Your Guide to Getting a Job at Aimsio

Attracting amazing new people to our company is critical to our success at Aimsio! We agonize over the words we use in our job postings and the interview process for the selected candidates. We do our best to ensure that, once you sign a job offer, you will be successful in your new role with us.

So, given we’ve put this much time and effort into our talent processes, we figured we may as well share them with you! We hope this article will help you complete your application and prepare for the interview, if your application is selected.

First, we want you to know our mission: We want to find a candidate who will love their job at Aimsio, and be successful while doing it! While it may be frustrating to not get an offer, we’re doing our best to find people whose knowledge, skills, and abilities will help them succeed in our roles. We’re not perfect, but we try our hardest to accomplish that mission.

Applying to a position at Aimsio.

The most important thing I want applicants to know: We READ your resumes! And your application responses! We do not run the applications through a bot to find keywords. And many of our roles require artistic flare. For example, an Implementation Developer at Aimsio must create aesthetically-appealing web forms for our clients. So if you have a stylized, templated version of your resume, please use that one! The text-based resume that sites like Indeed pump out have their purpose, but not at Aimsio.

All our applications start with this question: What made you apply (ie. cover letter). Since we actually READ your resume, don’t waste your time re-writing your resume in this field. And you don’t need a lengthy answer for this question! Just tell us why you’re interested in this job. Often the answer to this is “because this is the thing I’m good at doing, and I can prove it because of these examples”. Many of our roles are customer-facing and hence require good business English communication so please proof-read your answers. Depending on the position you’re applying for, it can make all the difference for your application.

Final note, in exchange for reading your application, we need you to read our postings! We try to be clear about what we’re looking for so you can tweak your resume and response to help us understand if you have it. For example, most of our postings specify resumes must be submitted in PDF format. Don’t test us on this one. Opening a Word document in our system adds a step for our hiring team (PDFs are automatically previewed) and we just can’t do it. We’ll read your (PDF) resumes, but you have to make it easy for us. Help us, help you!

The Interview process

After you submit your application, it may be a little while before you hear from us. We often let applications pile up a bit before we start reviewing them. 

If we do follow up with you, you’ll get an email from us, (in fact, usually from me!) to invite you to start the process.

In almost all cases, the following stages occur (though, not always in this order):

1. HR Screen. In this quick 30-minute video call, you get to talk to me! This is not a stressful interview you have to prepare for. Really, this is our chance to sell Aimsio to you and learn a bit more about your experience and background. Be ready to talk about your skills and experience, and to ask questions! Fair warning, we’ll be discussing compensation in this meeting, just to make sure we’re in the same ballpark when it comes to salary.
2. Technical challenge. Almost all our roles have some aspect of a technical challenge to help us see a sample of your work. We do our best to keep them short and they’ll be different for each role. We are impressed by attention to detail and demonstration of thought being put into the assignment. And we like having fun, so feel free to show us your personality in the assessment. Where possible, we invite as many candidates as we can to this stage. Sometimes people who are given a chance surprise us, even when on paper they might not seem like the right fit. This helps us foster diversity in our candidate pool and at our company.
3. Technical interview. This is when you’ll get to meet the hiring manager, and likely also another member of the team you’ll be joining. We’re small, and we want you to meet as many of your future coworkers as possible before you have to make any big commitments about signing an offer letter. In this interview, the hiring team will dive deeper into the results of your technical challenge. They’ll ask you about what you did and why you did it. They may also have other questions for you since it is usually their first time to meet you. 
4. Founders interview. Or as we call it at Aimsio, “Meet the Beasts” (a reference to the old video games where the final level required you to challenge “the beast”). For most roles, this is a short, and very casual interview with at least one of our founders. (Although occasionally, this constitutes the Technical Interview, and in this case it’s longer and more involved: don’t worry, you’ll know which kind it is before you book it!) Regardless of the complexity, it’s as much an opportunity for us to sell Aimsio to you as for you to sell yourself. Be yourself, and ask any questions you might have up until that point.

If you’ve made it through all those steps, it’s now time for the offer letter stage, and reference checks. Due to our SOC 1 certification, we must complete reference checks for all new hires, so please have them ready. We’re looking for at least one (ideally two) professional references, people who have worked with you in a professional setting and can attest to your work. If you do not have previous work experience, just let us know and we can make a plan together.

Once an offer letter is drafted, we will usually call you to review it, tell you all the great benefits you’ll get, and discuss the timelines. Then you’ll get the oh-so-exciting email with the actual offer letter and a summary of our benefits attached. Read it over, think it over, ask us a million questions if you need to. It’s a big decision. We understand! We hope you’ll decide to join us. If you do, sign it (digitally, if you can) and send it back our way.

After that, the real fun starts, and we will be with you every step of the way as the onboarding begins!

Now, of course not everyone who applies for a job opening at Aimsio ends up with a job offer. Sad but true. If you’ve heard from us at any point along the way, and you do NOT get progressed, you will be notified, typically with an email. Please don’t get discouraged. We do our best to select candidates we think will be successful, and just because you are eliminated from one role does not mean you will not be considered for others. Try again!

However, if you sent in an application and did not hear back at all, please don’t be mad at us. We do our best to send notifications to all candidates, but on high-volume roles, it’s just not possible. If you have not heard back on an application within about 3 weeks, we’ve probably moved on with other candidates, and we hope you’ll consider applying again to a future opportunity with Aimsio. 

We know job-hunting is a stressful time, and application and interviewing can be time-consuming and stressful! We hope this overview will help you feel more comfortable taking a chance on us. Because we love making new friends at Aimsio.