How we became a LATAM talent hub

What problem are we trying to help with ?

In a world full of opportunities, where every company is a technology company, we face an overwhelming demand for talent in the IT industry (i.e developers, designers). In this context, the main problem all companies are facing nowadays, in every industry (not just in the IT sector), is the lack of available talent to hire and engage with their own development initiatives.

So, the problem is in fact grounded in two problems:

• Difficulties to find available people
• Difficulties to find the right people with the expected mix of hard and soft skills to join the team.

Why do we focus on soft skills ?

The business world tends to despise soft skills or interpersonal skills, considering it in the best of hypotheses, something merely complementary to hard skills, which are specific knowledge or technical skills. This point of view is a setback. It is necessary to change paradigms to change interactions.

Soft skills (like passion and empathy) lead hard skills (like programming, operations, and project skills) to rare effectiveness. How ? Soft skills connect hard skills to operational productivity, organizational synergy, and commercial relevance because all of this requires a solid human commitment.

Hard skills can be tested, taught and transferred. Most of the business or programming books are written based on that idea, because we can monitor the progress of hard skills in detail (both individually and corporately) with tables, metrics or reports.

This is not what happens with soft skills. It is difficult to reduce them to stages. They are often confusing and can only be quantifiable when we get better relationships in response. 

Individuals and companies insensitive to the success of soft skills are being left behind. Some claim that it is impossible to teach someone to have these more subtle skills. This is true when approaching soft skills with hard skills methodologies. When we behave in a way to make friends and influence others positively, we dive into a well full of inspiration, meaning and versatility.

We all have the desire for honest communication (both to understand and to be understood). We also want to make authentic connections (to be known, accepted, and valued). We want to build successful partnerships, work together to achieve meaningful achievements, be it a business success, a great product, or a long term relationship. The essence of success lies on a spectrum between an authentic human connection (making friends) and a significant and progressive impact (influencing people).

Who we have helped ?

During  2019 and 2020 the team at Lithium have helped dev teams from clients in the UK, USA, Israel, Argentina, Chile and Mexico.

We work directly with final customers, which are mainly software development companies small to medium size. In other opportunities we help our partners to build the right team, to participate in projects for their final customers.

We have participated in projects in the following industries:

• Banks (Argentina)
• Unicorn startups from Mexico, who are expanding to many countries in Latin America
• eCommerce Platforms (Argentina)
• Paper Mill Companies (Chile)
• Delivery and Logistics (Argentina)
• Media companies (Israel)
• eCommerce websites (UK)
• Gaming and Quizzes Apps (USA)
• Digital devices (USA)

Our rockstars

Today Lithium has more than 20 collaborators in its team, with developers, designers and devops from Uruguay, Argentina and other Latin American countries.

The team is full of rockstars experts in different technologies and disciplines like: UX/UI, mobile native or hybrid development (Android, iOS, React Native, Flutter), web development (Javascript, React, Angular, PHP, Ruby on Rails, NodeJS), enterprise development (Java + Springboot).

Our work modality is mainly remote, which allows us to collaborate with talents located not only in the big capitals, but with incredible people who combine their passion for technology and a relaxed lifestyle, working from small cities of the country, to the countryside or cute coastal destinations.