The Centre for Energy Advancement through Technological Innovation (CEATI) is a user-driven organization that brings its electrical utility participants together to collaborate. Their goal: to advance the industry through the sharing and development of practical and applicable knowledge. Its participants are spread across 20 countries on 6 continents.
In addition to facilitating information exchange through its programs and industry conferences, CEATI International brings partners together to collaborate on technical projects with a strong practical focus and develops customised training solutions to fit the participants’ needs.
CEATI found themselves needing a custom, web-based interface to better accomplish this mission. And when they decided they wanted to have a full-time employee dedicated to creating and maintaining this, they came to DistantJob.
David Vines, the Operations Manager at CEATI International, sat with us at our virtual desk to talk about his DistantJob hiring experience:
DistantJob:
Tell me a bit about the experience of finding the person you needed. Why did you decide to go with DistantJob on this? How was finding the person, hiring, and putting him to work like?
David Vines:
It was fairly smooth getting him on. He was referred by Sharon [Koifman, President of DistantJob]. It worked out really well in the sense that the programmer was quite good and it’s not like we had to search through multiple people or multiple CV’s – the first one was perfect.
DJ:
So what value do you feel he contributed to the company?
DV:
He was a bright guy. I was able to sit down regularly with him go over the development, review it. We used Skype, screen-sharing which worked out really well.
At the beginning, we set up weekly milestones. We would check in once a week for half an hour to review the development of the core platform. Then as we got to the end, where the changes were more small and nuanced we would meet about once a day for anywhere between 5 and 15 minutes, just to see how things were going to make sure we were on track.
He was very fast at coding! He surpassed my expectations on that front. And in regard to really understanding what had to be done, once I explained it, he was on point every time.
DJ:
Can you go into a bit more detail on the work he did for you?
DV:
What he did is develop our customer portal interface. So, based off of some quick pen and paper mockups with some explanations on how certain links, functions, or features were supposed to work, he developed a website where customers can search and access the documents and information that they need, in an easy, professional and efficient way.
DJ:
How easy, or hard, was your experience compared to managing local employees?
DV:
I don’t know if it’s the DistantJob recruitment service in general or the programmer in specific, but he hit every single milestone. It was painless.
DJ:
Did this experience change your opinion of remote work?
DV:
I would say I had no opinion before, neither for it or against, but this experience definitely put it on the radar for me.
It’s always a treat to hear about how happy our clients are with the people we find for them.
DJ:Thank you, David and CEATI!
