We spoke with Keter Luhaorg, the Recruitment Partner at Euronics Estonia, who joined Estonia’s largest electronics retailer two and a half years ago. Upon joining, the entire recruitment process was managed in Excel spreadsheets and several different online databases – Euronics’ HR manager, Ave Kruusalu, gave Keter the green light to elevate recruitment to a new and more productive level.
When Keter joined Euronics, there were 20 open positions in stores, warehouses, and the office. Considering the variety of roles open, the number of candidates, and future recruitment goals, it was necessary to make the process more strategic and efficient.
Keter last recruited without software over 10 years ago when the recruitment volume was small enough to be managed manually. Euronics’ recruitment need is an average of 7-10 positions per month. It was immediately clear to Keter that good recruitment software is critical for such volumes and positions.
One of her first goals was to find suitable software to ensure key retail metrics such as time to hire and cost of hire are kept low. Thanks to previous experience, expectations regarding the software were also clear to maintain these metrics at the desired level.
Today, Euronics and Keter have been active users of Teamdash recruitment software for over two years. We asked them to share their experience with software selection and implementation, as well as their user experience so far.
Keter, tell us more about recruitment in Euronics, the largest electronics retail chain in Estonia. What are the typical challenges in recruiting for a retail company?
Euronics’ Baltic unit currently has 840 employees, 47 stores, 14 of which are located in Estonia and are represented in eight cities. All stores have a small warehouse area, and we also have a large logistics centre, which houses the first robot warehouse in the Baltics. I deal with finding employees for all stores, warehouses, and the office together with the HR manager and hiring managers. For the past few months, I have also had an assistant.
In addition to recruitment, I also handle employer branding – starting from job advertisements and ending with career pages, and managing other related projects in cooperation with the HR manager and the external agency.
We recruit for many different positions, and when planning each recruitment process, we consider the specifics of the field to ensure we hire the best people in the industry. For Euronics, we need to fill positions in stores, offices, transport units, and warehouses. Depending on the position, the source of candidates and the stages in the recruitment process vary.
We also have to consider retail specifics such as seasonality – my busiest recruitment periods are Spring, early Summer and September. Stores usually employ younger people who often want or are accustomed to taking it easy in the summer and don’t want to work in stores. The stores are open regardless of the season – maintaining known quality is essential. It’s also clear that sales volumes are higher during the Christmas and New Year period – there’s no employee movement during this time. However, employees start to move once this period ends, and the recruitment workload increases.
This year, we have recruited 86 new colleagues – on average, about 7 recruitment projects per month.
For stores and warehouses, it’s important that we are represented in job portals and have a well-managed talent pool. For office specialist positions, targeted searches are more common. It’s important that I know the market and can address good candidates, for instance, on LinkedIn. There are typically 30-60 candidates for each project in stores, at least 30 for office specialist positions. The recruitment process must be efficient and fast.
All ads appear on the career page, but the largest number of candidates for store and warehouse positions come through job boards, for example, CV Keskus.
There have also been cases where warehouse workers had to be sourced. They are not found on LinkedIn but can be found on other social media. Therefore, we have also use targeted social media ads to increase and expand our candidate base.
There is a recruitment project for a Courier in Tallinn with 139 candidates, a Project Manager position with 64 candidates, and a Procurement Specialist position with 53 candidates. This indicates that Euronics is attractive as an employer in the Estonian market.
Before you joined the Euronics team, no recruitment software was in use. What were the most important selection criteria?
It was my first time joining a company where no software other than Excel was in use. Nowadays, no recruiter should work without software unless they only recruit for a few positions a year.
I needed to recruit for 20 different positions when I joined Euronics. It was clear that the right software was critically important for our recruitment needs. The software implementation process also had to be quick – it took just two months from joining to start using the Teamdash.
I had encountered several recruitment software in previous positions, so I knew the criteria for selection. I knew to ask about them during product demonstration calls.
Firstly, it was paramount to maintain candidate history. Since we recruit for different positions, it’s important to be able to filter out repeat candidates and maintain all previous history with comments. This helps in two ways: first, we know why the candidate was not previously selected, and second, we have their history to recommend them for another position in the future. Managing all this in Excel is nearly impossible and highly time-consuming – plus, you can make many mistakes, and a good candidate may go unnoticed or be lost entirely.
Secondly, access to recruitment statistics is important. We track metrics like time to hire and cost of hire. It’s important for us to fill positions quickly with the right people. Typically, our job ad is active for about 2-3 weeks, and the goal is to fill store positions within about 30 days. The speed of the process is also important for candidates. Compiling statistics should not require additional time and should be visible in real-time.
Thirdly, the ability to create job ads and integrations with job boards is important. It’s essential that job ads are attractive and consistent with the Euronics employer brand and that they reach the right candidates. We have our career page, which is entirely in line with our brand – we don’t want to compromise in this area in job portals, either. Since the recruitment need is also relatively large, design templates and the ability to publish them in several job portals at once are necessary.
Fourthly, compatibility with existing software and ease of implementation. The implementation process should be quick and easily understandable. We wanted to start using the software immediately and involve the hiring managers immediately. If the software is complicated and the learning period is long, that would be a dealbreaker. We later started using HiBob, with which Teamdash is integrated.
In addition to the criteria outlined above, Teamdash’s software stood out for its customer support’s quick response, which has remained a major strength. Since using Teamdash, many features have been added and developed based on user feedback.
We know that you selected Teamdash as Euronics’ recruitment software. You’ve been our user for over two years now.
Tell us how Teamdash has helped Euronics in recruitment.
Better overview of the recruitment process and candidate history
We now have a good overview of the recruitment process and candidate history. I see whether and in which projects the candidate has previously participated and what is their previous communication history, and I can add suitable tags for easier candidate identification. In addition, I can add candidates from LinkedIn to build up my talent pool so that all the information is available from one place.
Hiring manager engagement and a fairer decision-making process
Added comments are also a big advantage. They make it convenient to track and recommend candidates for open positions, and they make the selection process more transparent – I don’t have to make decisions based on gut feeling. I’m not just talking about my comments but also those of the hiring managers.
Teamdash allows adding limited users and regular users with different permissions. Adding comments and using Scorecards for rating is accessible to every user, and hiring managers are happy to do it.
I always give the hiring managers access to their recruitment projects as a limited user or regular user, depending on how much they want to engage with candidates in the project. Mostly, managers are in regular user status because they get a better overview of the entire process in that role.
A better understanding of the value of a recruiter’s work
The introduction of Teamdash has helped engage hiring managers in the process and understand the strategic nature of the recruiter’s work.
This has proven very useful – hiring managers understand how complex and extensive a recruitment project actually is, and they have a better overview of the entire recruitment process. Previously, they only saw the last two or three candidates I had selected for a meeting with them. Now, they see the entire candidate journey in the process. This helps understand what a recruiter’s job entails. It’s not just posting a job ad and expecting the talent pool to come knocking on your door – there’s a lot of work behind it.
I also had a project where the hiring manager wanted to select suitable candidates from the screening stage. Usually, I did this myself and only selected candidates reached him. Thanks to Teamdash software, the hiring manager had the opportunity to see the talent pool and how candidates move through the process in detail.
This has helped many non-recruiters understand the value of a recruiter’s work.
Easily accessible recruitment statistics
A significant advantage of using Teamdash is the ease of access to recruitment statistics. Instead of doing calculations, I have all the necessary information on one screen and immediately accessible. I can compare it with historical results to see trends and understand bottlenecks. Previously, I didn’t use as many metrics because I didn’t have the freedom to access them without doing calculations in Excel. The metric I most closely follow is time to hire.
Creating attractive job ads
I can’t ignore the creation of job ads that stand out on job boards. This was also one of the main criteria in choosing software – a large part of our high-volume recruitments come through job boards. We need to catch the eye of potential candidates.
For this purpose, we have created templates in Teamdash that are easy to copy and modify according to the position being sought. Thanks to these templates, it only takes me 3 minutes to create an attractive job ad and add it to various job boards with a click of a button.
Automation
If I didn’t have access to Teamdash recruitment software from tomorrow, the most significant change would be the time spent on activities I currently easily automate. This includes setting automatic triggers and scheduling tasks.
Time is critical in the recruitment field – I can’t imagine having to manually send out calendar invites, send feedback or rejection emails to candidates, and ask for or wait for hiring managers’ feedback about candidates.
This would affect critical metrics, not to mention that calculating these metrics would also take considerable time.
What other functionalities have you discovered in Teamdash?
Asynchronous Video Interview experience
I had no previous experience with asynchronous video interviews. Recruitment Automation Expert Endrik had mentioned them to me several times. When we started recruiting for a Social Media Specialist, I thought it was the best opportunity to test them.
There were a lot of candidates for this competition – over 150. It would have been challenging to meet all potentially suitable candidates, but asynchronous interviews gave us the opportunity to meet more candidates and also gave more candidates the chance to advance to the next round.
This also allowed us to filter out candidates who were not genuinely interested or motivated to join our team. Some candidates did not respond to the asynchronous video interviews – I wouldn’t have been able to notice the lack of interest so quickly and easily in face-to-face meetings. Overall, it saved a lot of time for both us and the candidates.
For me, it was a positively surprising experience. From one short asynchronous video interview, you can learn a lot more about a candidate than from a CV. They don’t work recruiting for every position, but I will happily use them in the future when I have the chance.
Using automatic email reminders
For positions like office workers or specialists, non-attendance or not answering calls is not a problem – however, this does happen for positions like warehouse operators, customer consultants, or cashiers. I’ve also noticed that the younger the person, the more easily this happens. It’s a two-way street – candidates expect feedback, and recruiters expect the same.
If there are candidates who have applied for multiple positions and then haven’t answered the phone, but I still consider them strong or suitable, I have the option of sending an automatic email reminder. Non-response to calls can happen for many reasons – it can be as simple as the candidate thinking it’s a sales call. I can follow up with an automatic email and let the candidate know I will call.
I also see the opening rates of emails sent from Teamdash, which helps reduce the number of candidates who drop out of the competition due to an unopened email.
Actually, there have been many different functionalities added, all of which I haven’t had the time to explore yet. The Customer Success team, led by Triin, has compiled a lot of introductory and instructional material in the Help Center, which I plan to go through when I have the chance.
In conclusion, what would you say is the biggest benefit you have received from Teamdash?
Without Teamdash, the time spent on operational work or simple copy-paste activities would take up a significant portion of my day. Sending each email separately or designing job ads and then adding them to job boards would take the time that I currently invest in activities that bring more value.
With the help of Teamdash, I have become a much more strategic recruiter – this change has mostly occurred in the last two and a half years working at Euronics. I have a complete overview of the recruitment process, and I can tailor it precisely to my current needs. This is especially important in today’s recruitment landscape – I can identify potential problem areas early and be more efficient in finding candidates.
Recruiting with Teamdash is much more comfortable and transparent, and collaboration with hiring managers is smooth. This helps make the entire recruitment communication more efficient. I have experience with other recruitment software, but none have been as effective and full of possibilities as Teamdash.
🤗 Thank you to Keter and the team at Euronics for sharing their experience with us.
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