Use Case: BCR's IT Academy program

Forward thinking organizations plan and build for the future. When talking about talent needs, one of the key projects of each corporation is represented by internship programs.
Today, most employers struggle to understand the very particular needs of Millennials and Genz as well as how to attract, how to qualify and how to select the right candidates for their programs. Add the “IT” in the mix and the challenge is complete.

In this use case, we’ll address the process for hiring IT professionals for an internship, key roles for building the future IT workforce, how technology can optimize the time to hire involving multiple stakeholders and, of course, the end results.

For context, Banca Comercială Română (BCR), a member of Erste Group, is the most important financial group in Romania, including operations of universal bank (retail, corporate & investment banking, treasury and capital markets), as well as specialized companies on the leasing market, assets management, private pensions, housing banks and banking services through mobile phone. BCR is the no. 1 bank in Romania on the assets value (over EUR 16 billion), the no. 1 Bank by number of clients and the no. 1 bank by savings and financing segments.

Getting back to the use case, BCR’s talent acquisition team was looking for a solution to help optimize the selection of best candidates for the IT Academy program. The internal process contains the following steps:

1. Publish the opportunity for internship on multiple sourcing channels and social media pages
2. Select the relevant profiles based on resume for assessment
3. Send technical assessments to these candidates and receive their solutions
4. Evaluate the assessment and send the results to each candidate
5. Select the top candidates for group interviews
6. Offering & hiring

The Challenge

Now, it looks simple at a first glance but there’s a lot of operational burden between the lines as well as associated risks. In terms of operations, the recruitment team has to engage with hiring managers to create the tests and once again to evaluate. This creates a ping pong between candidates, recruiters and hiring managers which represents a relevant part of the “time to hire” metric. For each step of the process, recruiters communicate with candidates: when the assessment starts, how much time it candidates have, results of the assessment, scheduling for group interviews and the list goes on. Of course, there are always some candidates who request additional information which adds another “task” to the list.

In terms of risks, the assessment happens online and, as a candidate, you have a couple of days to submit. This can allow fraudulent behaviour of sharing answers between candidates for example.

The Solution

Enter Jobful, our technology for talent acquisition, and you get bcr.jobful.io.

• Candidates can now register on the platform and join BCR’s community. They get a quick onboarding, CV parsing does its magic and your profile is completed in less than 5 minutes
• On the platform, you can already see a course where the entire program is described: which tests they can take, when these will be available, what the timeline is, along with more details on the program
• The countdown begins, they receive an email mentioning the assessment will become available after the weekend. As soon as Monday comes, they can start working on the assessment, they get a second countdown as the time to complete the test is limited
• One week passes and they get an email with the evaluation results, with feedback for each of the answers and, if they scored ‘above the line’, they also get an invitation to be scheduled for the group interview. Otherwise, they’re still part of the community – meaning that new jobs, learning materials or other relevant opportunities are constantly shared with them
• After successfully going through group interviews, they stand in front of their next career move: BCR’s IT Academy. Congratulations!

The candidates don’t see all the work behind the scenes, but the recruiters work together with hiring managers as a team. As soon as the deadline for assessments passes, each hiring manager has access to the platform and can evaluate candidates. It’s not magic, it’s teamwork!

Recruiters have the results, the emails for selected and rejected candidates are in place and the platform sends them automatically. Less time on the operational burden means more time to focus on the candidates and finalize the hiring process for IT Academy in record time.

How long did all this take? From bringing the audience on the platform to group interviews with the shortlisted candidates: 2 weeks, entirely digital.

What do the candidates say?

Thanks so much for your time and for the opportunity! The Java test was very interesting and fun, it helped me evaluate my skills in this language. Thanks again one more time! –  Teodor

What do the numbers say?

• 604 candidates joined the race (created their profiles on the platform)
• 850 tests were submitted
• 30 employees from BCR as part of the hiring team
• 141 candidates selected for the group interview
• 28 new hires for IT Academy by BCR

Looking at an entire talent acquisition process with hundreds of candidates through this use case zoom out lens might look simple, but there’s a lot more behind the scenes. For example, in order to enforce equal opportunities, the candidates’ profiles were anonymized prior to selection, the candidates’ journeys were built and validated, and automatic communication was put in place with key messages (the list goes on).

The Takeaway

The conclusion we want to share is that recruitment teams work very hard to build an attractive and relevant hiring process, most of the time on multiple fronts. Technology for talent acquisition cannot replace the people representing the employer and it’s important to build connections with candidates which can also ease the onboarding process. However, technology can remove a lot of the operational burden, allowing recruiters and hiring managers to focus on professionals instead of backlogs.

But more importantly, it allows the selection process to focus on finding the right match not just in terms of hard skills, but in terms of culture fits as well.

If you want to learn more about what Jobful does and how it can help your recruitment processes, don’t hesitate to reach out.

We’re looking forward to solving your challenges!