Candidate Experience Meetup II Barcelona

Yesterday we celebrated our second meetup in Barcelona to talk about the Candidate Experience (the experience that a candidate has along the hiring process with a company). Lorena Rebenciuc, Talent Acquisition Specialist IT at FREE NOW, and Gianluca Rosania, Global Technical Recruitment Lead at Glovo, shared their CX practices with all of us and today we want to share their knowledge and tips with you. Keep reading!

The CX Notebook

LORENA REBENCIUC

“A cool name or brand doesn’t mean candidates should choose us and we have to have that clear when it comes to recruiting”

The Story of Recruitment at FREE NOW

“Right when I joined FREW NOW, I was overloaded with a lot of applications and interviews and Candidate Experience was not doing well”, says Lorena. They started to understand that a cool company name doesn’t guarantee them hundreds of hires and that they needed to do something about it. “64% of candidates say that a poor Candidate Experience would make them less likely to purchase goods and services from that employer” so it was definitely an inflection point for them.

Candidate Experience for FREE NOW

Lorena starts the talk by defining Candidate Experience as “past and potential future candidates’ overall perception of your company’s whole recruiting process. This is, from sourcing and screening to interviewing, hiring and finally onboarding”. In order to improve CX along all these stages, they follow some worth sharing practices:

1. Sourcing and Application Review: “when doing sourcing, we properly check who we send messages to. We’ve seen that when we focus on the right target, the response rate is much higher”. Lorena also mentions that referrals (candidates that have been recommended by other employees or network) move to the next stage, to guarantee at least a first interview.

2. First zoom: “we always do the first call through video since it is a great way to understand the candidates’ motivations. It is the perfect moment for me to be transparent regarding the job and our company”. Lorena explains that they share the steps of the process to the candidate in the first email so the candidate knows what to expect.

3. Test: FREE NOW always does an assessment test to candidates and developers to be reviewed for competency. This helps FREE NOW better understand the background and experience of the candidate and see if they are a good fit for the role.

4. Technical interview: there will also be a technical interview to conclude the interview process. “I insist on hiring managers and developers give feedback and copy me in the emails so I have constant feedback, knowing where I have to follow up”. Lorena also shares a practice that ends up working quite well: when a recruiter has recently joined FREE NOW, we invite them to join interviews with both recruiters and hiring managers so they can understand what to ask in each interview and avoid repeating questions. This helps to coach candidates before the interviews, ensuring they know what to expect.

5. Speed dating: when FREE NOW does speed dating with candidates, they make sure managers are also there. “FREE NOW takes care of the expenses of candidates who want to participate”. “These last steps of the hiring process can vary in order. We are quite flexible with our process since we want to adapt to each candidate’s needs”.

6. The offer: “when we want to propose an offer to a candidate, we always call them. Immediately after, we send the offer by email”.

7. The Onboarding: at FREE NOW, they have new team members join their headquarters in Hamburg for 2 days to get a better feeling about the company values. “We also have a weekly breakfast where new hires present themselves”. This helps the candidate develop a sense of belonging the company.

8. The Rejection: “when we reject candidates from a hiring process, we always let them know. If we have had a conversation with the candidate, we’ll let them know by call. It is very important for us to give constructive feedback, not only saying the negative points, but also highlighting the positive ones.” Lorena reminds recruiters how important it is to show respect to the candidate and to never forget that they have invested time applying, preparing for the interviews, etc. “A nice way of showing appreciation is to invite rejected candidates to Circular. We refer them to a platform where they can connect with other impressive companies. I’d also add a recommendation for them since it will help them get hired”

GIANLUCA ROSANIA

“To improve Candidate Experience you have to know who you are talking to. You have to understand that if you talk to an engineer, you have to speak their language.”

The Story of Recruitment at Glovo

“At Glovo we change people’s life period. We don’t have just a purpose of hiring for hiring”. His motto is to help, share, learn, make people grow. When Gianluca joined Glovo, there were only 2 tech recruiters and they were asked to hire 300 developers. “What???” he says laughing. “We were on fire, man, so we needed protection for providing a good Candidate Experience” So they started to build a team of recruiters and coordinators and now there are 25 of them. This allowed them to give a faster response and a better CX.

Candidate Experience for Glovo

“For us data is extremely important, it is what tells us if we are doing well at Candidate Experience” This way the recruitment team of Glovo is also formed by a business and data analyst and an employer branding manager. “We are one, HR is a whole”. Gianluca says that before continuing improving the Candidate Experience, their basics need to be done which are measuring the journey and know the candidate better in order to personalize each hiring process for each of them.

Preparing and measuring

As we mentioned before, Glovo wants data to understand the candidates’ perception and to know where to improve.

1. Staffing plan: “it is important to know exactly how many roles we need to fulfill in every quarter, at least to have a clear staffing plan”.
2. Interviewer capacity: “we need to understand how many interviewers from recruitment and engineering we have and how many we should allocate to each job opportunity in order to cover the processes successfully.”
3. Prospects conversion rate: Glovo analyzed their conversion rate and time needed to process a hire.
4. CNPS: they also measure their Candidate NPS to have a better feeling on how likely candidates would be to recommend their hiring process. They check the CNPS for the application process and the recruitment process also if they end up being hired and for the company culture perception.

Engaging with the candidate

“When reaching out, we always try to develop a sense of belonging in the candidate, showing how they can contribute at Glovo”. He shows a document that they send to candidates with all of the information they need to better understand the company, values, and role. “We need to understand our audience, so we need to speak their language” He clarifies that generations exist and that the outreach should go in accordance with their needs and expectations.”

“Once we attract them, we have to make sure they get the feeling of working at Glovo through employer branding, posts from employees, and recruitment campaigns through LinkedIn and Stack Overflow”

The Interviewing Journey

The first call will be with the recruitment team, who is prepared and focused on knowing the candidate (e.g. their experience, expectations, background). Each process is unique because each candidate is unique. “We have a bootcamp to train interviewers and we also give a handbook to candidates so they know how the process is going to be and what topics are going to be covered”.

“We always follow up with candidates and inform them about the rejections. This is via phone call and we like to give constructive feedback”. “Also, Circular is a great community for recruiters in Barcelona for this stage”. Circular helps the rejected candidates find other great opportunities in other great jobs.

Gianluca reminds all of the recruiters in the room, “please, don’t forget employees retention after all of this is done”.

The CX Photo Shoot