Zubak Group - Automotive

Zubak Grupa is a company with a long history of hiring different talent. After being in the business for almost 40 years, they implemented TalenLyft and enhanced their hiring.

A unique candidate database where all candidates that ever applied for a position at your company have their spot, waiting for the perfect timing to be rediscovered may sound like an unreachable goal. However, this possibility may introduce additional savings to the company and better organization of your HR department.

Just imagine that every time you said to a rejected candidate that their information will be saved and considered for future job openings was actually true. Not only that this would mean a better candidate experience for your applicants, but it would also introduce significant savings for your company since it would mean skipping the entire job advertising process.

This is exactly how Zubak Grupa, our customer of several years, explains their hiring process. More specifically, in our recent conversation with Dino, their Head of HR Department, told us that: “ There are always 10 to 15 candidates within the base that I can contact regarding a new job opening and check their interest in the role. Minimally 50% of them usually say yes! “

In the rest of our conversation, he also gave us a detailed look into their hiring processes and the ways in which TalentLyft helped them navigate through their hiring efforts. We invite you to keep reading the blog to find out all the insightful ways in which they are using the tool to maximize their effectiveness.

A History of Old-fashioned Hiring Practices

As Dino explains, prior to implementing TalentLyft, their hiring used to be quite old-fashioned and from time to time disorganized. Recruiters and hiring managers used to organize candidates into Excel spreadsheets, uploaded various content on Google Drive, or even used internally created software, and ultimately lacked a central place in which all candidates' information would be systematically stored.

This somewhat conservative approach to recruiting candidates cost them a lot of time and effort and still didn’t enable them to easily recruit the best talent.

The Beginning of the Change!

Soon after implementing TalentLyft, things started to change. Now that the company had a centralized base for storing all candidate information, to put it in Dino’s words: “ this made their lives easier”. The fact that all candidates were in one place had several benefits:

1. Sharing candidates internally
2. Enhancing employer brand
3. Searchable database speed up the sourcing process
4. Easier consistent communication with the candidates
5. Always respecting candidates' privacy

1. Collaborative Hiring had Never Been Easier!

It is rarely a case that only one person determines a need for new hires, goes through the process alone and finally hires a new candidate. Whether it is a hiring manager that collaborates with the recruiter, or a decision maker from the team that is getting a new member, there is almost always a collaboration that takes place in hiring.

In Dino’s case this is what often happens during his regular work day:

“ A colleague of mine from Sisak recently called me saying that there is a high demand for a new car mechanic in their branch and asking if we could source some quality candidates. The first thing I do in such cases in looking into our database and finding a list of potential candidates. Afterwards, I can simply share a link containing all relevant information about the candidate with my colleague who then decides if these candidates are suitable for hiring.”

He adds: “ Basically with one click, I have the power to share specific information about the candidates with my colleagues and collaborate with them effortlessly. By doing so, I can simply see every action that my colleagues make - from notes that they create, communication that they perform with the candidates or any evaluation that they mention. Since the app is very user friendly, sharing candidates internally and externally became a part of our everyday.”

2. Employer Brand Benefits

Creating a customized career site can be difficult, require extensive collaboration between the teams and is oftentimes expensive. However, Zubak Grupa demonstrated that by implementing the TalentLyft career site they can save time and money and create a unique space for all their employees to read about the company and their coworkers. Besides having one place where candidates can apply for any open position (or send an open letter), they use the career site for other activities as well. Their career site consists of an Articles page where they share news and the successes of the company and their individuals, employees' career stories and all activities happening at the company.

“The stories that we like to share are the stories of success within our company. It often happens that our employees progress from a regular position to somewhere high up in the company, sometimes even become board members. This is something that we are really proud of and what we like to display as a part of our career site.”

“To put it shortly, on one hand we created a place where our colleagues can go to see everything that is happening at the company and read about their coworkers which would represent an internal employer branding. On the other hand, potential candidates can visit this page and learn more about the culture within our company, get a better understanding of it and decide whether they want to pursue the job application.”

3. Searchable Database Speeds up the Sourcing Process 

Having a searchable database within which you can use various ways of filtering candidates makes recruiters inevitably faster at their work. For Zubak Grupa, one of the useful aspects of the tool revolves around using relevant filters to source great candidates faster.

“If we go back to the example I gave with the colleague from Sisak who was looking for a car mechanic, it is clear that I became way more efficient thanks to the tool. In that case I used hashtags for the location - in this case Sisak and 15 km around that area - and filtered my entire database based on that criteria. Afterwards I skimmed through all the candidates and shared them with my colleague. This meant that my process of sourcing potentially great candidates took only a couple of minutes which helped us save a lot of time and money.”

4. Easier Consistent Communication with the Candidates

A timely, precise and personal communication with the candidates is one of the biggest challenges that recruiters go through in their everyday work. Dealing with a vast number of applicants for different roles and in different stages of their recruitment process can be challenging and a source of a lot of human error. However, the ability to create various templates for each stage of the process and schedule them depending on the time they should be sent to each individual candidate helps recruiters be on point.

“ We created templates so that we can send all of our candidates personalized emails depending on the stage they are in. They receive email after applying, after being admitted or rejected to the next phase, and so on. Also, I would like to mention that the timely communication goes hand in hand with our own internal KPIs. For instance, to make sure that precisely three days before the set deadline, I deliver all information to the candidates. This made us way more reliable in the eyes of our candidates. ”

5. Always Respecting Candidates' Privacy

“Making sure that we respect our candidates' privacy and obey the rules of GDPR is one of our big priorities”, said Dino. Despite this being a priority, the task is not easy if there is no way to set the timers and automatically delete candidates' information from the database when their consent is expiring. By using TalentLyft, the company manages to always be on top of the legal legislation and never has to worry about breaking any confidentiality.

6. Referral Program

Finally, after years of using the tool, Dino told us that a couple of months ago they implemented their own referral program that seems to be paying off.

“We create an elaborate referral program with different categorizations, depending on the type of role that our employees are referring their colleagues for. We presented attractive awards for our employees and we hope for it to be a great success. For us this represents benefits in two ways. Firstly, we save money by avoiding a classic job advertisement, and secondly, we show to our employees that their word really does matter to us. So far, I’ve seen a lot of my colleagues sharing new vacancies on their social media which shows us that the program is working for now.”

Ultimately, it is a long way ahead of their referral program, but Dino is confident that this is something that will give them a lot of success in the future.