Interview with the Fairbanks and 42on HR executive

Interview with the Fairbanks and 42on HR executive

At Fairbanks and 42on we just love open source! And 2022 was another beautiful year for us, filled with open source awesomeness and challenges. As a company we are always looking forward, but for this blog, let’s look back for a minute.

To gain another inside perspective, we have interviewed our HR executive for this blog, Sophie Harmsen. So, let’s dive in and see how Sophie looks back at 2022.

What was the most remarkable event to you in 2022, related to HR? 
This year definitely our enormous expansion stands out. We were able to welcome a lot of new customers and did some very interesting support projects. For me this meant I have had my focus on recruiting new open infra experts most of the year. To get a good fit and stand out between all companies looking for employees, I dove in special possibilities and wishes of potential employees. And with all our current colleagues and new colleagues we made sure we did what delivered on our promises, and offer flexible hours, bring a fantastic technical culture and continue to limit commuting time. These points are increasingly important to communicate clearly to potential new employees.

What has been the best HR related development to you, this year? 
When I started in 2019, I was mainly concerned with recruitment and administrative tasks. Now I can also focus on adding value to our employees. For example ’employer branding’ or professionalizing how to facilitate and engage staff and to continuously improve this. With these developments, I see more room to improve as a great company to work for and therefore also to be more successful.

What did you find a specific challenge for HR? 
In particular, sourcing people with the right expertise remains a challenge. Especially because both Fairbanks and 42on are growing very fast and a lot of specific technical knowledge is needed to facilitate this growth.

Apart from HR, what was your most positive experience in 2022? 
I personally really liked the activities we did with the various teams. For example, we went to France where we discussed topics like, the strategy, sustainability and future plans, but above all had a lot of fun together. Moreover, we also discussed what we consider important in the development of open source software and possible improvements for it.

To see how passionately our colleagues talk about their field of work and its future, made a huge impression on me. During COVID we were forced to work mostly from home and we learned that we can do our jobs very well remotely. Since then, our teams work mostly from home and don’t see each other and other teams every week; with some colleagues even living and working abroad. During these social events I saw that everyone had a great time and grew closer together. Such events have proven to still be essential to become a close-knit organization instead of an organization with ‘’separate islands’’.

What developments would you like to see for HR next year? 
I would like to pay more attention to sustainable employability. I also want to make a further contribution to brand awareness in the field of employer branding. We’ve had quite a bit of growth with this, but I think our unique proposition is still of added value for both open source users and engineers.

That was the interview. What are your thoughts on the interview and 2022? Let us know in the comment section.

If you would like to read how our CTO looks at 2022 you can do so through the following link: https://fairbanks.nl/what-our-cto-thinks-of-2022/

We are hiring!
Are you our new