Case study:
Respect Energy S.A.

How to recruit effectively in the RES industry

About company

Respect Energy S.A. is currently one of the largest independent entities in the Polish electricity market. The company’s activities focus on many areas – from wholesale energy trade, property rights or guarantees of origin, to sales of energy to end customers and comprehensive solutions for companies in the field of cogeneration installations based on natural gas, LNG and biogas.

Industry: Energetics

Number of employees: Confidential

Challenges: Hiring 40 new salespeople in 3 months

How do you grow a team quickly without an internal HR department?

With the rapid development of the energy industry and the popularization of renewable energy sources Respect Energy has undertaken in 2020 the decision to dynamically develop the company. The project was closely linked to the expansion of the merchant network – the goal was to hire 40 new, qualified employees within 3 months. The company decided to look for candidates throughout Poland and among the requirements for new employees the most important was previous experience in selling B2B services.

Implementing this ambitious plan required the involvement of external recruiting partners as the company does not have an internal recruiting team. Talent Place was recommended to Respect Energy through a referral. Initially, the employer planned to outsource only half of the planned hires to us, with the remainder done with another partner to diversify the sources of referrals. After reviewing the details of the offer Respect Energy ultimately decided to execute the entire project in partnership with Talent Place.

Crowdstaffing as a way to hire 40 salespeople in 3 months

The project was planned in two phases – the first was to hire 20 new people for Respect Energy’s sales department in just three weeks. Additional difficulties included a well-defined advanced candidate profile, a scattering of locations and recruitment during the holiday season.

A large volume of specialized recruitment involves a large number of candidates participating in the process. To meet this challenge Talent Place engaged an extensive team of recruiters to execute the project. This was possible only because of our business model – a standard approach to recruitment would not allow any other partner to delegate so many recruiters to one project in such a short period of time. The second driver of the challenge was diversifying the locations in which our recruiters operate and the channels they use to source candidates. As a result, from day one we launched operations across the country and used a variety of sourcing channels, including direct search, marketing campaigns and job ad campaigns.

Recruitment that gives you 100% success rate

The service that Talent Place provided was end-to-end. Throughout the process, we supported Respect Energy by:

sourcing matched candidates
selection and verification
arranging meetings with client-side managers
keeping candidates engaged throughout the process
giving feedback
submitting offers to selected candidates
coordination of signing letters of intent

“Working with Talent Place has exceeded our expectations. Not only did we manage to achieve our goal but the whole process was extremely smooth – says Piotr Ostaszewski, CEO of Respect Energy S.A. “Above all, we appreciated the comprehensive support of Talent Place – the actions of a dedicated account manager and the possibility of using the ATS system facilitated the processing of candidates. Meetings were arranged on a daily basis and the quality of recommendations was verified on an ongoing basis to meet our expectations. I would recommend working with Talent Place to any company planning rapid growth.” he adds.

Thanks to intensive actions and full mobilization of Talent Place during 3 weeks Respect Energy offered 27 out of 45 recommended candidates for the position of Key Account Manager and 6 out of 10 recommended candidates for the position of Regional Sales Manager (60% success rate of referrals). Out of 20 hires initially anticipated Respect Energy decided to accept and begin working with as many as 24 candidates.

The second phase of the project is anticipated in September 2020 and will focus on meeting the remainder of the goal of 40 hires at locations selected by the client.