Onboarding your hiring team: Interview training with Bynder

May 7, 2019


Onboarding your hiring team: Interview training with Bynder

  1. The Bynder recruitment philosophy
  2. Leadership academy
  3. Eurley’s recruitment goals & story
  4. Agile recruitment & the ATS
  5. Ruben & the art of the interview
  6. Types of interview questions
  7. What not to ask
  8. The STAR method
  9. Salary negotiation
  10. Onboarding new hires
  11. Bootcamp
  12. Onboarding plan
  13. Q&A
  14. Resources

Adrie Smith: Hi everyone, welcome to another Recruitee webinar. I’m your host, Adrie Smith, head of content here at recruitee. And today I’m joined by the Bynder team, and we’ll be discussing onboarding your hiring team. So I have Judyta, Ruben, who are here with me in Amsterdam, and Eurley who is actually joining us from the Alps in Italy today. We’re here to talk about onboarding your hiring team and walking you through the interview process for your hiring managers.

Adrie Smith: Just a few house rules before we get started, you can see actually on the right-hand side of your screen that there’s a questions tab. Feel free to drop your questions there at any time, but we’ll save the questions till the end and the Bynder team will answer them one by one. Also, if you see that some of these answered, or asked a question that you’d like also answered, you can actually upvote them by choosing the triangle on the side of the question. That way we know that it’s a super important question and that we need to answer it. And of course, this recording will also go live on the Talent Acquisition Innovators Facebook community. You guys should have already got a link to it in your reminder emails, but if you haven’t received those you’ll also get it in the follow-up email afterward. So join us there for a lot of resources but also for the recording from today. I’ll let the Bynder team take it away already.

Ruben Vermaak: Thank you. Thank you also for this opportunity. First of all, I’m very happy Eurley is joining us in his vacation destination from the Italian Alps. So Eurley, thank you so much for joining from all the way over there. We couldn’t do it without you.

The Bynder recruitment philosophy

Ruben Vermaak: So, the topic of today is how to onboard your hiring team, something that we also have to deal with of course on quite a frequent basis. The agenda for today. So first we gonna tell you bit more about our recruitment philosophy, about things we do regarding recruitment and hiring team, and more about the actual interview and how you can help with that. A very important topic, salary negotiations, then we can gonna save and discuss at the end is not the end, it’s near the beginning and also some takeaways from this afternoon.

Ruben Vermaak: So let me start with our Bynder recruitment philosophy because you often hear within companies that recruiters have the feeling that they have to do everything by themselves. And we actually don’t think that’s correct, in ideal worlds we think that recruitment is a team responsibility. So if a manager would walk up to a recruiter say, hey, that’s not possible. Because it’s happening within the whole team. The way that we see it, recruiters are there to support the team, they’re facilitators. So they’re there to help you as a hiring manager and not the other way around. That’s how we see things at Bynder and I also hope that for other companies it will also apply.

Ruben Vermaak: Yes, then more about our leadership academy.

Leadership academy

Judyta  Niedbalska: Indeed. Just a few words about the leadership academy. And the reason why we are talking about it now is that the next materials for the next slides that you will see are coming actually from the leadership academy. So what is leadership academy?

Judyta  Niedbalska: In Bynder we have three days of training for all our management. This is something which is obligatory if you are becoming a manager. It doesn’t matter if you are a new manager or if you have a lot of experience, we want our people are in line with their knowledge and this leadership academy has got three days. It covers different topics. And one of them is the art of recruitment. Why it is important? It is important because some of the managers maybe they have a lot of experience with that, some of the managers they are brand new in their role and maybe they never did any recruitment. So again we want people to be in line with that.

Judyta  Niedbalska: This training is basically set up that there is a lot of theory, but there is a big focus on practice. So every single person has got a chance to actually practice with professional actress, maybe a person that they struggle with. I don’t know, if they need to reject a person that is super excited about the job, about the position. So basically everybody has got a chance to practice themselves and that’s the main focus of that academy. If you want to know more about that you can contact us later. And now we will just move into the content of this training basically. Yeah?

Ruben Vermaak: Correct. First, we’re gonna talk about the recruitment and the hiring team, and I am gonna pass the mic to Eurley.

Eurley’s recruitment goals & story

Eurley Balentina: Alright, hey. Thank you guys, and also thank you to technology. I’m actually like twelve hundred kilometers away from Amsterdam and two thousand meters up in the mountains, but not complaining, not complaining at all. So let me just start off with the goal of recruitment and a brief introduction about myself as well. I joined Bynder in January, pretty much the only recruiter for the company. Two months into my function we hired a contractor to help us out with tech positions, but once I joined Bynder I had a lot of freedom to actually tweak and work with the recruitment process. And pretty much the first thing I’ve done when joining Bynder had a meeting with all the hiring managers to explain and get their feedback as well and input on what we want to achieve as a team when it comes down to hiring.

Eurley Balentina: So pretty much we came up with our philosophy, I would say. As recruiters, we would like to meet Bynder’s hiring goals and targets the most efficient way possible and obviously, I don’t think this will be different for any other company. We would like to achieve this by controlling our costs, hiring in a timely manner, and finding the right people for our different teams. I think the last one is very important and I think for myself personally as well. I’ve worked at a few big companies with teams of like five, ten, twenty people, companies with ten k people in total. And I remember the last company I worked for, their hiring model was to hire excellence and to hire the best people that they could find on the market. To me, myself, I think that it really depends on what your teams needs that makes the hire a good hire for the team. There are a lot of developers outside, let’s take an example. Guys that have had a lot of experience in development. If I go to our development team right now, the best development, they would have most experience will not be the right fit for the team at the moment as we have many seniors on the team already.

Eurley Balentina: So just a little bit of a twist on it, hiring the right people for different teams is very, very important. I think to recruit as a team consultant, the relationship between the hiring team and the recruitment is key for successful and efficient hiring. As I mentioned before, when I joined Bynder I had like one general meeting with all the hiring managers to explain what I can do for them and also to get an idea of what they expect from recruitment. Obviously, changing from recruiters could set some expectations, obviously. I think it’s always good for hiring managers to understand where you come from, what your ideas are, and also to get the situation about how things have been going before and how things will be going from now on.

Eurley Balentina: So even before interviewing or qualifying any candidates, I think recruitment hiring managers just need to meet and discuss the hiring goals for short-term and long-term, and how these will be achieved. So pretty much, team situation, how big is your team at the moment, what you expect would be happening, the coming period, let’s say 2,1, to 2 to 3 to 4, are you going to expand, do you see people that might be leaving your team, and what you will be needing yourself in terms of hiring. Are you expect to be having interns, are expecting to hire senior people, junior people, you have to get an idea about that. In terms of recruitment strategy as well, from our side as recruiters, explain what we can do. Maybe put up job ads depending on the need and situation, or the job description, not the job description but the job need, basically. Meetups, a lot of stuff we can do.

Eurley Balentina: Very important as well, roles and expectations. Who is doing what during the process? I have some teams who are very much involved in our recruiting. And I do have some teams as well who rather have the least, least, least amount of time spent on recruiting. But, it’s really good to know from the start actually, what to expect from each other. Resources, how much is our budget, can we also have meetups, can we use extra or new jobs words et cetera if we cannot find the right people at the right time. Obviously, most people I do know and I have been in the situation before with other companies where there was no money, how do you find people, are you only relying on your own job ad page or are you going to use Indeed, Monster, and so on so on.

Eurley Balentina: And now we have a timeline as well, every hiring manager has an urgent need obviously, everybody will say, yo I need a spreadsheet yesterday [inaudible 00:11:32] what will happen if you don’t hire this person tomorrow, what will happen to your teams, or your goals and pretty much what you want to achieve in your team if you don’t hire this person in a week, in a month, and so on and so on.

Eurley Balentina: So my main takeaway from, let’s say the last four, five months, especially with the hiring managers here. The better both recruiter and hiring managers are informed, the better the candidate is gonna be informed as well. The translates into better candidate engagement and a smaller chance of mistakes during the recruitment process. Information is key, communication is key. We have ATS for that. I have the advantage that we are pretty much all in one office, so I can edit pretty much every moment of the day, walk up to the hiring managers and talk to them. I know some teams work remotely for some companies, make sure their communication lines are very short and that you can always reach your hiring managers and that they can reach you as well. That definitely helps the process.

Agile recruitment & the ATS

Eurley Balentina: If I look at all procedures at Bynder, they are standard but bespoke. So each team will have a different hiring process, cater to their needs. Where the process is pretty much standard across Bynder when it comes to SLA’s, ATS use, candidate feedback, and so on. What it has provided us is better to control of the recruitment process. Well informed and prepared candidates, which is very important. And more agile recruitment process, I would like to explain it a little bit more. Let’s say if you as a recruiter are very much of informed- has informed your hiring manager of what you guys gonna do and how you gonna hire if anything happens during the process you guys are pretty much ready and able to adjust change and pretty much improve. I think that’s very, very important.

Eurley Balentina: A must for reporting, feedback and improving. I think that’s a standard part. Having correct ATS,  obviously. Having pretty much standard time where you can actually receive feedback from your hiring managers and pretty much give feedback to your candidates as well. It really, really helps the reporting, feedback, and recruitment on there. And obviously, it makes the role for the recruiter itself actually more exciting. I had the experience of working at companies where the recruitment position almost becomes like an admin position. It can become very boring and if I have the chance to make a team or grow a team at Bynder, I would rather get the recruiters who would be in my team more of a strategic pro, where they can actually be an expert in their field, advisor of the hiring team, advise the hiring manager train them and actually bounce back ideas and forward, just to make the role for them interesting but also the experience for the candidate and the hiring manager as well, the best possible.

Eurley Balentina: A quick example about the standard and bespoke, our sales team is growing rapidly and our finance team, lately I’ve hired a few people for them as well, but they are not growing as fast. I think the main difference in there is that the standard part in terms of giving feedback using ATS, both teams have the same. Bespoke, sales, obviously the sales team have a higher attrition rate, unfortunately, so we would like to get people in very quickly and get them through the process very fast. They also have more of a long-term vision of where they wanna drive the team. The team needs to grow because Bynder is growing pretty well as well. But how are we going to pipeline candidates, are we gonna have a job ad all the time on our job, careers page. It’s quite different.

Eurley Balentina: For the finance team, I had more one-off, one on positions this year. I don’t expect the team to have high attrition actually. The focus has been more on sourcing instead of using a job ad and using a meetup, pretty much find those specialized positions like an accountant or even like someone who can handle our system, we have a very bespoke system, financial system actually. So it’s more of sourcing, short-term a longer process and actually a more specialized process in general.

Eurley Balentina: I will hand my turn over to, I think, you Ruben, right now to do your part?

Ruben Vermaak: That’s correct, thank you.

Ruben & the art of the interview

Ruben Vermaak: The interview. So what we suggest, everything we’ve got right now is not rocket science. Even though we know from experience, working with our own hiring managers it doesn’t really hurt to create some structure every now and then.

Ruben Vermaak: We’re starting, for example, with the actual interview. So what we recommend for hiring managers, when somebody comes in, break the ice, introduce yourself. Something we always do at Bynder, start with a tour of the building, takes two minutes but you can already chat to a person, break the ice, and then you can go sit in a meeting room that you already have that.

Ruben Vermaak: Second thing. Global information about the company and the role. You’ll be surprised that if you don’t do this that halfway during a conversation it could be that the person you’re talking to has totally different expectations about a role, for example. So, it doesn’t hurt at the beginning explaining a little more information about Bynder ad also about the role that you’re talking about so just to clarify. Clarify, never ever hurts.

Ruben Vermaak: Then, of course, the moment is where you can ask questions to the client. Hiring managers often do it by themselves or they do it with somebody else, so a tag team, there are two people who are asking questions. And after that you switch, so you actually give the opportunity to the candidate to ask questions to you about the role, about the company, perhaps about you being manager, et cetera. This in total recommends, not let it be more than forty-five minutes. After that you end the conversation, it’s really important you discuss the follow-up. So what can they expect next, because if you don’t do that then the person will leave with no clue what’s next, not something- how you would like to end. Just make sure that you discuss next week, or within a month, we’ll be back to you. And also, if possible, discuss the following steps afterward until they hopefully get the job.

Ruben Vermaak: After the candidate has left, and we highly recommend directly, especially if you’re with another person, to sit down and to do a short debrief. If you are away from the situation, write it down directly, so don’t wait till the end, or the day after because you know the longer you wait, the more you forget. So it’s really important also during the conversation to already make some short notes and put it on the system, especially if you’re interviewing with several people. Because if other people need to rely on your notes and on your very brief statements, it’s really hard to compare candidates. So make sure that you take some time to also to do the actual evaluation.

Ruben Vermaak: And near the end, including evaluation with normal candidates can run ninety minutes, and could be with tech interview it takes a little bit longer because you have some more in-depth questions or even a little demo part. So that is what we suggest giving a structure of how to do an interview for the hiring manager.

Types of interview questions

Ruben Vermaak: Now we’re going to the kind of questions you can ask. Now as you know there is a big difference between open and closed questions. So if you only ask closed questions where the answer could be yes or no, you don’t get a lot of information. We rather recommend combining that. Perhaps start with a closed question and then open question after that. Actually, we recommend using as many open questions as possible, because in the end, it is the point of this interview that you get as much information from the candidate as possible. If you after an hour you spoke more than the candidate, something went wrong.

Ruben Vermaak: Try to eliminate suggestive questions. For example, at Bynder we really like team players, are you a team player? If you ask a person like that, you are gonna get the answer that you’re hoping for because of course, they say they gonna be team player. By making it suggestive you don’t really get the answer you actually want to hear. Make sure to steer away from suggestive questions where you actually already fill in the blanks of what you want to hear.

bynder quote ruben vermaak on onboarding hiring team

Ruben Vermaak: Then we have the fantasy first experience questions. Later I’m gonna tell you more about STAR, which actually can help with this. But if you ask a hypothetical question, you will also get a hypothetical answer. Often what you wanna hear with candidates is their experience, how they have handled things in the past. That’s why we really recommend going more for the experience questions. But like I said, I’m gonna handle that in the next slide.

Ruben Vermaak: Then we have more psychological questions, the why versus how come. Now we have learned from experience but also actually after we have been tipped by some research, that if you ask why question it can sometimes be perceived as a negative, like why are you like this, or why did you go for the specific job opportunity, almost like an assault or attack. And if you would rephrase with how come, it could feel as less as a threat or an attack. I know it’s a very, very minor thing, but we know from experience and also from research that we have read, that these minor things could really have an impact, so try to stay away from the why questions and rephrase it using how come.

Ruben Vermaak: And then the cocktail questions. So what people do often, myself included, ask like three or four questions in a row. So for example, if you see the person worked at EY, it’s like hey, so I saw you worked at EY so can you please explain to me what did you do there, why did you leave, can you tell me more about your manager and what was the coolest thing you did at the company, go. If you ask like three or four questions in a row you often see that people only answer like one or two questions because they already forgot that you actually asked four questions. And quite often they only answer the last question. Again, this isn’t rocket science but we really ask you, and especially the hiring manager to be aware of that. Just ask one question, wait for the answer. And what you can always do, is do a follow-up question based on the answer that they actually gave. And also doesn’t really hurt after you listened and asked to follow up question to make a short summary, like hey, do I understand correctly that this is what you said? Okay, great, and then you can proceed with the next question, go to a different topic.

Ruben Vermaak: And last but not least, silence. Sometimes people have the tendency if the candidate doesn’t say anything, to start talking again, because it’s really awkward if there is silence. But sometimes it’s good. If you ask the question, let it be silent for a few seconds, maybe even ten or twenty seconds. Because you also need to give the candidate the opportunity to think, because perhaps you came with a question that he or she didn’t expect. So give the person some time to think and you don’t always need to start talking again. Let them do the talking.

What not to ask

Ruben Vermaak: So we talked about what you can ask, there are also things that you cannot ask. This really important. So Bynder’s located in the Netherlands, in Spain, in England, in Dubai, we also have two offices in the United States: in Boston and San Mateo, California. And as you might know, in the US there are a lot more rules about what you can and cannot say. Perhaps for you as a recruiter or somebody part of the HR or people in the talent team, you are familiar with that. But we also know from experience that not all hiring managers, especially people that just been promoted to become team leaders are not aware of this. So also that it doesn’t hurt to make them, again, aware of things you can or cannot ask.

Ruben Vermaak: On the slide, you see an overview of things, especially in the US, that you cannot ask by law. It’s just, again, to be aware of that and instruct your hiring managers about things they should ask, and especially things they shouldn’t ask. Also, something came into mind, if you would have a candidate that needs to do like three different rounds, make sure that the people that are interviewing that person don’t ask the same kind of questions again and again and again. Because then the candidate might have the feeling that people aren’t really listening to your answers or it’s not written down and it’s a repetition of the previous interview.

The STAR method

Ruben Vermaak: Yes about STAR. So as you’ve written here, the best predictor of future behavior is the past. So as we’ve already said if you ask hypothetical questions you might get hypothetical answers. And quite often, you’d actually like to know what has happened in the past. So I think what you could teach to hiring managers is to use the STAR method for that, to find out more about the candidate’s experience. In case, you’re not familiar with the STAR method, it actually consists of four elements.

Ruben Vermaak: S stands for situation, the T for task, the A for action, and the R for results. For example, you always start by asking a certain situation. So tell me more about the time or situation when you needed to show leadership. The task could be, could you please tell me what was the specific task that you got, and the action is what did you actually do with that, and then the R, results, could you please tell us what was the outcome of your actions, what has happened. By doing this the candidate will start describing the situation so you’re actually familiar with what the situation was, what the specific task was, what he or she did, and the actual end results.

Ruben Vermaak: I also have an overview over here, so it doesn’t always have to be four specific questions. It can also be a combination of that. Tell me more about the time where you worked effectively as part of a team, what were the challenges, based on that how did you deal with the challenges, etcetera. So also here, one question at a time, don’t fall into the trap of the cocktail question like we always, sometimes do.

Salary negotiation

Ruben Vermaak: Now, I’m giving the floor back to Eurley regarding salary negations.

Adrie Smith: Very controversial.

Ruben Vermaak: Yes.

Eurley Balentina: Thank you, Ruben. Yeah, controversial indeed. These are pretty much my reflection on how we do things at Bynder. Obviously, I know pretty much every recruiter has their own opinion on this, but my take on this is don’t make it hard on yourself. I used to work in agency recruitment, I think my first in recruitment was agency, almost eight, nine years ago. And I was trained as pretty much a consultant, always be closing, asking the right question, knowing all the information. And for me, salary negotiation is not even different than that. It’s very important to know what you can offer and have all the information. Know what you can offer and how much range you have. That’s something at Bynder we have been working hard on to actually know what we can offer our new hires, or pretty much our candidates. Very important to have a benchmark in a way, if you don’t have a benchmark and start asking people, start asking everybody that you speak to what they want to make or what they want to earn. If possible, indicate salary benchmark on your job ads.

Eurley Balentina: Very controversial, I think a few weeks ago I saw something about this on LinkedIn as well. Definitely, if you can do that, ask HR to do it, it actually gives candidates an indication of what they can expect, and it also gives you kind of a filter with possible candidates that you already can speak to. Ask them about what you want to earn in your first point of contact, talking about the first contact as well, I’ve already seen a few questions about that. Be open with your candidates on the first call. I obviously my first call as more as a, let me get to know you, what your interests are, and so on and so on. Be open about what you can offer, definitely be open to the candidate about this as well. Don’t settle or set any expectations.

onboarding hiring team quote bynder

Use your ATS and document salary, this will help your HR with benchmarking. Always be closing, so summarize, ask and confirm. And don’t be afraid of rejections. Definitely that one, if you have a very open conversation with your candidate the easier the negotiation will be at the end as well.

Judyta Niedbalska: Alright, is that the end? You might think so, but indeed this is not the end.

Onboarding new hires

Judyta Niedbalska: So when we have the candidate, he signs the contract, yay we have a new person on board. We should not stop here, that’s very important. That’s why we in Bynder, we really take of care of the onboarding process, and we also train our hiring manager that this a crucial part. Because we have a person who is very excited to join us and then they might call and they don’t know what to do, how to do, they’re lost, confused, and then the excitement might just go. And also, and this is very important for us, is that we are all hiring. We need to take care of our people through the whole process, and in the end, if you are a happy employee, you will also promote our company for another recruitment.

bynder onboarding hiring team quote

Judyta Niedbalska: So let me go now a bit more into our onboarding. Just briefly about it, a few activities that we actually do in our onboarding process. Now what you can see in front of you is an email. When the person signs the contract, this kind of email will appear in their mailbox, and this is general welcome from the company. Few words from our CEO and then you have pictures and introduction of a few people. Of course your manager, then you have an introduction to your buddy. In Bynder we have a buddy system, which means when you join the company you have a person who will take care of you, take you for lunch, explain you things like, I don’t know, where is the printing machine or where is even the toilet. It basically a person who will make you feel comfortable in your first days. And then you also have an explanation who is your office manager. Is the person basically who will help you out of logistics like coming in the company in your first day.

Judyta Niedbalska: Here what you can guys see also down there, there is like a blue button and this blue button will take you to a presentation that will answer like the frequently asked questions. For example, do you have lunch in the company, do I need to bring my lunch box, or what kind of dress code is there. So basically when the new person arrives at the company, they are a bit less stressed and they know basic things. So that’s the purpose of this general email. This is how we start our onboarding process.

Judyta Niedbalska: Moving to the next slide. So we have a general email from the company, and then the next step is an email from your manager. The email that you see in front of you is an email that I received from Ruben. And that’s an email where he introduces you to the team, so who you are, very short message, what did you do in the past, and then the introduction of the whole team. Also, as well you have links to LinkedIn of your future team members so you can make a little bit of spy activity in order to know with whom you are working, you’re going to work with. What happened with me, in that case, was really cool because when I received this email from Ruben, every team member starts writing me emails like, welcome and we are happy to work with you, so on and stuff like this. That was a really nice experience.

Ruben Vermaak: Lot of giphies.

Judyta Niedbalska: Lot of giphies, exactly. I was still in my notice period, I just received those emails one after another, it was a really nice experience. And indeed, makes you feel welcome and even more exciting, yeah I’m coming to cool company to work with. That works very well with me and I hope for other new Byndies as well. And in the end, I think it’s a small thing but that makes a difference, definitely.

Adrie Smith: At Recruitee we also do welcome gifs. So every new hire gets actually a custom welcome gif. So we do them- I’m the resident gif-maker now, so it’s like one of the best titles you could possibly have. But it’s a really nice way to make people feel really welcome and make sure that they feel like they made the right choice, right?


Judyta Niedbalska: Great, great idea. Alright, so another part of the onboarding program is Bootcamp. Bootcamp is basically a week where we do different pieces of training, presentations about the company, about our product. We have bootcamp in the US that is done in Boston office and San Mateo office, and then we have a bootcamp in Amsterdam. Which means people from the London office, from Barcelona, from Rotterdam and Amsterdam, we all meet together in Amsterdam. And then indeed we have friends presentations, training together. One day we also spend in Rotterdam, so most of the week is in Amsterdam but then we also go to Rotterdam.

Judyta Niedbalska: Why we actually are doing bootcamp? It has got of course, few, I would say. We want everybody in the company knows what we are doing. So it doesn’t matter in which department you are, that you have an image what is our product, that you have an image what other teams are doing. If you have a question about, I don’t know, an invoice that you know where to go with this invoice. But what is also very important for us is that we are all recruiting. So if you go to a bar with your friends and they are asking you like, yeah, okay, so what Bynder is doing? Oh, I don’t know if I work for legal. But mainly your friends, they would be interested in working in Bynder, and if you don’t know much about the company then you do not really recruit. So that’s one of the reasons why we would do it. We want that our people have knowledge about the company, but they are also promoting us outside also for the recruitment.

Judyta Niedbalska: What is also interesting that at the end of the bootcamp we also have a quiz, and that’s something which day one we are saying, hey so we will have a quiz at the end and people are like: oh okay, taking out their notebooks, making their notes. And in the end, the purpose of the quiz is just to make sure that people have certain knowledge, but this is also a great moment to actually review their knowledge. Sometimes they work together for this quiz and they learn a lot from that itself. Just to make sure again, that they know a lot about our company and they can represent us outside.

Judyta Niedbalska: One more thing, during this bootcamp we also have a presentation from our recruitment team, so Eurley is on stage. He is basically presenting and trying to put the culture that’s already there that, hey we are all responsible for recruitment. Maybe you have good friends around, bring them on, they might be a great fit for our company. So in bootcamp, we are already teaching people, hey you are all supporting, we are all in one team, we want both I would say, recruiting people around. So starting from the beginning this is how we want the company culture to be alive.

Onboarding plan

Judyta Niedbalska: Going further to our onboarding process, one of the important parts of it is also an onboarding plan. And that’s the document that is basically a structure for your first weeks in the company. So you have, there are certain weekly goals for example, what you need to do, what form you need to talk, maybe what kind of e-learning you need to do. The purpose of the onboarding plan is to make sure that both the manager and the new employee, they’re inline and they know what the first weeks look like. It’s to prevent the situation when you have a new employee, Maria and you ask her boss, hey how is Maria doing? And the manager is saying yeah she’s doing great, she’s working in this project, she’s doing this e-learning. And then you go to Maria, and Maria is like I have no clue what is happening, I don’t know what I need to do. So this onboarding plan is basically to prevent those kinds of situations. And it also gives a certain direction, so they think: I have to follow in my first weeks. So this is basically how, few things that we are using in our onboarding.

Ruben Vermaak: It’s actually also something we enforce hiring managers before someone is hired, is that onboard plan ready. Because if your recruiter is as good as early, within a few weeks the new hire is there and then what? So that’s why it’s really important for us that the onboarding plan is there, and for example, if you’re in sales, I’m pretty sure 80% can be recycled from the previous role because it’s really about meeting this, talk to that person, have coffee with that person, et cetera. But just the basics, but yeah. One thing that we did, we create for the company template, and that can be reused by everyone, and they make minor tweaks, but whatever works.

Ruben Vermaak: The takeaways. As in the beginning, recruitment is a team responsibility. It’s not you as recruiter who is doing it, you’re doing it with the whole team and it’s very important that also the hiring managers are aware of that, that not only the hiring manager but also people in the team might be involved during the interviews are responsible for recruiting. And the recruiter here is a facilitator, they are there to help you, not the other way around.

Ruben Vermaak: Standard bespoke. Eurley, you wanna say something more about that?

Eurley Balentina: Yeah, just make sure you have certain things in place for the entire company, you know the reporting part, feedback part, SMA’s. But really reach out to your teams, have a meeting with them, discuss how they see recruitment and tailor the process to that team, I think that’s the very, very important. Don’t treat hiring just like any other activity. I think that’s pretty much self-explanatory. But also involve hiring managers more, and actually getting the feeling that you are there, helping them out. And be the expert matter as well.

Eurley Balentina: Don’t become admin, don’t just go through CV’s and get the hiring managers to receive these and to expect the best from it. Do your market research, do you salary research, come back, advise your hiring managers, advise your team. Have a meeting with them, set up the process the way the team would like it. Some teams will need three rounds, other teams will need two rounds, meet the interviewers as well. Discuss with interviewers who is going to assess what. Our ATS, we get scorecards in there to give every round pretty much pointers on what to look out for when they interview. Do stuff like that, make it your own. Standard on reporting, stuff like that, bespoke per team.

Ruben Vermaak: Thank you. We also spoke about interview questions, the type of questions you can ask and things you shouldn’t ask. We talked about closed questions, open questions, and if you want to have some multi-layered answers, the STAR method is really there to help you to find more about experiences the candidates have in their previous jobs or careers. And last but not least, onboarding starts after signing.

Judyta Niedbalska: Indeed. When a person signs a contract, it’s not the end but it’s actually the beginning. There are a few little things that can be done in order to welcome the person. And also what is very important in onboarding is to already teach your people that hey, we are all in one boat and we are all recruiting, we are all representing our company outside.

Ruben Vermaak: I think that’s it.

Adrie Smith: Thank you very much. I think that’s all really important takeaways, and especially for us here at Recruitee. We’re an ATS, we’re designed for collaborative hiring. And of course getting your hiring managers involved early is super important, getting them involved in the recruitment process obviously empowers recruiters to really connect with candidates and to make the right hires. I think it’s a really important message to send home.

Adrie Smith: So we have a couple of minutes for question and answer. I’m looking through the upvotes and seeing our most popular questions. So I’ll start with the popular questions first, we have about ten minutes and so let’s get started.

Ruben Vermaak: Sure.


Adrie Smith: So the first one, do you create the first manually or use a program that will tailor the info for the new employee?

Ruben Vermaak: Well this is actually a trick question because we used to use HubSpot for that because our marketing team used that. But quite recently they changed into a different system. So currently what we’re doing is a lot of manual work. But we just implement a new HR system called Sage People, and we’ve told with Sage People we can create a template for that. And the only thing that needs to happen, because the text is for 90% the same, so the only we can do we have three placeholders with pictures, and if you click on the placeholder you will go into a folder with all the Bynder employees and you can easily select the people that need to be in there.

Adrie Smith: Great, next one. Tech interviews will run longer than 120 minutes, isn’t it overwhelming for the candidate or do you split it up into two sessions?

Ruben Vermaak: Think it’s a good question of Eurley.

Eurley Balentina: Yeah so when I saw the question I was like, whoa okay, that don’t add up. But I think what he meant in our slides was that the entire in time can take 120, and then pretty much for tech can take longer. With that being said, and with answers on the bespoke part as well of this process, check what your team needs. If you guys think you need, let’s say two sessions of an hour to assess if someone is great, then so be it. It also depends on how many interviews you have, but if I get like an example the tech interviews we’ve been having lately, me or Paul would start off with [inaudible 00:48:06] get to know people, if people are from abroad, Skype or even Google Hangouts obviously, just to check what they’ve done in the past, get to know them a little bit, give them the chance as well to ask the basic questions [inaudible 00:48:20]. I definitely can conversate with developers about technical things.

Eurley Balentina: And then pretty much after the first session, it’s kind of an assessment of communication, assessment of motivation, and then pretty much it will go to a second round, and the third round, and so on and so on. So it’s not 120 in one sitting because that can definitely be overwhelming, I can imagine, and I would definitely advise no one to do that 120 minutes, it’s not good.

Ruben Vermaak: I saw that that one. I hope this also answers a little bit.

Adrie Smith: So he also asked, do you have a phone screening, I think also answered the question, yeah.

Adrie Smith: Let’s see next one, why doesn’t the hiring manager make the offer to the candidate? That’s a good one.

Ruben Vermaak: I think also a good question for Eurley.

Eurley Balentina: It really depends, it really depends. I do have some hiring managers who get really excited when they see a candidate and they want the candidate to come in right away. I’ve definitely asked since you are this excited why won’t you make the offer yourself, I think that’s a great experience for the candidate [inaudible 00:49:41]. It’s pretty much like a nice welcome, let’s put it that way. But I do have hiring managers as well who would like to stay as distant as possible, so once they interview they just put the message in there, send me a link or a slide, [inaudible 00:49:58] go ahead and make the offer. It’s not a set rule, it really depends per team and situation as well.

Adrie Smith: Alright, I think this one is about the questions.

Ruben Vermaak: Yes, the questions that you saw that we have there was actually created by one of our American colleagues in the Boston, San Mateo office, actually I think they created together. In the US, it is pretty straightforward the questions you can and cannot ask, a lot of things are forbidden by law. At the moment you Google that what am I not allowed to ask, you see a few of the questions. There are questions you can ask here for example, so where are you from, which is not allowed over there. Over here, I would say try to check with your HR team, or perhaps if you have some sources that you use, some journals to see what kind of typical questions are you not allowed to ask. For example, I know that candidates are never- I don’t think you can ask what somebody is making right now as a salary, but you don’t have to answer that question. My personal opinion I think the question is totally irrelevant, because what you should be interested in what’s the salary expectation of a candidate, not what they’re currently making.

Eurley Balentina: Yeah that’s very correct. I mean you can ask it but you know, anybody reserved for their own answers, right? I don’t think you can answer that. Just try to put the salary ranges on your job ads, I think that definitely helps, sets a lot of expectations.

Ruben Vermaak: In Holland and I think in Europe, we are more lenient about things you can ask, in the US it’s a little more strict. So my advice, check with your HR team or the local resources that you use.

Adrie Smith: I also think that, when I consider myself as a candidate, I’m American, so I’m used to obviously knowing that you can’t ask certain questions. I think also if you recruiting internationally you might consider candidates from other countries where these questions might be sensitive, it might be a good idea to go with the highest common denominator, which often is the most conservative. Then I guess, you also have to ask yourself, why you ask those specific questions. Is there a kind of goal to it?

Adrie Smith: Think there’s one here: Do your hiring managers write directly into the ATS during the interview, or do you use a separate assessment and selection matrix?

Eurley Balentina: Yeah good question. So we definitely push people and our hiring managers to write directly into our ATS. The reason why our hiring managers write directly into the ATS, we can put scorecards in there, it’s pretty much tailored, we can tailor the process in there as well per position. We can group positions together as well, and I really like our hiring managers to put their feedback in there as fresh as possible. I think that once an interview has taken place like 24, 48 hours ago and there’s no feedback in there, the feedback is no longer reliable, in the sense- so yes, that’s the reason pretty much.

Eurley Balentina: Directly with the ATS I can see all the feedback right away, and pretty much when all the interview rounds are done we can come together, have a debrief and pretty much make the right decision.

Adrie Smith: We’ll do one last question here. It’s about a FAQ page on our website and how is it set up.

Ruben Vermaak: Think that’s yours.

Judyta Niedbalska: The frequently asked questions are actually part of our training online center. We are using Lessonly for that. And normally Lessonly set it up that we can use it internally, but for this purpose, we can also open up. So basically you don’t need to work yet in Bynder in order to open a Lesson. So it’s basically it’s taking you there and you just click through the questions that are there.

Ruben Vermaak: It’s almost like an online powerpoint version, but it’s very easy to add images and videos which we can kind of like to do to just to make it less boring, I would say.


Adrie Smith: Alright, I think that’s all the time that we have today. I’m gonna leave you guys with a couple of resources up here on the page. So we here at Recruitee, we’re starting actually a Talent Acquisition Innovators Radio, so it’s a podcast. That’s the first short link that you see there. We also have our blog which covers everything in talent acquisition, recruitment, HR tech. So if you’re interested, go there. Also, if you want the follow-up materials and the recording from this particular webinar and also past webinars, you can find them on the TA Innovators Facebook group, and that’s the third short link that you see there. And of course, as I mentioned before, we are an ATS designed for collaborative hiring, we also offer a free trial. So Eurley also if you wanna give that a try, you’re more than welcome. But anyone who’s interested you can also find your free trial at recruit.ee/trial.

Adrie Smith: So, I think that’s the end of today. But I want to thank the Bynder team, thank you so much. Eurley from coming from your own holidays in the Italian Alps, that’s quite a feat for technology, too, for you to have joined us today. Also, to you to here in Amsterdam, thank you so much.

Ruben Vermaak: My pleasure.

Eurley Balentina: Thank you, thank you very much, guys.

Ruben Vermaak: Enjoy the rest of your day.

Adrie Smith: Enjoy.

Eurley Balentina: You too, bye, bye.

Adrie is a former recruiter and Recruitee's Head of Content. With a passion for hiring and tech, she is responsible for all the awesome stuff that gets published on this blog.
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