News UK builds 170 person tech team in 7 months
CTO Christina Scott helps create a team doing everything from operations and infrastructure support to data science and app development
News UK, the publisher behind The Times and The Sun newspapers, has created a 170-strong technology team in a little over seven months.
Speaking to Computing recently, News UK CTO Christina Scott, formerly Chief Information and Product Officer at the Financial Times, explained that the new team was built in part to in-house work previously carried out by outsourcer HCL.
"When I moved to News UK, I said to the management team that I want to build a team outside London, as it's expensive and difficult to keep hold of talent here," said Scott. "So we built a team in India, in Banglaore. From the start in April 2016 we've managed to build a complete team of 170 people, in new offices which have been purpose-built for us. They're doing everything from operations and infrastructure support, to software development, including working on the the Sun mobile and web apps."
She added that the new hires are replacing previous teams, but contractors.
"Previously we had lots of contractors. We moved from an outsourcing contract with HCL to bring the work in-house with the team in India. And they're work complements everything we do in London. The idea is it's just one tech team, I don't care if the work's done in India or here."
Scott explained that News UK used innovative recruitment techniques to secure the right talent, including hackathons.
"Data scientists are very hard to get, so it's worth investing in a team where you can build up their skills over time. So they may not have 20 years of data science behind them, but get right people with maybe a few years, and then you can build up their experience.
"We worked with HackerEarth, and ran a data-based hackathon over a weekend. We let it be known there were jobs available at the end. We had 1,500 people apply, then 40 attended, and we recruited the best four. That also brings great PR around the company we built out there, as the offices are amazing which creates a buzz. So it works as both a marketing and recruitment tool."
The organisation has also been recruiting in the UK, where Scott recently brought in outside help.
"My mission in life is to make News UK, whether in India, London or anywhere, a destination for technologists. When I arrived, it's not that we had a bad reputation, we had no reputation. We were never speaking at conferences or putting ourselves up for awards."
[Turn to page 2]
News UK builds 170 person tech team in 7 months
CTO Christina Scott helps create a team doing everything from operations and infrastructure support to data science and app development
Scott explained that her teams worked on understanding what values they wanted News UK known for, but also that those values had to be real, rather than purely aspirational.
"There's no point attracting people on values you don't actually have, as they'll join and be disillusioned. So we did a piece on values and culture, and looked at where and how we're recruiting. People had a fixed idea of recruiting, you generally recruit people like yourself. So we looked at different methods, like internships, apprenticeships, and the back to work scheme from FDM [an organisation which helps people find work after career breaks]."
News UK also worked with Makers Academy, who send people on boot camps to learn to code, and other similar schemes who take PhD students with analytical ability and turn them into data scientists.
"We did AB testing to work on how we position our recruitment ads, looking at whether some ads did things like put women off from recruiting, trying to work on the best language to use."
The organisation also worked with recruitment agents, and changed the process which Scott described as originally being "horrible".
"We had a horrible process, making people jump through hoops and then taking three weeks to get back to them."
Having made the changes, News UK is now seeing itself able to out-compete some of the best-known firms technology firms for the top talent.
"We have now started seeing people accept our offers where they've also had offers from Google and Amazon, so they're choosing us above those companies. That wouldn't have happened without that work."