Margaret Buj, Head of Recruitment at Yieldify and Interview Coach shares her recruitment experience and how it is like to be an in-house recruiter.
There are 2 things I will see every day – an inbox full of applications and emails from candidates and managers (there are days I receive about 250 emails). In any given day, I will meet with line managers to discuss specific roles or candidates, I will source and interview candidates, negotiate salaries and make offers. I’d also respond to up to 10 recruitment agencies who contact us daily – these approaches never stop but we operate a direct sourcing model and only use a few select agencies for hard to fill engineering roles.
I also find events to attend to expand my network or as a team, we’d brainstorm ideas for e.g. improving candidate experience or getting more quality candidates for specific roles. We get a lot of applications every day but some roles are quite niche and I only get good candidates by finding them and approaching on LinkedIn or by employee referrals.
You’d think all candidates who read a job description would pay attention to the minimum qualifications before clicking the ‘Apply Now’ button. This is definitely not always the case and we receive lots of applications of candidates who have zero or hardly any relevant experience for a specific position.
I do use LinkedIn to conduct searches – I not only find specific people with a certain skill set, but I ask other people in my network who they know. Of course employee referrals are a great source, too.
As I speak to candidates, we can quickly ascertain whether what Yieldify has to offer to them will fit their needs. It is a two-way street. Yes, in these economic times candidates may be more flexible, but we want to hire smart, motivated, talented people from top 20 universities, who want to work for us.
I might have to talk to 10 or even more people to find one or two really good people who will work within our culture – it is a very fast paced environment and we’ve grown from 2 to 155 people in 2.5 years, so change is the only constant here.
Once I have completed a phone interview and we both feel comfortable we should move ahead, we arrange interviews with the hiring manager and a few others within the business. Typically, the candidate will meet the hiring manager and a couple of other managers or peers and on some occasions, there will be a presentation or a case study involved.
In an ideal world, the candidate is a perfect fit and the hiring process runs as smooth as silk. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world so many times, even after the final interview, you need to start the process from scratch – sometimes a candidate will drop out of the process for personal reasons or they will accept another offer.
Why do I do it? For one, helping people progress in their career is a wholly satisfying experience. Secondly, helping Yieldify grow by finding the best and brightest brings a sense of personal satisfaction. Being able to directly impact a company’s success by ensuring the right people are in place is an opportunity few other careers offer.
The challenge of reworking your strategy and game plan in an ever-changing environment means that I rarely have the same work day twice. When I talk to some of our new hires who love working for us and are doing a great job, I do feel a sense of satisfaction that I played a key role in getting them to work for us.
About the author
Margaret Buj is a Head of Recruitment at Yieldify and Interview Coach. She has 11 years of international recruitment experience and in the last 9 years she’s helped hundreds of professionals across the globe get jobs and promotions they really wanted.
About Yieldify
Yieldify believes that marketers want to convert visitors, easily. We are specialists at creating more conversions in the lower funnel using our Exit-Intent Technology. Yieldify’s technology simplifies the marketers’ ability to predict and adapt to visitor intent across all devices. Since official trading began in 2013 Yieldify has grown to 155 staff with offices based in London, New York, Sydney, Porto and Berlin.
