What did you do before you came to Talent Place?
Similar to Talent Place – I was in charge of recruitment. Early in my recruiting career, I focused on translator roles. I managed the processes end-to-end: from the moment I received inquiries from production, through the entire onboarding process, to the delivery of the translator teams. In the course of my career as a Vendor Manager, I began to be interested in other roles as well, and that’s how I became a freelance recruiter for various positions. As the IT market became popularized, roles in this field also emerged in my area of interest. And so for several years now, the IT market has been my specialty.
What is your role at Talent Place? What do you do for a living?
I have been working at Talent Place since March. At the moment, I’m on the recruiting team for one of the IT companies, but I also realize the recruitment in other projects. I combine the roles of RPO recruiter and freelancer.
What does RPO cooperation look like from your perspective? What does such work give you?
I think, above all, a sense of security. You are in a team and for several months you are provided with projects, working for one client. You know that what was agreed at the very beginning of the cooperation applies. You know the team you are working with and you begin to feel part of it, part of the company you are recruiting for. You know the responsible, decision-making people. Simply put – it’s easier for you. It’s not like you get a new project every now and then and have to start all over again. By recruiting RPOs and joining a team of in-house recruiters, I know what a company requires, what methods it prefers and what it does not support. Besides, RPO recruiting is also a cool way to deepen your IT knowledge, as you take part in technical interviews with internal teams. I appreciate it very much. Sometimes, already as a freelancer, I do other projects, outside of IT, so as not to fall into a rut. I value this kind of choice and take advantage of it, switching between projects from different industries.
What does your workday look like?
I work 100% remotely. My first focus is on RPO processes. I check for responses from candidates, questions about processes or team meetings. Basically, my day looks like this: conducting a search for candidates, answering their questions or arranging meetings with them. It’s not easy, and sometimes I have to work hard to get the candidate and all the necessary people together at a technical meeting – especially since there has to be at least one architect and developer from the team during the meeting, and each of them usually has a busy schedule. If I manage to arrange it all, I take a break from RPO processes and switch to other projects. In addition, I also complete reports on the activities carried out or do some other activities: I try to plan my day in such a way as to make it as varied as possible.
What challenges did you happen to face?
Certainly one challenge is the issue of rates for the role. Clients, especially corporate ones, often have undisclosed rates, and nowadays candidates actually want to know the financial details at the beginning of the interview. And it happens that candidates end the interview the moment I say that unfortunately I can’t give a fork, because corporate rules don’t allow it.We had several meetings with the team to figure out how to deal with this problem. Because the market – especially in programming – is such that it is often the candidates who set the conditions. My teammates and I had to figure out what and how to tell programmers so that they would even want to talk to us, the recruiters. We came up with several ways. We are currently testing them and seeing that they are starting to work. The second challenge in the recruiting I do is that programmers are now under heavy attack and often don’t even respond to offers from recruiters. And here, too, we have to be creative: for example, we have started, together with the team, to come up with funny, unusual message texts to candidates that will catch their attention.
How can the Talent Place community help in the work of an RPO recruiter?
Both I and my teammates benefit from the support of HR experts located in the Community. This is helpful if only for the implicit rates described above and how to deal with such a problem. We all share ideas on the subject. Being able to ask another recruiter who is running a similar process if, for example, there are any candidates who just happened to drop out in his recruitment and if he could recommend them for one of the RPO recruitments – this is very valuable. This bypasses the time-consuming sourcing on LinkedIn and the need to contact candidates from scratch, only to get a lead on a specific person who is open to new challenges right away, and can thus speed up the entire process considerably.
And, well, you can also complain (laughs). I will frankly admit that I had such a moment when I needed support. Then a friend, BUM, called me, we talked, and it was very helpful. I learned a different perspective, a different point of view. I felt taken care of. I also like that in the Talent Place Community, even though we work remotely, there is such a sense of being part of a team and that as RPO recruiters we work in internal teams. We have a dedicated HR Business Partner who is very helpful and often assists us with the administrative side or with customer contact issues. If there is a problem, we think together on a solution that will satisfy both us and the customer. Recruiters are not left on their own, they can count on support and help in organizing their work.
To whom would you recommend working as an RPO recruiter?
I would definitely recommend it to my fellow recruiters, because I think it’s something cool, something completely different. On the one hand, you have a “full-time” job, for one client, but on the other hand, you are not sitting in an office and you can combine it with single orders. I always speak of cooperation with Talent Place in only positive terms. We work remotely, but from time to time we also have the opportunity to see each other in person, for example at breakfast with the whole team. And that’s great. You feel support from all sides here, you can see that Talent Place as a company wants to grow with us, wants us to be part of the team, satisfied and eager to carry out more projects and achieve the best results. These activities I mentioned earlier are great for this. I’ve only been working here a few months, but I already feel like I’ve been here for several years. That’s how we meshed with the community.
Want to join the community? You can find all the necessary information and the application form here.
