Liberis software feature launched in 2 weeks with Makers Accelerator Programme

“Makers career switchers brought a culture add, but also perspective and new experience that we wouldn’t have seen in the traditional hiring process.”

Liberis exists to close the funding gap for small businesses and empower business owners. We caught up with Tito Sarrionandia, Director of Engineering at Liberis, who had previously worked with Makers graduates at ThoughtWorks and saw the quality and culture Makers graduates brought.

Tito tasked Makers with the goal of improving the pace of execution, ramping up collaboration and improving the product at Liberis through Makers Accelerator Programme, designed to help businesses find and hire exceptional, high performance engineers, from our graduate pool. The talent deployed were able to address these goals and deliver a new feature within two weeks. Read on to find out how.

Empowering engineering teams while scaling

Setting engineering teams up for success involves ongoing support and training. Tito saw the value of integrating career switchers, but Liberis was at a stage of growth and needed support, so he chose Makers Accelerator Programme to bring his goal to life.

“It’s pretty great having people that switch careers into tech, but I think it’s also quite a big change in your life to make that jump. Liberis is a scale up and realistically we just weren’t going to have the capacity to have a training and support programme that would be kept front of mind for the whole period of having folk from Makers onboard. Being able to have support on that was important; we would never have pulled that off internally.”

Reinventing hiring with career switchers

Makers come from diverse backgrounds and are trained in various skills over the 16 week bootcamp. Our inclusive but selective admissions process selects learners with a growth mindset; combined with the technical and EQ training they receive on the bootcamp, talent emerges from the programme with the skills to hit the ground running, problem solve and contribute new perspectives.

“I have always built teams where we have people from a variety of backgrounds and I knew that we could build better financial products if we had people from various backgrounds. One of the people that came from Makers was previously working as an accountant and that became a superpower. Everybody that we hired really brought something to the table that made our product better.”

The harmonious partnership between Liberis and Makers meant we were able to offer fast hiring and onboarding, where the skills of our learners matched Liberis’ goals.

“The hiring process and onboarding was super fast. From when we started the process to getting offers accepted was only 2 or 3 weeks. We really struggled to make a decision about who to hire, because there were so many candidates we wanted to hire, and ultimately only had so much capacity. That was pretty stand out — when you’re sitting there, with a list of 10 people and really want them all to join. The great thing about that was it really made us think about what’s important and what we value.”

We have seen the powerful impact of placing career switchers into tech teams. Our learners brought lived experience, skills and ambition which set them up for success at Liberis.

“One thing that’s been consistent is Makers really listen to what our priorities are as an organisation. For us, it was 100% about diversity of skills and backgrounds. Makers listened to what we needed and that came through in all our interactions with the candidate shortlist. That would have been unusual to find in our traditional hiring process and that really shone through.”

Adapting to new tech stacks

The Accelerator Programme offers flexible bridge training after the bootcamp. Learners undertook immersive training in Liberis’ specific tech stack so they were able to add value from day one in the team.

“What impressed me most is how quickly the accelerators got stuck into tech stacks they’d never seen before. We don’t programme in the same tech stack that the Makers bootcamp is done. We did bridge training where they had a flying introduction and then they transferred the skills that they learnt into our stack. I was a little bit apprehensive about that, wondering if that was going to be a sticking point, but it wasn’t at all. The accelerators launched a feature on week 2. They’re very much here to learn and driven and that’s great to have”.

What’s next?

“The Accelerator Programme has definitely met the goals that we set at the beginning. The accelerators do three rotations over one year and there’s a really good opportunity to cross pollinate ideas. We’re also discussing wider training options for more senior employees with Makers and are excited to see what comes next.”

Inspired to take your engineering team to the next level with the Makers Accelerator Programme like Liberis? Reach out to our partnership team at partnership@makers.tech to find out more.