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Global and local recruiting industry in Croatia

What is the current difference between the Croatian market vs the global recruitment market?

According to the European Commission, the labour market structure in Croatia is characterised by labour shortages resulting from long-lasting demographic trends linked to an ageing population and significant emigration to other European Union Member States. However, the Croatian unemployment rate in 2019 was 8.2%, which is still quite high compared with the USA, which was only 3.6% in 2019. Here in Croatia, we haven’t yet felt the pains of a real talent shortage, and it’s not possible to estimate at the moment the state of the labour market in 2020 and beyond due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, but it is assumed that the rise in the unemployment rate will be significant.

Do you have any stats that would describe a difference between corporate teams and mid-size companies, and their retention numbers?

Retention rate is associated more with the industry than company size. Some industries have significantly higher turnover rates. For example, the retail and hospitality industries are notorious for poor retention rates. However, in the last decade, the industry with the highest retention rate is the tech industry. What was once called ‘job-hopping’ and looked at negatively, today is the new normal. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that 40 million or 27% of the workforce quit their jobs in 2018. 

What would be the best recruiting practices for particular industries?

Each industry has its specific recruiting challenges and consequently, best practices aimed at successfully tackling those challenges. For example, key recruitment challenges in the retail sector are high volume hiring and high turnover. The modern recruitment software helps to streamline, automate and fasten their selection process, as well as invest in employer branding and recruitment marketing to be able to attract the right candidates. On the other hand, technology and healthcare companies struggle to find highly-qualified candidates, so they should consider proactive sourcing methods such as implementing a referral program and using AI-powered sourcing tools. They should also invest in building their employer brand to attract candidates who are highly sought after and can choose where they want to work. 

Are young people fully aware of the need for career management, and what are the trends in Croatia?

Career management is still not a widely spread and familiar concept in Croatia. However, younger generations are becoming more aware of its importance, so it’s expected to grow rapidly in the following years. 

Source, Engage, Convert, Track and Analyse – where do employers have most problems?

TalentLyft consists of 5 products that are created to help H.R. professionals and recruiters tackle the biggest challenges in the recruitment process, from finding candidates and receiving applications to selecting the best candidates and making an offer. The aspect of the highly challenging recruitment process mostly depends on the specific role that is being filled. For example, when hiring developers, you will most likely struggle to find them and convince them to apply for your open job positions. 

What is social recruiting?

Simply, it’s using social media channels to find talent. This term refers to different ways of using social media networks (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) and websites (blogs, forums, job boards and sites like Glassdoor for example) to find, attract and hire talent. Social recruiting goes beyond posting vacant jobs ads on a company’s social media profiles. Recruiters can also use social media networks to proactively search for potential candidates, present their company’s employer brand, build relationships with potential candidates and encourage them to apply to your vacant job positions.

What is the concept of employee referral?

It’s an internal method for finding job candidates. Employee referral is a term used for a structured program that organisations use to find talent within the professional network of their existing employees. To incentivise employees to recommend potential candidates, companies can offer different types of employee referral rewards and bonuses. 

Employee referrals are the #1 method for finding high-quality candidates, according to LinkedIn’s research. Referred candidates are also 55% faster to hire, as reported by H.R. Technologist and referred hires produce 25% more profit than hires from other sources, as found by The Alexander Group.

Employer branding

Can you explain the concept of the employer branding and what that is?

Employer branding is creating and maintaining your company’s employer brand and managing your employer reputation. The goal of employer branding is to present a company as a desirable employer to attract high-quality candidates. 75% of candidates research a company’s reputation before applying for a job opening, according to LinkedIn’s research. If a company has a bad reputation, 75% of candidates won’t apply – even if they were unemployed! Additionally, a strong employer brand reduces turnover by 28% and cost per hire by 50%, as reported by LinkedIn. 

How often do companies talk about gender balancing in their employer branding strategies?

Building and promoting diversity is an essential part of employer branding. Companies want to attract diverse candidates because workplace diversity has tangible and direct benefits. Organisations with greater workplace diversity (in terms of gender, age, religion, race, ethnicity, cultural background, sexual orientation, religion, languages, education, abilities, etc.) outperform their competitors and achieve higher profits!

What can you say could be the best techniques in employee retention?

The best technique in employee retention is setting up new hires for success and ensuring opportunities for their career growth. The number one reason why talented employees change jobs is the lack of opportunities to grow and develop, as found by MRINetwork and this is why companies should ensure career advancement opportunities for their A-players in the company. Another critical but often neglected tactic for employee retention is employee onboarding. Some findings say that 69% of talent will stay with the organisation for three years if they experienced great onboarding. 

What’s employee engagement and why employers should measure it?

Employee engagement is defined as the commitment employees have to the organisation and its goals. Engaged employees are 21% more productive, and they achieve a 22% higher profitability, according to Gallup. However, only 15% of employees are engaged in the workplace, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace research.

Moving to Croatia vs Remote working

It looks like introducing flex-work guidelines and implementing them into the culture will be a thing for many companies, after the COVID-19 experience, across many industries. 

Before COVID-19, offering flex-work wasn’t a standard in employer branding. Remote was a top benefit reserved mostly for C-level suites; however, things have changed a lot due to COVID-19 pandemic. According to a recent Gallup research, 59% of employees who worked from home during the pandemic would prefer to continue to work remotely. Companies will have to offer remote work if they want to attract and keep top talent in the future.

Is it hard to move the talent to Croatia and why don’t employers seek candidates that can work remotely, like many global teams already do?

There are three key reasons for this. First is that the administration for employing talent from other countries that would work remotely is quite complicated and substantial. The other is that most Croatian companies are service-oriented rather than manufacturing-oriented, so when Croatian employers lack employees, they turn mostly to neighbouring countries in their search for the workers. The third is that remote work is not a common practice in Croatia. At least it hasn’t been until the COVID-19 pandemic, but this is changing now so in the future we can expect the rising trend of remote work in Croatia as well. 

What was the first ‘minimal viable product’ version of your application, and how much did it change from then?

TalentLyft is a recruiting software created to modernise and simplify the recruiting process; this was the idea from the start. However, the first version of the software no longer exists; we completely transformed it based on the industry trends, challenges and input from our users. TalentLyft is now all-in on recruitment software that helps companies find, attract and hire the best talent. TalentLyft offers both recruitment software and marketing solutions to attract the best candidates and an applicant tracking system to solve post-application problems such as effective candidate communication, a database with all the applicants and their profiles, candidate assessment kits and scorecards, and interview scheduling all in one place.

How many people you had in your team at the start, and how many do you have now?

TalentLyft was founded in 2015 in Zagreb by two software developers, Mario Buntić and Nikola Biondić. Now we have 15 full-time employees and external associates. 

What are your leading markets?

The leading markets we target are Europe and the USA. However, we have more than 200 customers in 30 countries from all over the world.

What do you have in the roadmap for the coming months and quarters?

The next big thing we are preparing is a Smart A.I. The assistant that will provide actionable tips to TalentLyft users and help them optimise and improve their selection process, making them more productive and successful. We are very excited about this project! We are working with the latest technologies in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and we believe our A.I. assistant will be a real game-changer!