In the world of business and HR, there is no better source of knowledge than specialists – entrepreneurs who want to share their experience.

In a series of HRoes interviews, we interview experienced managers and HR experts, the secrets of effective employee management, find out what the labor market looks like in the new, post-coronavirus reality, and how to deal with the challenges faced by smaller and larger entrepreneurs. Thanks to their knowledge and years of practice, our interlocutors offer not only effective advice but also professional help.

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." – Benjamin Franklin

Today, HRoes hosts TRAFFIT – a company developing the ATS software, which supports recruiters in acquiring the best specialists.

TRAFFIT is a tool that allows you to optimize the recruitment process of new employees. Thanks to integrating with popular employee portals and personalization of the recruitment process, TRAFFIT provides a perfect recruitment experience for both recruiters and candidates.

We've asked Anna Sykut – Chief Evangelist of TRAFFIT – to talk about optimizing the recruitment process in hiring the best specialists. Anna has been helping recruiters to improve the recruitment process for four years. She uses the experience gained during economic studies and closely observes the labor market and the latest HR trends in her daily work.

What made you create a company that supports recruiters in their daily tasks?

A chance, actually! During his student years, our CEO got a project from one of the recruitment agencies based in Tricity to create a custom recruitment system. That’s when he spotted a niche that his project – after taking it to a higher level – could fill in. His system let not only runs the recruitment process but also builds and manages the talent pool. Soon, the business partners came in, believed in the project, and set up a company. That’s how TRAFFIT began.

Who is your target group? Who can make the most from TRAFFIT?

Basically, everyone who recruits, no matter the scale. Among our clients, you can find both freelancers and huge recruitment agencies, internal HR teams, or city departments. As we work in a SaaS model, everyone can choose the right plan and the exact amount of users they need, and cover their individual situation.

Has the pandemic impacted the demand of your tool or your target group?

Sure – at first, as almost every company, we were worried about the impact that the pandemic could have on us. Luckily, that was unnecessary. For lots of companies, going remote meant looking for a tool for recruitment. The team wasn’t anymore in one office, so the communication had to go to the Internet – whether it was about discussing candidate profiles or the recruitment process. The cloud solution lets its users work from anywhere they have an Internet connection.

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What are the most common problems for recruiters?

From our perspective we notice:

  • too little applications or low quality of applications – when most of them don’t match the requirements
  • or a similar problem, when you have to manage tons of CVs, that makes the preselection and taking care of candidate experience a lot harder
  • poor communication flow within the company, for example from hiring managers that take the final decision of recruitment – it costs the company time, and most importantly, lowers the chances of getting the best candidates
  • no time or tools to lead effective communication with the candidates.

How do you tackle those problems?

TRAFFIT is integrated with multiple candidate sources, like Facebook Jobs or Talent.com, and works with LinkedIn sourcing tools. We also encourage our clients to create talent pools right in the system, because such a database can have the right candidate we’ll be looking for in the next recruitment process. We also give them tools to manage the contact base, like filters or boolean search.

An ATS is helpful also when dealing with a high number of applications. You can use a quick preview of the candidate profile, filters and search with multiple values, or bulk actions. Also, it’s easier to keep your candidates up to date with automatic email notifications, so they know when they’re moved to the next stage.

Hiring managers can get access to TRAFFIT and view selected candidates, or leave notes and comments to the recruiter. That boosts communication and lets them have all the information they need – in one place.

What’s the biggest challenge when recruiting in IT?

You have to stand out. Putting the info about the technology used or salary is not enough. The candidates are looking for interesting, challenging projects and are sick of phrases like “young, energetic team”. Apart from that, you mostly deal with passive candidates – those that aren’t looking for a change. So next to publishing job postings on websites or social media, you need to source – or reach out to them personally.

How important is the candidate experience for the perception of a potential employer?

I’d say it’s the most important part! The recruitment process is a true touchpoint for both candidate and the company, making a moment of truth. That’s when the candidate compares the vision from the company page or ads with reality. The way in which the recruiter behaves: respect, professional attitude, keeping the word and lots of other elements make a huge impact on the perception of our future employer.

How does TRAFFIT help in boosting candidate experience?

Career Page is one of the sources where candidates seek information about the position and the company. It can be created and managed straight from the ATS with our Career Page generator, which makes it always up-to-date and relevant.

TRAFFIT application forms are clear, easy to use, and responsive, which supports the candidate through the application process.

Recruiters can also automate e-mail communication with the candidate, sending out notifications and custom messages when the candidate is moved to the next stage. You can create smart templates that help you take care of message personalization.

Another important point is that the ATS for recruiters is similar to CRM for salespeople. You gather there all the information about past processes and candidates – and you’ll always know if someone applies to your company for the second time! This helps you work on relations you have with your candidates. Also, recruiters can integrate their mailboxes so that the entire communication process is available for everyone in the team.

The recruitment process calls for good organization. How does TRAFFIT help in organizing meetings with candidates?

That’s what we have covered recently with our new Scheduler feature. You can integrate it with the recruiter’s calendar and share a link to a page that lets the invitees choose the most suitable time for an interview themselves.

Task optimization is one of the entrepreneurs’ top priorities. How does TRAFFIT make recruitment processes faster and more efficient?

To be honest, TRAFFIT helps you streamline each part of your recruitment process. From gathering the applications with easy application forms and posting job offers on multiple platforms, through preselection, candidate management in a Kanban view, exchanging opinions with other recruiters and hiring managers to scheduling interviews with Scheduler and sending personal feedback to those who didn’t make it. It takes off of your shoulders the monotonous tasks and lets you focus on people.

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In your opinion, what’s the most important element in the recruitment process – from the candidate’s point of view?

It’s actually all about feedback – that’s still missing in many cases. Also, treating your candidates as partners in the process, giving them time to ask questions, and find out more about the company or particular projects. The last important point is a comprehensive, accurate job description. Often, you can find only info about the benefits, generic selling points, like “young and energetic team”, but what candidates are really looking for in a job offer is information about challenges, exemplary tasks, and the environment they would work in.

Does TRAFFIT support remote recruitment? How?

Definitely yes, we’ve also had some fully remote recruitment processes led with TRAFFIT in our case. Mostly it’s about our integration with Google Meet and Scheduler.

What’s the most common problem you solve for your clients?

Taking care of candidate experience – we’re really happy to see the rise in awareness about that issue and its importance!

Often, our clients need to solve the mess they deal with when having multiple sources of application and tools to process candidates’ data. With the implementation of an ATS, they can have a full view of their recruitment process, equal access to candidates’ data, which in turn makes their management more efficient.

I’m also happy about clients willing to analyze their budget spending when it comes to job offer promotion. Reporting options in TRAFFIT help them in spotting the most efficient candidate sources.

How can you optimize clients’ recruitment process most simply?

The starting point is to define how the process should look like, and who’s responsible for each stage. Adding time limitations for the duration of each stage can help in candidate experience efforts: they appreciate having a clear timeline of their process. Also, you can prepare appropriate message templates. Those steps let your team know what are each member’s responsibilities and make the process run smoothly.

What tools does TRAFFIT integrate with? What’s the main benefit of integrating your tools?

We have direct integrations with mailboxes, calendars, Slack, and Google Meet – but you can also use Zapier to connect with your toolbox! It makes TRAFFIT a powerful center for recruiters with all the tools and information they need to perform daily tasks.

HR industry cares about data protection issues. How does TRAFFIT comply with it?

TRAFFIT lets you gather consents and later manage them. It also anonymizes candidates’ data whose consent period came to the end. In short, it’s fully compliant with GDPR and lets you meet the requirements. Candidates’ data are stored on servers in EEA and backed up each day.

Tell us a bit more about your TRAFFIT Pathways project. What made you come up with it? What are the benefits it brings along? And what do your employees and candidates think about it?

We had several reasons to introduce a transparent system of salaries and promotions, but the most important one was to make our promotion decisions clear and transparent. We’d always cared for equal opportunities for everyone, and now it’s just described and published. Also, Pathways let people develop themselves at their own pace. All employees know what they should do to progress on their paths. It’s also important for our candidates – even though we have a flat structure, there’s always space for improvement and hitting higher levels in their career development. Here you can see the details of our project.

And last but not least, do you use a tool for work time tracking? What are the highlights of this solution from a recruiter’s perspective?

For the moment our IT team uses Jira to stay on track of their projects, but we’re open to changes! A time-tracking tool lets, apart from the financial part and accounting, analyze how much time do you spend on a given task. It opens room for process improvement and optimization, and that’s crucial in our business. For example, when you find out that you spend way too much time on interview scheduling, our ATS and its Scheduler feature might help you :)

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Thank you for your comprehensive answers! In the world of recruitment, an efficient tool supporting the HR department is a great way to effectively employ the best specialists and build a database of candidates for the future.

If you're looking for a tool that will support your HR department in recruitment, onboarding, and ensuring a positive employee experience, we highly recommend trying TRAFFIT.

If you want to learn more about recruiting employees, integrating HR tools, and optimizing work in companies from various industries, follow our HR blog or contact us!

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