Motius

The Talent Journey — Turning Our Vision Into Reality

Motius' vision is to become the best place for techies. In this blog post, we explain how we turn such an abstract vision into reality. Read more!

December 2022
13
min read
Motius GmbH
The Best Place for Techies
R&D Company since 2013
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Today, we will have a look at the key elements of the Talent Journey. You will find out which ideas and principles we built this crucial Motius element on.

The Underlying Challenge

As we all know, tech companies are just as good as their techies, i.e. engineers, developers etc. Logically, every tech company wants to have the best techies. Unfortunately, there is a dilemma: high demand meets scarcity because tech talents are rare. And even if companies manage to get tech talents, it is very hard to keep them on board for a long time. So the underlying challenge of managing talent can be summarized as “How do we attract, manage and keep the best techies?”. One of our approaches towards this challenge is the Talent Journey.

Why Did We Design the Talent Journey?

Our objective for the Talent Journey was to design incentive schemes and decision mechanisms in a way that makes Motius attractive for top tech talents and a place where they can grow and with that be the engine of growth for Motius. So how did we do that? What were our ideas to tackle this objective? We can see this along with the following four keys.

Key #1: The Talent Journey Gives Future Directions

Most often, (tech) talents have a lot of dreams and aspirations for their career and their future. They want to work on something impactful, they want their technologies to inspire others, they want to achieve something. The “something” is where the problem is. Developers and engineers know where they want to go, but they do not know how to get there. This is something we wanted to tackle with the Talent Journey.

As the first key, the Talent Journey provides concrete direction. Basically, it is like a roadmap: it visualizes where a talent can go to, what happens on the way and what it requires to reach the destination. Do you wonder what this process actually looks like?

Already before starting at Motius, we try to match individual needs and desires to the different paths of the Talent Journey. Then we take the Talent Journey as an orientation blueprint. It helps to visualize the different possible paths for the future which every Motee can use to define his own preferred way. Together, we then align Motee with Motius. We evaluate which path is the best and show the concrete steps along the way. Of course, we also outline how this particular path helps the Motee to achieve his goals.

But what happens if a Motee does not know where he wants to go? Good that you ask. Our Talent Journey always provides Motees with numerous different opportunities for the future. By giving concrete paths and information about possible roles at Motius, we can easily get to the point where the Motee feels ready to go, actually knowing where he is going to go.

On top of that, the Motius office is full of role models. So if a new Motee is not sure about what to do, he can always approach different Motees from different paths and roles to make the Talent Journey tangible and get an impression of what his future could look like. To be honest, we are quite proud to say that we have numerous Motees who went all the way from, for example, joining our Talent Pool to becoming Tech Specialist Vl. And actually, this development is the second key to our journey.

Key #2: The Talent Journey Drives Constant Development

Once a Motee enters the Talent Journey, he enters a path of constant development. As there are a lot of different aspects that can enable such development, let us have a look at some of them.

First of all, there is the main part of our work at Motius: innovative customer projects. The project teams are interdisciplinary and depending on the stage you are at, you can have different roles. So, whereas Project Owners (or as we call them: PrOs), depending on the project, work at the interception of technical project management and product owner, Tech Specialists are mostly involved in strategic project tasks.

Such project-based working in interdisciplinary teams with different roles has several advantages. For example, it helps to make each Motee better at what he does but also improves interpersonal skills. Moreover, there are a lot of insights into e.g. staffing, offer creation, customer relationship management, etc. Throughout different projects, Motees can have different responsibilities and changing tasks. This ensures constant excitement — a key factor for employee happiness.

But the Talent Journey does not just provide professional development. A crucial part of it is also self-development. Basically, self-development is without boundaries. Do you want to improve your soft skills? Maybe try giving an Info talk. You want to build this crazy thing you have always dreamed about? Do it in the next Motius Discovery round. Do you want to specialize in a certain tech field with a nanodegree? We will find a way to support you!

The one thing that drives constant development is a regular reassessment. You cannot know whether you really are improving, developing or even just staying on your track if you do not reassess your situation and goals on a regular basis.

So we periodically sit down with our Motees to make sure that they are on the path that they want to be on and that they are progressing towards the next stage. This enables us to make sure that Motee and Motius are still aligned, that our actions have the desired outcome and that we all, company and Motee, go where we want to go. One of the key elements of pretty much every goal is an impact which in fact is the third key of the Talent Journey.

Key #3: The Talent Journey Enables Real Impact

As we have mentioned before, Motius was founded to enable techies to have the impact they deserve. It is what we have been doing from the very beginning and it is what we will always do. Obviously, the Talent Journey needs to incorporate this desire as well. So what do we do to make that happen?

One of the most important aspects is that with us, techies get into actual contact with customers if they want to. Unlike in many other companies, techies do not act in the background as the unknown (and often unvalued) developers and engineers, but they are right out there with the customer. That means acquiring projects, developing ideas and iterating on feedback on a level that most techies, unfortunately, do not get to at other companies. We make that possible through our roles in the Talent Journey. These roles clarify that Motees will be working with the customer, not for them. So they will actually see the impact they are making and get the recognition they should.

Besides combining such techie and business aspects of work, as we have mentioned in Key #2, we provide numerous activities to expand the impact beyond the daily project work. We encourage Motees to write blog articles, we enable speaker and networking events, we support hackathon participations. All of this helps us to become the best place for techies because it maximizes the impact that a Motee has on the real world.

Another aspect that we want to make clear again is that our Talent Journey is our way to show that we do not limit impact possibilities from above. We believe that we need to enable every Motee to have the impact he wants to have. So this comes down to very individual pathways. Consequently, this is our last key — individuality.

Key #4: The Talent Journey Maximizes Individual Pathways

Our last key is very straightforward. Throughout this blog post, we made clear that the Talent Journey is not a one-size-fits-all tool. Instead, it is a framework that gets customized for every Motee. The paths are like a blueprint for every individual journey. We do that to provide individual direction, development, and impact within our collectivistic company culture. Basically, this individuality is our way to celebrate every single Motee — because they deserve it.

How the Talent Journey Drives Us Towards Our Vision

The Talent Journey is a crucial step towards becoming the best place for techies. It is a self-reinforcing, collaborative, customizable part of our company structure, set up in pursuit of our vision. Through concrete direction, constant development, real impact, and maximum individuality, we make Motees happy and become the best place for techies.In the next blog post, we will have a look at the Talent Journey from yet another perspective. To give you a hint, we will dive into detail and explain how everything is linked to our core values. Up until then, make sure to check out our job openings to soon get your own individual Talent Journey.

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