The tech market has been in a constant state of competition for talent for years. Companies no longer compete only with salaries or benefits packages but with ways of working, speed of growth and real impact they offer their teams. Candidates, in turn, are increasingly looking for environments that allow them to grow faster than the market and do so in a deliberate way.
In this context, recruitment stops being an operational process and becomes a strategic function. It is the moment when an organization defines its future. At GR8 Tech, a global tech company with 1,000+ employees across 40+ countries, hiring is approached not as a support function but as a key driver of business growth and long-term capability building – an investment in people who not only respond to today’s business needs but also shape its direction tomorrow.
At GR8 Tech, the starting point is not a list of technologies or years of experience. The key question is whether a candidate thinks like a challenger. Do they have a natural drive to question the status quo, look for better solutions and operate in an environment that does not always provide ready answers?
This approach comes from the company’s history of growing while competing with more established players in the tech market. The challenger mindset is not a marketing slogan but a practical way of working. In reality, it means people who do not wait for instructions but take ownership and build solutions in conditions of change.
As Daria Bendas, Talent Acquisition Specialist explains:
“We are not looking for perfect CVs because they rarely translate into real impact inside the organization. We focus on how people think, whether they can operate in uncertainty, whether they take ownership, whether they are willing to challenge decisions if they see a better way. Experience matters, but mindset determines how that experience is used here.”
EVP as the foundation of hiring
The hiring philosophy at GR8 Tech is built on three EVP pillars that define the real employee experience: challenge, growth and impact.
Challenge means working in a complex and dynamic environment where decisions directly affect both product and business. These are not isolated tasks but projects embedded in a global context, from system architecture to scaling platforms across multiple markets.
Growth goes beyond access to courses or training programs. It means early responsibility and proximity to decision makers. In practice, engineers or product managers have a real influence on decisions that in many organizations happen much higher up the hierarchy.
Impact refers to scale. GR8 Tech builds solutions for global iGaming operators, which means that the outcomes of the teams’ work are visible across multiple regions. It is an environment where technology and product decisions translate into tangible business results.
How recruitment reflects the EVP
What distinguishes GR8 Tech is the consistency between declared values and candidate experience. The recruitment process is not just about selection, it is the first real touchpoint with the company culture.
Conversations focus not only on what candidates have done but how they made decisions, how they reacted under pressure and how they worked with others. Context matters, whether someone operated in environments requiring independent thinking or mainly followed predefined paths. To make this evaluation more consistent and objective, we use structured interviews that allow us to assess candidates across clearly defined criteria, ensuring alignment with both role requirements and ways of working.
We also incorporate a values-based assessment into the process, not as a strict pass-or-fail element, but as a way to better understand how a candidate’s approach aligns with our culture, decision-making style and expectations around ownership and collaboration.
Anastasiia Surzhenko, Talent Acquisition Team Lead, approaches it in a similar way:
“For me, understanding how someone makes decisions is critical. You can learn technology, but changing the way someone thinks is much harder. I look for people who can act fast but still stay deliberate and who are not afraid to take responsibility for the final outcome.”
At the same time, we place a strong emphasis on hiring leaders who can operate effectively in uncertainty. This means individuals who are comfortable making decisions without complete information, can navigate ambiguity and are able to create clarity for their teams even in rapidly changing environments.
This approach turns recruitment into a natural cultural filter. Candidates who resonate with this environment can already see during the process what they can expect once they join.
From challenger to champion
Hiring is not the end of the journey but the beginning. GR8 Tech intentionally designs its work environment to support employees in becoming champions, people who not only deliver results but elevate standards across the organization.
This path is not defined by a single formal program. It is the result of combining autonomy, access to knowledge and a strong feedback culture. Employees can move between roles, work on different products and grow in directions aligned with their ambitions.
In practice, this means that an engineer can move within a few years from working on a single component to co-creating system architecture for platforms operating across multiple markets. A product manager may take ownership of an entire business area with direct impact on its results.
One of such journeys is Serhii’s story. He joined GR8 Tech as a Middle QA Automation Engineer, treating QA as his entry point into the tech world. Driven by curiosity and a clear goal to grow, he gradually took on more complex tasks, started working with C#, and deepened his understanding of the product and development processes.
“I’ve always wanted to be a developer – QA was just my way in. At the beginning, I focused on doing my job well, but over time I started picking up more complex tasks, learning C#, and trying to understand not just what we were building, but why. That perspective helped me grow faster and eventually step into development.”
– Serhii Velychko, Middle .NET Developer
Within a year, Serhii transitioned into a Middle .NET Developer role within the same team. His growth was not the result of a predefined path, but of ownership, mentorship, and the freedom to explore beyond his initial scope.
His story reflects how internal mobility at GR8 Tech works in practice – not as a formal program, but as an environment where initiative is noticed and supported, and where people can actively shape their own career paths.
As Oleksandra Borysenko, Head of Talent Acquisition, puts it:
“Our role is not just to hire for today. We are building an organization that needs to work in the years ahead, so we look for people who want to grow faster than their role. If someone comes in with the mindset of doing more than what is expected, we know they have the potential to become a champion.”
Recruitment as an investment in the future
In a world where technology evolves rapidly, competitive advantage rarely comes from the product alone. The key factor is people, their way of thinking, their ability to adapt and their readiness to operate in uncertainty.
GR8 Tech treats recruitment as a strategic tool to build this advantage. Instead of optimizing for speed, the company focuses on quality of fit and long term potential.
This approach creates a consistent organizational model, from the first interaction with a candidate through the employee experience to career development. As a result, GR8 Tech builds an environment where challengers not only find their place but have the space to become champions and actively shape the company’s future.
