Hiring

Third in the Tech Employers Leading the Way Series

Editor’s Note: Tech Employers Leading the Way recognizes companies that innovate and work to improve the hiring experience for both their hiring managers and the tech candidates they seek. In this series, we’ll dive into what works for them and what they’ve learned. Sharing these stories and learnings supports our company vision to make hiring more equitable, efficient, and transparent.

Hired’s List of 2023 Top Employers Winning Tech Talent highlighted companies across a variety of segments and industries creating tech hiring processes and experiences embracing principles such as equity, efficiency, and transparency. 

Among those leading the way is Veho, an organization revolutionizing package delivery and returns. Patrick Vitulli, Tech Recruiting Manager, shares how Veho created its candidate-centric interview process and uses Hired to reach top candidates. 

Our mission is to reinvent the world of delivery and returns in the e-commerce era by combining technology and logistics into a customer-centric organization. We build from the ground up to create new products and we compete against some top global companies daily.

Describe a process you’ve implemented to improve candidate experience and the hiring process

When I joined Veho, we were creating the interview process. Especially for engineers, we wanted to emulate what it would be like daily for an engineer working here. We created a three-part interview, which is back to back to back interviewing. 

First: Evaluate alignment

We dive into company culture, make sure you’re a team fit, and see how you align with the values of the organization. 

Second: Architecture interview for thought process (for engineers) 

The second part of this is an architecture interview for engineers specifically to design a system and walk us through the thought process. 

Third: Case study for practical application

The last portion is a case study, which is a realistic example of what it’s like working at Veho. Candidates get a set of broken code and have the opportunity to fix it and get it working again.

What are some of Veho’s strategies for maintaining a strong employer brand?

Two of the biggest metrics we discuss is our on-time delivery rate, which is 99.9%. To quantify that for you, it means one in every 1000 packages is delivered late. The second part of this is our customer satisfaction score which is regularly 4.9 out of 5. Both metrics are excellent and very efficient for this industry. 

As an employer brand, when we deliver on behalf of organizations such as Lululemon, Kroger, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Nordstrom, we are an extension of these brands in the delivery process. This is how we’ve built our brand throughout the years.

How has collaboration between hiring managers and TA teams improved efficiency?

At Veho, our recruiters collaborate with hiring managers regularly. We do all intake calls before we post any role. We make sure candidates meet certain competencies. Every candidate goes through the same process to avoid any bias. 

We meet with our hiring managers multiple times during the week to ensure the process is going well, the candidates are a good fit, and we’re hiring the best person for each role.

Using a tool such as Hired at Veho allows us to reach out to highly qualified candidates quickly. It also helps reach out to more folks than we typically would be able to, especially those who are underrepresented. 

Veho sees a 60% interview acceptance rate and an 80% offer close rate with Hired

Our response rate [using Hired] is far higher than you would see on a typical seat for LinkedIn recruiter, which is typically 13% to 14%. We track throughout the whole process and work with our Hired account and customer success managers to make sure we’re on board with these candidates. 

For example, they’ve shared that our average time to hire using the tech recruitment platform is 29 days. That’s 18 days faster than the average for companies our size. Feedback like that helps us know we’re running an efficient hiring process and helping our hiring managers reduce the cost of vacancy (CoV). 

Check out all the featured tech employers in the series so far: 

Firstup Puts People First to Help Companies Speed Up

One Medical Focuses on Authenticity in the Candidate Experience More

Second in the Tech Employers Leading the Way Series

Editor’s Note: This blog is part of a new series, Tech Employers Leading the Way, which recognizes companies that innovate and work to improve the hiring experience for both their hiring managers and the tech candidates they seek. In this series, we’ll dive into what works for them, and what they’ve learned, and share it with our readers. Sharing these stories and learnings supports our company vision to make hiring more equitable, efficient, and transparent.

Hired’s list of 2023 Top Employers Winning Tech Talent highlighted companies across a variety of segments and industries creating tech hiring processes and experiences embracing principles such as equity, efficiency, and transparency. 

Among those leading the way is One Medical, an organization transforming healthcare through its membership-based primary care practice. John Beard, Senior Director of Corporate and Technical Talent Acquisition, shares how One Medical offers a refreshing interview process and crafted its updated employer branding to foster an authentic candidate experience. 

About One Medical

For more than 15 years, One Medical has continuously proven there is a better way to deliver primary health care in the US. We have a hybrid model of both brick-and-mortar medical offices and online services. One Medical has more than 200 offices across the country and robust on-demand virtual services. We’re uniquely positioned to provide a wide range of services for our members. 

These include wellness and prevention, everyday care, chronic conditions, mental health, women’s health, LGBTQIA+ services, urgent concerns, sexual health, senior health, pediatric services, and many more. 

At One Medical, we also know that every minute matters when it comes to our members’ health. Our human-centered and technology-powered approach empowers our providers to spend more quality time with our patients and less time on paperwork.

This gives our members the undivided attention and care they deserve, rather than looking for a quick fix to get them out the door. Our providers have the time and space to consider our members’ current concerns and needs within the picture of their overall health. That way, they receive higher-quality care. 

We take the same human-centered approach with our own team members. It’s always about the people. It’s our biggest competitive advantage. No matter the role, the people of One Medical are singularly-minded in delivering on our goal of transforming primary care.

Tell us about a process you implemented to improve candidate experience and the hiring process.

While going through the interview process, I realized One Medical is doing the whole process of interviewing candidates much differently than everybody else. It starts with preparing candidates before their interviews. 

We found it is critically important for candidate experience to proactively answer questions we know they have. They should know what the process looks like and what we’re evaluating them on. Then, we give them friendly reminders about the unique aspects of our culture and what we expect from candidates. 

For instance, we welcome being able to admit mistakes because it is a learning opportunity. The better prepared a candidate is for the interview, the more comfortable they will be. That results in us getting better information from them. This helps us make sure we’re evaluating their skills rather than any cultural, communication, or environmental biases. And we all know we have them to some extent. 

It’s really about communicating with the candidates. We’re not trying to play “gotcha” with them. We’re not trying to surprise them even in our coding interviews or paired experiences so they have an opportunity to ask questions and be more interactive than usual.

What are some of One Medical’s strategies for maintaining a strong employer brand?

We embarked on a refresh of our employer brand last year. That started with listening. We conducted focus groups to hear why people were attracted to One Medical and why they stayed. We used that to build messaging around why One Medical is a great place to work. 

A strong employer brand needs to be authentic to the employee experience. The brand is not just ‘marketing speak’ to attract candidates. It should also be used to retain employees and reinforce why they choose to build a career here. We say it’s very aligned with our people experience team and internal communications to make sure what we say is accurate and consistent. 

We know from this work that one of the most powerful parts of our employer brand is the mission. Our technology team values the ability to have real, tangible impacts on our patients and clinical teams. They get to work with the people who use the technology they build every single day. That’s really exciting. On the recruiting team, we agree. That’s why many of us are here.

Related: One Medical shares some insights about building a better employer brand in this eBook.

How has collaboration between hiring managers and TA teams improved efficiency?

We’re very fortunate in that our hiring partners see recruiting as a shared responsibility. They will help their recruiter learn how to identify the proper candidate pools and they see it as an equal responsibility to convince those people to engage. They prioritized acting on candidates quickly, even if that’s early in the process. 

When we’re setting up a search boolean, critiquing our messaging, or reviewing profiles, they understand the importance of moving quickly. In fact, when it comes to scheduling candidates, we have the freedom to overwrite their calendars. 

We have a rubric we built in conjunction with our hiring teams that tells us what on their calendars can be written over and what can’t. That keeps us moving quickly in the process. Often, that’s the difference between an offer accept and an offer decline.

Related: One Medical adds expertise to this eBook about collaboration between hiring managers and TA teams.

We do have a robust tech stack for our TA team. This enables and optimizes speed, efficiency, and candidate experience. Sourcing, engagement, interview scheduling, candidate experience, interview prep, reporting, analytics, and debriefs each have a different tool that fits into our TA stack seamlessly. It enables recruiters to work with increased velocity and efficiency.

Hired specifically provides a warm handoff between One Medical and potential candidates because there’s mutual interest present from the beginning. The entire process goes much faster with the candidates we engage through Hired. 

In fact, the Hired platform is now our number one source of engineering hires. So thank you, Hired! More

A recruiter capacity model is a data-driven approach to determine the optimal number of requisitions (open positions) a recruiter can handle within a given timeframe effectively. It takes into account various factors such as the complexity of roles, hiring process duration, candidate sourcing channels, and recruiter workload. By establishing a well-defined capacity model, organizations can enhance their recruitment strategies, improve candidate experience, and ensure efficient resource allocation.

Why is a recruiter capacity model important?

Enhanced efficiency: By understanding their capacity, recruiters manage their workload more effectively. This leads to quicker and more efficient hiring processes.

Quality hiring: It reduces recruiter burnout and ensures each candidate and role receives the attention it deserves, leading to higher quality hires.

Data-driven decisions: It offers a framework to make informed decisions about staffing their recruitment teams and allocating resources.

Scalability: Organizations can better scale their recruitment efforts in line with business growth. This ensures the recruitment team’s size and capabilities are always aligned with company needs.

Ready to start developing your recruiter capacity model? Access the full checklist. More

First in the Tech Employers Leading the Way Series

Editor’s Note: This blog kicks off a new series, Tech Employers Leading the Way, which recognizes companies that innovate and work to improve the hiring experience for both their hiring managers and the tech candidates they seek. In this series, we’ll dive into what works for them, and what they’ve learned, and share it with our readers. Sharing these stories and learnings supports our company vision to make hiring more equitable, efficient, and transparent.

Hired’s list of 2023 Top Employers Winning Tech Talent highlighted companies across a variety of segments and industries creating tech hiring processes and experiences embracing principles such as equity, efficiency, and transparency. 

Among those leading the way is Firstup, an organization transforming the digital employee experience. Sabra Sciolaro, Chief People Officer, shares how Firstup creates an impactful tech recruiting strategy and nurtures exceptional candidate experiences.  

About Firstup

From the beginning, Firstup founders and employees understood that the problem of disengaged workers and disconnected tech was a huge opportunity for positive change. We built a platform that could reach and engage employees not just anytime and anywhere, but at the optimal time — inside the software they were already using. That’s how we became the world’s first intelligent communications platform, serving 40 percent of the Fortune 100.

Today, we are the communication pipeline for the world’s workforce, connecting tens of millions of employees globally. We’re using that unique position to help employers better understand and support their people at every moment of the employee journey. That vision and mission, provide a positive vision for the future that we are all working together to achieve. 

Our vision is to make work better for every worker and our mission is to improve the employee experience at every moment that matters, large and small. 

This mission and vision translate internally too. We want to make the employee experience exceptional at Firstup for our employees. Empowered by the belief that each team member holds a stake in the company, Firstup cultivates an environment of creativity, accountability, and connection. 

As a virtual workforce, we exemplify how distributed teams can harmoniously unite, achieving remarkable outcomes through unwavering collaboration and a shared sense of ownership. A core value at Firstup is we win as a team. 

Tell us about a process you implemented to improve candidate experience and the hiring process

We are very proud of the recruiting and onboarding process we created. A positive experience for the candidate starts from the moment they interact with our company. First, we worked to improve our LinkedIn Belonging pages, Firstup careers page, and Comparably pages. That way, candidates could find cultural and benefits information on the company, including authentic employee testimonials. 

Next, the People Ops, Talent Acquisition, and Communications Teams worked together to outline the recruiting process at Firstup through a program we created called Firstup Select. This program outlines the step-by-step process to align the TA, People Ops, and hiring manager. 

This ensures the job descriptions are well-written and accurate, the interviews are organized with measurable interview questions, and the experience is cohesive and seamless for the candidate. 

Spending the time to outline the process, create templates (job description, rating scales, interview questions, etc.), and train employees on Firstup Select truly up-leveled our recruiting process – and it shows through the top-notch employees we have hired.

Once the employee signs the contract, our best-in-class preboarding and onboarding experience kicks off! 

What are some of Firstup’s strategies for maintaining a strong employer brand?

We believe in authentic employee voices. At the heart of powerful talent marketing are employees That is why our talent marketing strategy focuses on our talented employees through the following initiatives:

Featuring employee videos, testimonials, employee gathering pictures, and Comparably data on our social media so people get an inside look at our company culture.

Honoring and celebrating our current employees with anniversaries or those who have won awards on our social pages. It is important to showcase the talent of our current employees. 

Conducting a monthly brand advocacy program. This program provides employees with a variety of company content that they can choose to share externally to their professional networks. This includes hot jobs, employee thought leadership, Firstup events, awesome customer examples, and more. Our advocacy program is also contest-based to get people excited to share and extend their own thought leadership. 

Encouraging employees via an automatic journey on their anniversaries and QR codes on their welcome box to share to LinkedIn that they started at Firstup or it is their anniversary.

Our talent marketing social content outperforms the other content because it is fun and authentic. It gives top tech talent a true insight into our company and employees. 

How has collaboration between hiring managers and TA teams improved efficiency?

At Firstup, the Talent Acquisition Team partners closely with hiring managers to find top tech candidates for our open positions. To help guide them through the process, we created the Firstup Select program which outlines the hiring process and resources and provides hiring and interview best practices. 

This five-step process is available on our Firstup intelligent communications platform to offer People Leaders easy access to the guides and other manager resources, including rating scales, job description templates, intake meeting discussion guide, intake meeting form, interview tips, and a brand guide to help hiring managers confidently talk about Firstup. 

Managers can access this content at any time and meet with their recruiter regularly throughout the process to ask questions and align. 

As businesses evolve, talent strategies do too. How have your strategies shifted in the last 12 months? How do you plan to shift your strategies in 2024? 

In 2022, we were using a lot of agencies for recruiting. However, insourcing our TA function has been a key priority, and as such, we have invested heavily in our own talent function. This has included additional training for both recruiters and hiring managers, investing in best-in-class TA technology and resources (like Hired.com), and streamlining processes.

This shift supported our awesome and capable recruiting team to better leverage their company and brand knowledge to recruit talent. In 2023, we reduced spending with agencies where necessary and utilized our recruiters to hire those top tech candidates. 

This has proven worthwhile because they have first-hand company experience, can speak to the brand well, and provide examples. 

We still utilize agencies where necessary for specific skill sets. One area we are looking to expand (started in 2023 but more in 2024) is partnering with an agency(ies) to specifically help us recruit diverse tech candidates and improve our DEIB analytics we are tracking for a diverse and inclusive workforce. All data shows that a more inclusive workforce equals more innovation and diversity of thought. 

In 2023 we also focused on increasing talent marketing. We developed a plan to better highlight open jobs through social media, enhanced our employee referral program, and created a Hot Jobs channel in our Firstup communications platform where the recruiters posted job openings internally to help with referrals and internal mobility.  We also created a talent marketing plan that highlighted our employee voices so that our amazing Firstup culture speaks for itself. 

As an intelligent communication platform, we must utilize technology, specifically our platform, to improve the hiring process. 

When we created the Firstup Select recruiting process, we posted it on our internal communication platform. We created an HR Hub for People Leaders with a recruiting page specifically targeted to hiring managers with the Firstup Select recruiting process, links to templates, and other technologies/tools used in the recruiting process.

When an individual contributor is promoted to a manager, or a new manager begins at Firstup, they join a “new manager onboarding journey.” This journey sends a series of communications about what to do in your first 90 days as a new manager. 

As part of that journey, one of the communications focuses specifically on the recruiting/Firstup Select process. It provides a high-level overview of our strategy and process and educates new hiring managers on where to find materials when they are ready to hire. 

What’s cool about this journey is it automatically kicks off when there is a new manager, so the HR team “sets it and forgets it” and it automatically sends it. It is a great way to educate the new leaders on our hiring process.

Within our communication platform/modern intranet, employees also will see hot jobs to share and with the click of a button, can easily post the job to their social networks. 

We also have a robust Comparably page and have integrated our recruiting platform, Lever, into Comparably so that when prospective candidates are perusing Comparably data, they can also see our job openings.

Finally, we created a profile on Hired to connect directly with growing tech teams. Hired has helped us market to and recruit top tech talent since they are the go-to company for sourcing the best tech talent.  More