This year we bring you a diverse mix of insightful interviews and articles. These articles will explore the realm of market dynamics, delve into data interpretation, and dispense useful insights.
We’ve been privileged to have conversations with numerous distinguished individuals and companies, each contributing a unique narrative. Our discussion topics cover a wide spectrum, from remote recruitment strategies to fostering exceptional organizational culture and offering attractive employee benefits among many other intriguing themes.
Presented below are the 10 most engaging articles from our blog, ranked based on reader count.
#10 – Interview: Nikolai Kabatsikov, Head of Talent at Bolt
One of the interviews that has consistently garnered significant readership over the past few years is once again asserting its popularity by securing a spot in this year’s Top 10. 🔝
Besides shedding light on the company, Nikolai Kabatsikov, the Talent Head at Bolt, also shares evergreen tips on crafting a compelling LinkedIn profile and securing a job in a rapidly expanding tech firm.
#9 – Interview with Mara Steinberga from SmartLynx Airlines
Most-read interview from last year’s top also makes it this year. It hails from the world of aviation, a domain characterized by pace, stressful circumstances, joy, and an ever-evolving day-to-day life that is a norm for all those at SmartLynx Airlines. ✈️
Our conversation with SmartLynx Airlines’ Chief of People & Culture, Mara Steinberga, provided insights into the aviation industry’s distinctive work culture. She shared her perspectives on the unique aspects of working in this sector and gave a glimpse into a typical day at SmartLynx (spoiler alert: there’s no such thing as a ‘typical’ day here).
#8 – Data-driven Hiring: TOP 10 Factors of Employee Motivation
A mere 13% of the tech employers surveyed admitted to successfully hiring and retaining the talent they require. To amplify the appeal of your job offers for superior talent, it’s critical to address the typical motivational factors. 📊
In this article we take an in-depth view, based on survey results of 163 386 users, of what precisely drives individuals.
The IT sector is seeing a trend where talent has the negotiation advantage due to a surplus of jobs and scarcity of talent. Companies like Oxylabs, a tech firm providing web-scraping solutions, are tackling this by nurturing internal talent and initiating development plans. Over three years, Oxylabs has launched new products, caught Fortune 500 companies’ interest, and doubled its staff size.
In our discussion, Web Product Owner Monika Gerybaite shared insights into overcoming these challenges while maintaining rapid growth. 🚀
#6 – Äripäev Salary TOP 2023: Vacancies at the Highest Paying Companies
The Estonian financial newspaper, Äripäev, annually compiles the Salary TOP list, spotlighting the highest-paying companies. MeetFrank presents you with the latest job openings at a range of these top-paying firms. 💰
#5 – Inside the diverse culture driving the success of Entain Baltics and Nordics
We talked to Oleg Karpušenko, the head of the HR department at Entain Baltics & Nordics, about how to build a great company culture that values diversity and inclusiveness and what are the essential elements for creating a friendly and down-to-earth company culture. 🌟
#4 – 10 Ways to Get More Job Applicants when Hiring
Hiring an exceptional team player can be a challenging task. 😖 Posting a job vacancy on a job board might garner about 5-10 applicants. But for the ideal hire, you’d need a pool of over 30 candidates to select from.
So, how can you attract more high-quality job seekers? Regardless of whether you have an extensive HR & Recruitment department supporting you, as a hiring manager, there’s a plethora of strategies you can employ.
#3 – Enabling employee growth through learning at Oxylabs
Fostering employee development and enhancing their expertise, skills, and abilities has become increasingly pivotal in propelling business performance. Oxylabs, a technology firm and a leader in innovative web-scraping infrastructure solutions, stands out in its commitment to Learning & Development (L&D) activities.
We had a conversation with Frederika Dovgal, the Learning and Development Manager at Oxylabs, discussing the company’s strategies in cultivating its in-house talent and fostering growth.
#2 – You’re Recruiting All Wrong — Say Goodbye to Job Boards
Traditional hiring strategies, like advertising job vacancies and awaiting applications, are becoming obsolete and less effective. Recruitment is evolving into a selling process, deviating from the earlier purchasing concept — companies failing to adapt can’t attract or hire top-notch talent. 🔝
In this article we take a look at what the recruiters need to change in order to fix the problem and more importantly, how it can be achieved.
#1 – What Is Employer Branding and How Do Companies Do it?
The most popular article of the past year is about employer branding. Employer branding might feel like an elusive concept that’s often talked about, but rarely fully grasped, much like a mythical unicorn. 🦄
Yet, certain companies seem to have mastered it, magnetizing the best talent. So, what exactly is employer branding? How is it effectively implemented? And who within your organization should shoulder this responsibility?
In this article, we highlight some of the key things to consider when analysing your approach to recruitment.
Traditional hiring methods, such as posting job ads and waiting for applications to roll in, are becoming outdated and ineffective.
Recruiting has turned into selling, drifting away from the buying concept — and companies, that don’t adapt, aren’t able to attract and hire the best talent.
Job Boards won’t do the trick
It’s interesting how far we have come in other areas of business, but not yet in recruitment. Just go check your local popular Job Board at web.archive.org and be surprised how little it has changed during the years.
Why do inefficient ways still dominate the recruitment industry?
Job Boards work, but not very well. Just enough to maintain the numbers-first strategy. Simply put, it is well within the recruiters comfort zone.
And why ditch the low-hanging fruit?
Numbers vs quality
Take a minute to look beyond the numbers game. Even if there’s a bigger pool in Job Boards, the expectation is always to hire the best. It does not matter in the end, if you found the perfect hire among two people or two thousand people. Nevermind that the latter is wasting a lot of valuable time, the end result — the quality-first strategy — is what matters.
Passive candidates — widely regarded as the most desirable ones — aren’t looking for Job Boards. These people have choice, and if you’re not looking for people with choice, you’re seeing the wrong people.
Time Kills Quality Deals
Talent acquisition professionals often hear the phrase “Time kills quality deals”. The candidate-driven market expects the speed of hiring to increase.
Stop spending time and money on Job Board’s “OK” candidates and don’t string them along while waiting for the perfect one.
Treat recruitment as selling not buying
The recruitment industry has changed, and so has the way talent thinks about careers. However, what hasn’t changed is the way recruitment teams approach hiring.
Instead of buying talent, you’re selling opportunities to work at your organisation. In other words, jobs are like products and applicants are like customers.
Start treating applicants as your customers, because companies are competing for people now. In the candidate-driven market, top talent is on the hunt for authentic voices in the marketplace. If you want to compete, make sure yours is among them.
Is your hiring team spending more time sourcing candidates and less time actively engaging with them? Yes? Then you’re missing the mark.
Avoid the use of dull, corporate language. Keep it engaging and conversational. Personal conversation, natural tone leaves a great first impression.
WHAT? The remedy for old ways of recruiting
Alright, we have settled on WHAT needs to be done — audit your candidate experience:
⬆️ Raise quality, don’t settle for “OK” candidates. 🚀 Speed up the recruitment process. 🤝 Start treating applicants as your customers.
Many organisations are struggling to attract top talent, but failing to see what they need to change in order to fix the problem. So let’s talk about HOW it can be achieved.
HOW? Goodbye, fear of change
Posting on traditional Job Boards page isn’t going to have the best CVs flooding your inbox. Reinvesting the time and budget you spend on Job Boards into recruitment technology and AI. This investment pays massive dividends.
How many times have you started recruiting and wished you had a pool of talented candidates to pick from? This is where MeetFrank comes in — recruitment service for record-fast hires (a mobile app for letting companies apply to talent).
How MeetFrank is innovating the hiring Industry?
1. Unique sample of talent
📱 MeetFrank’s mobile app is innovating the hiring industry by removing irrelevant questions and onboarding talent within a few minutes. This attracts passive candidates that cannot be found elsewhere.
✅ All the MeetFrank users are verified and have high intent. All candidates have personally uploaded their profiles and they are actually open for talks, happy to hear from you.
📆 This talentpool is live and constantly updated. Every morning a new batch of recently joined profiles are published.
2. Faster and simpler hiring
⏩ Recruit in record time. Skip waiting for applications to roll in — see all MeetFrank’s active candidates instantly.
⏱️ The record response time is just 10 seconds. And daily 5 minutes spent on MeetFrank frees up your time to invest in perfect hires.
💪 MeetFrank is more effective than a Job Board and 10x more affordable than a recruitment agency.
3. Tools adapting the industry change
💼 MeetFrank’s users don’t apply to jobs, instead they are open for direct offers. With a pipeline ready, you spend less time sourcing candidates and more time actively engaging with them.
👏 On the employee’s side, MeetFrank gives the unique opportunity for all, to compete for the same talent. On the talent side, the mobile app is changing the recruitment industry by building a positive candidate experience, with no rejection. Win-win for everybody.
🦾 MeetFrank’s automatisation does not mean losing the human element. The top talent is delivered to you, just select the perfect one and pitch your offer.
In conclusion, balance is the key. Probably you won’t change your Job Board strategy overnight. Try the hybrid version at first and draw your conclusions there.
If no changes are made, you’ll never hire the talent you want, or any candidates for that matter and slowly, your business will cease to remain competitive.
And remember, salary still talks, but don’t underestimate the power of human connectivity and direct offers.
Download MeetFrank mobile app to find your dream job. To start recruiting and accessing the top talent, create business account.
Key takeaways:
* Traditional hiring methods are becoming outdated, making it harder to attract top talent.
* Job Boards focus on quantity over quality, missing out on passive candidates who aren’t actively searching for jobs.
* Lengthy hiring processes lead to candidates losing patience and potentially accepting other offers.
* Recruitment should be treated as selling opportunities rather than buying talent. Treat applicants as customers and jobs like products.
* To improve recruitment, focus on raising quality, speed up hiring processes, and change your tone of voice.
* MeetFrank gives tools for adapting the industry change. It’s more effective than a Job Board and cheaper than a recruitment agency.
99math is an Estonian startup and math gaming platform with the aim of making math fun again. Founded in 2019, 99math has raised $3.6M in funding, with its primary market being the United States.
99math used MeetFrank to hire a:
✔ Front-End Engineer
✔ Mid- or Senior-level
✔ Located in Estonia (with remote being an option)
Using MeetFrank
To build a candidate shortlist, 99math took advantage of active sourcing features on MeetFrank. After posting their position, the algorithm showed them the most suitable candidates that are currently considering new opportunities.
In 6 minutes, 99math worked through the list of suitable talent, chose the top 20 most promising candidates, and sent out the initial pitch to all of them, essentially requesting to start a chat.
It didn’t take long for the responses to start coming in – the first candidate replied just 49 seconds after receiving the message. 2 hours after reaching out to talent, 99math already had ongoing chats with 7 candidates.
Overall, 99math achieved a 50% response rate from candidates on MeetFrank. Importantly, 9 out of 10 responses were positive, meaning the candidates were happy to chat about joining the company.
Results
⏰ Time spent to source candidates: 6 minutes
💬 Candidates sourced and contacted: 20
🏎 Time to the first positive response: 49 seconds
🙋 Number of chats started in the first 2 hours: 7
🤩 Overall response rate: 50%
✅ Overall number of positive responses: 9 out of 10
What they say
“MeetFrank is great for fast recruiting! You can see who is open to being hired – stuff you can’t do on LinkedIn. On MeetFrank, you can headhunt people who are actually open to moving.”
We have had the opportunity to interview a lot of great companies & people over the past year – each with their own unique story to tell. We’ve talked about remote hiring, building outstanding company culture, “spoiling the employees” with perks and many more interesting topics. ✌️
Here are the top 10 most popular articles from last year, ranked by the number of readers.
#10 – Ubiquiti
We start off the list with a conversation with Kristaps Rikans, Regional Managing Director at Ubiquiti. 🛠
Ubiquiti is a truly unique technology company globally, as there are no other companies that have shipped so many different IT products with such a small R&D team. We talked about how does Ubiquiti manage to keep its employees happy, motivated and so productive.
We chatted with Httpool a while back, in the summer of 2021, but the interview is as relevant and popular as ever, because Httpool’s global reach and direct access to the largest tech platforms in the world. 🌍
We interviewed Arnis Ozols, Regional Managing Director, about why talent should consider joining the journey. For a candid look into the company and its projects, we also chatted with four bright sales & marketing experts from Httpool about their experiences.
Our most read interview of the past year is still going strong and makes it to the Top 10 this year as well. 🔝
In addition to the insight into the company, Nikolai Kabatsikov, Head of Talent at Bolt, also offers timeless advice on building a LinkedIn profile and getting hired by a fast-growing tech company.
To get a glimpse of life in a truly global adtech company, we interviewed Karolina Baltuonytė, Global Platform Solutions Consultant at Adform.
The people filling the client-facing roles in Adform, work in a truly international environment with the biggest brand names in the world. We talked about NYC’s hustle and bustle, how to gain clients’ attention in a different cultural environment and how to step out of your comfort zone for a confidence boost. 🚀
We had great a chance to talk to their Head of Recruitment, Benjamin Moris, about their culture and what makes Printify unique for employees. ☀️
One of our all-time favourite interviews and a great inspiration boost for anybody looking for insights into remote hiring and creating an outstanding company culture.
Surfshark is a cybersecurity company with quite a story, for example, reaching one million paying customers faster than Netflix and becoming one of the most popular VPNs globally in just 30 months. Shortly after the interview, Surfshark joined forces with Nord Security to become 2nd Lithuanian tech unicorn. 🦄
We talked with Regimantas Urbanas, Chief Marketing Officer of Surfshark, about its most significant achievements, stellar growth, cybersecurity trends, and much more.
Katana, one of the most popular Estonian employers on MeetFrank, is well on its way to building the world’s leading manufacturing platform. Naturally, we had tonnes of questions for Priit Kaasik, its co-founder and CTO. 💡
The conversation went deep into their technological backbone, but also touched on lighter subjects, such as why is their office PS5 and barista-grade coffee so heavily underused.
The 3rd most popular interview is about something boring that just might make you a millionaire one day – share options. 💸
Vinted helped to explain it once and for all: How do they grant the options to the employees? How long is the vesting period? What is the potential upside? Are there any risks?
Every now and then, a start-up goes into hypergrowth. Kilo Health is the perfect example of this by more than doubling both the revenue and size of the team in a year. 🚀
This is why we were excited to interview Juste Vižinytė, Chief People Officer at Kilo Health. We asked her about the thinking behind “spoiling the employees” with perks and benefits, why they discarded all rules regarding the working location, and much more!
The most popular interview of the past year comes from the aviation industry. The speed, the stressful situations, the fun, and the ever-changing daily life is the normal for all those working in SmartLynx Airlines. ✈️
We talked with SmartLynx Airlines Chief of People & Culture, Mara Steinberga, about what does it mean to work in the aviation, what are the most exclusive things about working in this industry, and how does the average daily routine looks like at SmartLynx (spoiler: every day is unique).
We have interviewed a lot of great companies & people over the past year. Companies ranging from consultancies and corporations to unicorns, each of which has its unique story to tell. There has been an equally diverse set of interviewees, from CEOs to CTOs, and, of course, many people from Human Resources. ✌️
Which interview has been the most interesting? It’s hard to tell definitively, but here are the top 10 most popular articles, ranked by the number of readers.
#10 – Evolution
We kick off the list with one of the most technical interviews we’ve ever done – a conversation with Juris Krikis, Scala and JavaScript Department Lead. 🛠
If you are into software engineering, then the interview is a blast: We discuss the main benefits of using Scala, transitioning the codebase into a new language while the system remains in production, and the best way to learn a new programming language.
We chatted with Supermetrics in the autumn of 2020, right after they announced a blockbuster €40M Series B funding round. 💰
The interview with Viivi Marttinen, People Operations Manager, went deep into their recruiting process, including how they find the best candidates & convince them to join the company. Also, we touched on the set-up of the HR team and how remote work has changed the way they operate.
kevin. is a fast-growing fin-tech from Lithuania with the utmost flexibility in terms of working time and place. 🌍
Agnė Meškaitė, their Chief People Officer, explained how kevin. focuses on results, not on hours spent working, and how they set up their organization to fit every employee’s individual flow and peak productivity hours.
Jüri Tarkpea shared his 20-year career with us, culminating with the opening of brand new development centres in Tallinn and Tartu.
From using a soviet military map to track off-road vehicles to selling his company to Fleet Complete and becoming a Global VP of Engineering, this has been quite a ride. 🚗
A candid conversation with Hanna Kontinen, Head of Talent & Culture at Brella, about their progress in diversity and inclusion. 👣
By creating a diverse environment, they aim to unlock innovation and allow for more unique ideas. But what KPI-s to track? How to include these ideas in the hiring process? And why should companies stay humble while discussing D&I issues?
Nord Security began inside the Tesonet accelerator back in 2012. Now the company has nearly 700 employees and 15 million users worldwide. 🔥
In 2021, Nord Security stepped outside of Tesonet and started building separate company culture and employer brand. Karina Dirvonskienė, Head of HR, talked about the opportunities and challenges that followed this decision.
Tomas Unikauskis, CEO of Smart Brands Lab, opens the world of micro-brands for us. 🔎
We talk about their proprietary niche brand scoring algorithm that identifies the new target products and how they manage their five existing niche brands. Also, can a micro-brand sometimes be too micro?
In the summer of 2020, the news broke that Boku will acquire Fortumo for up to 40M euros. 🤝
Fortumo’s excellent team was mentioned as the main reason for the deal, so we naturally wanted to talk with their Head of HR, Signe Virolainen. How do you create a culture that is worth tens of millions?
The 2nd most popular interview is about something boring that just might make you a millionaire one day – share options. 💸
Vinted helped to explain it once and for all: How do they grant the options to the employees? How long is the vesting period? What is the potential upside? Are there any risks?
The most popular interview of the past year was written right when dark clouds caused by the pandemic started to clear for Bolt. ☀️
In addition to the insight into the company, Nikolai Kabatsikov, Head of Talent at Bolt, also offers timeless advice on building a LinkedIn profile and getting hired to a fast-growing tech company.
