In the international tech company Docler Holding, HR experts, thanks to their numerous initiatives, have become masters in attracting talent, especially in Luxembourg. BEAST recently met with Valentina Brysina, who is Lead Recruiter and Recruitment Services Manager. We discussed current recruitment trends in the tech industry, as well as the growing importance of the candidate experience in a corporate world that is more competitive than ever.
« Luxembourg is a unique place when it comes to digital talents. Obviously, the market is limited, due to the size of the country, while IT is growing and will continue to grow. Yet, we can clearly see that while demand is increasing, resources are not following… which therefore creates a gap, » starts Valentina Brysina. With the increasing number of ICT companies settling in Luxembourg, as well as banks and other sectors developing more and more their IT departments, she notices a significant growth: « The country, with the many opportunities it offers, needs to be marketed more. As a matter of fact, Luxembourg can offer unique possibilities to people from all around the world ». One of major project of Valentina and the team is to market this country, by spreading the word to their candidates directly, on their social media, sharing their life changes after relocating to Luxembourg. One of her main arguments is that all the recruiters of the Docler team are from different countries: they all speak of their experience and share their own stories.
What’s attractive here? In Luxembourg, Tech experts can work for international, big-name global groups, and for enthusiast innovative startups, local creative players. They can also meet decision makers from the public sector who are open to communicating with experts, local or expat, and are eager to help the country grow. « Also, salaries are higher than in most of the European countries, but it is clearly not the number 1 advantage. In fact, tech experts are constantly looking for new challenges and projects that mean something to them. IT is all about technical opportunities: learning the tech and participating in projects that matter, impact life of people. Moreover, Luxembourg has developed an interesting ecosystem of startups which makes it attractive for tech professionals, » comments Valentina. When it comes to everyday life, Luxembourg offers a unique situation for families, in terms of quality of life and support programs for their kids. By the way, kids learn four different languages here, « a unique asset nowadays, » according to Valentina Brysina.
As explained by the recruitment expert, the government encourages talents to come to Luxembourg and actually wants expats to feel welcomed. « Expats who have decided to come to Luxembourg and bring their loved ones can easily feel at home, giving the Grand-Duchy an additional advantage, » adds Valentina Brysina, « here, you will meet people from all around the world, from Brazil to Australia, creating enriching experiences. »
Docler Recruitment Services provided to clients in Luxembourg
« The HR team, which has significant internal demand, was able, over the years, to develop a solid and experienced recruitment services proposition. Other companies with same demand for IT profiles contacted us and asked if we could help them with their recruitment needs. Our team got extremely excited about this new challenge and opportunity, » explains Valentina Brysina, describing the creation of Docler Recruitment Services.
The team is now helping several clients to headhunt and hire, searching for exactly matching profiles, specific and often rare. This team is also finding ways to attract talent to Luxembourg. « Working hand-in-hand with the client is key: the better the collaboration, the better the outcome. Where do we come in? We find good fit candidates for the client’s needs, do an interview, check the hard and soft skills, and suggest best candidates to the client. We are able to bring candidates who are not looking for a job at all, as well as candidates from our large network and some of them have already passed our assessment. How do we attract them? We do so by challenging projects, technologies, creating an impactful product, gaining responsibilities. Furthermore, we make sure that the expert is affordable, helps negotiation process, relocation if needed, and ensuring that the candidate accepts the offer, » adds the Lead Recruiter.
Nowadays, some of new methods in tech recruitment concern better finding people – what we call sourcing – better communicating to them and assessing them. She specifies, « sourcing starts from analyzing the market to find the perfect match. Don’t stop on LinkedIn or just on job boards. There are platforms where tech people actually spend time: such as GitHub, Stackoverflow tech discussions, Twitter, Reddit. You can X-ray Google in order to find an exact match for the position. Of course every recruiter has something unique as own offline network. AI can help with sourcing too. Although we should take great care to craft well-targeted inputs and write accurate algorithms to ensure unbiased search results. We also support events such as tech talks for tech communities, meetups, and hackathons. Our main motivation is to support Luxembourg IT ecosystem, encouraging tech professionals to connect and do some quality experience exchange ».
When it comes to communicating, Valentina Brysina advocates continuous improvement: « when you talk to a tech person, you absolutely need to try to understand what they cherish the most, what they are looking for in life. Therefore, we should clearly communicate in the first message, which values candidates can find if they decide to join a company, or even relocate to another country. We carefully consider what motivates the candidate for both professional and personal development, » she comments.
From candidate to employee experience
In fact, the concepts of candidate and employee experience have become extremely important in a context of « competition for talent ».
As explained by Valentina Brysina, « Companies worldwide are facing the same challenge of increasing demand. Therefore, the importance of candidate experience is bigger than most of us realize. It starts from the first contact of the recruiter, the very first word! »
In this respect, she highlights several aspects, among them communicating with candidates as humans and with decent attention through all recruitment process, delivering to each candidate feedback, giving clear explanation of the assessment process to the candidate and more.
Docler narrates its employee experience in the web dimension called « #LifeatDocler, » so that future talents can get a glimpse of what happens on a daily basis and feel the atmosphere – and the culture – at the company before they are hired. “It is more than just «employer branding. » We at Docler share real stories and fragments of our daily experience. » When it comes to employee experience, «among others, we also put in place a new L&D – Learning & Development – related program, allowing talents to develop their skills, learn new technologies and seize new opportunities. They can also express themselves through surveys, and Docler provides them with well-being initiatives such as a daily breakfast, private cinema sessions, access to the gym, and more. Docler is about feeling good within the company. »
Also, Docler created an office space that is comfortable and that allows employees, including tech experts, to be creative. Teams work within agile methodology, which encourages them to collaborate with one another, but also with other departments. A flat organization gives a motivating opportunity to take the responsibility and solve complex tasks.
Finally, speaking about women in the tech environment, Valentina Brysina insisted on the uniqueness of today’s digital world: “Women in Tech bring the critical creativity and diversity to solutions and the decision-making process. It’s proven that organizations, who encourage diversity, create better user experiences and end product. The challenge is to attract females to tech and to make sure that they bring their knowledge into action ».
Tech does not only mean coding. « Sure, I know exceptionally talented female coders, but I also know female business analysists, project managers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, QA engineers, UX experts, designers, even technical recruiters. ICT opportunities are close to being endless ». As explained by the Lead Recruiter, « and it keeps on evolving with new technologies. The majority of industries need to involve IT already today; our world is changing, offering us all captivating tasks and intriguing problems to solve ».