clear description of their past projects, their role in each project, and the outcomes. The most disappointing experience is seeing a list of clichés that only sound smart but don’t really help to learn what’s unique about that candidate.
How do you sell people on the company’s culture and vision?
We try to be as clear as possible in explaining our vision – the goal is not to describe the vision in a way to make it appealing to that specific candidate but to evaluate together if there is a shared vision.
We also introduce the candidate to the rest of our team in their actual working environment, give them a chance to introduce themselves, and encourage them to ask questions about the company’s culture from the team members. This way, the management team will not describe their dream culture but give the candidate a chance to experience it firsthand.
How do you work to encourage women to pursue careers in tech?
By forgetting about their gender and instead focusing on their knowledge and skill sets – this means giving all team members (men and women) equal chance to contribute in the project design and development, encourage them to keep questioning what we do and offer ways we could improve things, and to acknowledge their contributions
