We dove into Frends' recruitment process and interviewed Elina Salo, who is the Head of Talent Acquisition at Frends. Or, as she puts it – People Integrator. Read below what Elina has to say. 

Frends recruitment focuses on a strong candidate experience and modern recruitment

I believe it all depends on whether our recruitment process is in good shape in the highly competitive IT industry and on finding a common thread, i.e., whether we can offer what the person is looking for, both in their job, working environment, and life situation. We want to find out whether our will and that of the individual meet as a whole, now and in the future. 

To achieve this, we want to invest in strong candidate experience and open and modern recruitment process, where both we as an employer and the person as a potential Frends employee are on an equal level. Human to Human – that’s the starting point for everything at Frends.

How modern recruitment looks like in Frends

In the highly competitive IT industry, where there is a shortage of skilled experts, the power lies with the experts. There is a lot of demand for their skills, and they can almost decide where they want to work. 

In this case, the recruitment process must especially be modern, fair and agile. The recruitment process is also a good place to strengthen the employer image. We want to manage the process with quality and focus on a good candidate experience. 

For example, it should be easy to get in touch with us and we’re just a few clicks away, there’s no need to write CV's, application letters, etc. The experts must be able to connect with us anywhere and anytime, regardless of the situation or the device used. For example, you can simply leave us an email address to indicate your interest in starting a conversation with us.

We aim to respond quickly and keep the whole process smooth from the very beginning up to the recruitment decision. Open, active and informative communication is particularly important to us and it’s something that our team puts a great deal of effort into.

At Frends, we also talk about meetings instead of traditional interviews. In my opinion, this is part of modern recruitment, and small word changes like this, can have a huge impact on a change in attitude. We don't want to hold any hierarchical interview and interview setup, but an equal meeting where we really get to know each other and are at the same level.

In our online and live meetings, we have more than one person involved to give a broad picture of our daily life. We want to give the candidates as realistic a picture as possible of what it's like to work for us. The meeting is strongly understood as a two-way transaction, so that neither party is superior to the other. We want our meetings to be open, relaxed and interactive, where everyone feels comfortable and where we can discuss issues that are important for both parties.

If the process does not result in recruitment, the person is informed as soon as possible, so communication is not forgotten at this point either. We will often also send a small Frends gift to the person’s home or, if we have had the chance to meet in person, we will give it to them when we meet.

Analyze and listen what the data has to tell you

Modern recruitment also involves measurement, analysis of results and development measures.  Data helps to make decisions in the right direction, to develop recruitment further and to attract the desired talent. There are several different KPIs, so you have to choose what you particularly want to measure and what things to develop further with the help of the data.

One of our KPI is candidate satisfaction and we actively measure, among other things, our candidate experience and ask how our process went. The results have been very high, even though not all respondents always end up working for us. Our average candidate experience rating is 4.8 (scale 1-5). 

There are also areas for improvement and we have constantly developed our process. For example, we aim to present the salary range in the job ad and have a discussion about it right at the beginning. 

Treat people as individuals

It has been a real pleasure for me to work at Frends. For me personally, a good candidate experience and modern recruitment is very important. This seems to be something that is innate in Frends and, for example, coaching the superiors in these areas and for a good recruitment process has been easy for me. The main reason for this is surely that we genuinely treat people as individuals. 

Human to Human – that’s the starting point for everything at Frends.

You might also be interested to read our other blog: Frends recruitment process.