Employee Onboarding: My First Months As A TalentHub Recruitment Partner
I joined TalentHub as a recruitment partner after spending much of my career in sales-related roles. After six years into my career though, I found that selling people products and services wasn’t something that made me feel fulfilled. I needed something that gave me a sense of purpose while still leveraging my strengths.
That’s when I found recruiting.
For me, recruiting is an opportunity to sell people life-changing opportunities. At the end of the day, we spend a third of our life working and what we do for a career has an enormous impact on our happiness. Therefore, by being a recruiter, I can make a positive impact on a person’s life.
Part of what makes an employee happy at their workplace is their onboarding experience. In fact, research shows that an effective employee onboarding experience increases the chances of an employee being happy at work 29 times.
Now that I have been at TalentHub for six months, I’ve decided to share my onboarding experience here.
Interview Process
Effective employee onboarding starts with the interview. I found TalentHub’s interview process to be efficient and straightforward. In total, there were two interviews and a sourcing home task.
For my interviews, I had a chance to talk to co-founders Reet and Käthe-Riin, as well as the team lead Jana. Although it was the first virtual interview I had done, it didn’t hold us back from developing an immediate connection. That is very hard to do through a computer screen, but their openness and sincere interest in getting to know me made it special. Unlike in many job interviews, there were no trick questions, it was an open and honest conversation to see whether we would be a match.
The transparency, along with the background of the team, were one of the main reasons why I wanted to join TalentHub. And when I got the offer, I didn’t think twice about anything else but to accept it.
First Day And Week
Before my first day even started, I got greeted with many things that made me feel welcomed. Since it was my birthday, TalentHub sent me flowers and a greeting from the team. I also received an email welcoming me to the team, along with a document where I could find the schedule for my first day, as well as contact details in case I had any problems finding the office.
When I got to the office on my first day, I loved that everyone was informed of me and had prepared a morning meet and greet session. The whole day was organized – the tasks were small and undemanding, such as setting up accounts and computers, as it should be. We also had a team lunch, which made it easier for me to get to know people a bit more.
My first day in the office was sweet to say the least.
The rest of my first week I spent much of my time familiarising myself with the team, the culture and how everyone worked. I had many materials to go through and eventually began shadowing other recruiters. I had to get a knack for their style, the way they presented themselves and the company during their calls. What also helped me was an onboarding to-do list along with deadlines at the beginning of my first day. The list had different tasks, ranging from attending my first team meeting, getting to know my personality type to starting my first project. Having a list like this for my first few weeks (and months) helped me achieve small wins, which let me know I was on the right track. It also made it clear what others expected of me, which is one of the most important aspects of effective employee onboarding.
Unfortunately due to corona restrictions at the time, I had to switch to remote working after just two days of starting. This meant that everything from meetings to interviews moved online.
My First Projects
Not long after my first week, I started my first recruitment project at TalentHub. Shadowing other recruiters during my first week prepared me well for my first project. I was learning what to ask from clients and candidates, as well as how to sell myself and the company. As I shadowed more calls, it also became clear to me how important it is to have technical knowledge if you want to understand what your candidates are saying.
For my first project, I got to help one of our senior recruitment partners Marleen hire mechanics for Ampler Bikes. This role, along with requiring technical knowledge, demanded me to speak German. I hadn’t practiced German in five years, nor did I have much knowledge about the nature of the role. Nevertheless, I was up for the challenge. I was glad to be able to begin the project together with a senior recruiter with tons of experience and knowledge. At first, my role was to communicate with the client, but the interviews were done together with Marleen. Yet, I found myself getting comfortable quickly and it wasn’t long before I completely took over the role myself.
During interviews, I was pleasantly surprised to find out how helpful candidates were when I couldn’t find the right word to say. Perhaps it was because I had warned them of my rusty German skills before the interview had even begun.
I felt like I had a strong support system behind me that allowed me to succeed. What helped me through this time were the daily stand-ups with my team lead Jana. Every morning, we would get together for a meeting where she would ask me about my goals for the day. She would challenge me (in a good way) by asking questions and encouraging me to be curious. She also had a great knack for knowing when I needed some words of encouragement or when I was feeling a bit down.
Now, looking back at my first project, I’m glad I got to work on a technical role, as this gave me the foundation and confidence to hire more complex roles. After hiring mechanics, I moved onto looking for a Showroom and Service Center Manager for Ampler. This was my first independent role from start to finish which I recently closed. In the process, I managed to form such a great partnership with my candidate that she wanted to meet me face-to-face for lunch when she visited Estonia.
Had a great time meeting my candidate for lunch.
During my first months, I also had a funny encounter with a candidate who accidentally gave me feedback about my work. After closing a hire for our partner Reconeyez, I asked my candidate for feedback about the company from 1-10. Instead, he went on to give me feedback about me because he misunderstood the question. He said that he would give me a 12 because I was the first recruiter in his career who he found to be dependable, helpful, amazing, friendly, accurate and lovely to talk to.
Personal Development At TalentHub
I’ve found the environment at TalentHub to be great for career and personal development. Here’s what it entails:
Social Talent
Every TalentHub employee has a seat on a recruitment training platform called Social Talent. On the platform, everyone has their own personal learning path consisting of different courses. It is useful whenever I want to go over stuff I have already learned, or learn something completely new about recruitment, marketing or other personal development topics.
I remember going into my first product manager role not knowing anything about what the position entailed. Relying on content from Social Talent helped me prepare better for interviews and actually understand what product managers do and what they are saying when they talk about their work.
I’ve also used Social Talent to learn about many other things that are not only useful at work, but also for personal life, such as time management and prioritization.
We aim to watch Social Talent at least 30 minutes per week. At the start of each week, everyone in the team shares their learnings, which has been a great way to gain extra knowledge as well.
Team Mingles
Once every month, our team gets together to host learning sessions (we like to call them mingles) on different topics. Whether it is about writing LinkedIn InMails, learning about stock options, relocating candidates, conducting interviews or simply getting better as a team, we will have an internal person or an external guest speak about one of these topics. These sessions are great because everyone in the team shares their ideas, asks questions and learns from each other.
Weekly One-to-One Meetings
Every week I catch up with our team lead Jana to check in on how I’m doing in regards to my goals and development. This meeting adds a lot of value to me because I get to ask questions and share my successes and worries. I feel like I’m never left alone with my own problems, whether it be work-related or personal, there’s always support and a solution.
Experiencing The Company Culture
Many companies like to put “supportive team” in their job adverts as one of their benefits, but in reality you get something different. Well, in this case, it is actually true. The TalentHub team consists of people who despite being busy, will always find the time to help each other. There have been times where I’m feeling down or lagging behind my work and I’ll always get approached by co-workers who check on me. I think that comes from the fact that each and every one of us cares about each other.
But if I had to describe TalentHub’s culture with one word it would be transparency. This involves all parties – we are transparent with ourselves, partners and candidates. Whether it is giving feedback to each other, an unsuccessful candidate or partner, we always remain open and honest. I think that comes from the fact that we want to be better each day and provide true value to people.
Although we don’t compete with each other, we’ve had many team challenges where we have friendly competitions. For instance, we walked together to Barcelona with the team (virtually, of course). It was a challenge where everyone had to track their daily mileage, whether it be walking, running or cycling. At the end of the month, the team had to gather just under 3,000 kilometers (equivalent to walking from Tallinn to Barcelona). It wasn’t only the individual effort that made the challenge fun, but also the team spirit to achieve a goal. I love that we have challenges like that which encourage us to live an active lifestyle. Recently, we had the most amazing summer days where we went wakeboarding, karting and had a lot of team building activities.
For me, it is important to also let yourself have fun outside of work and I’m happy to be able to call my colleagues friends.
Looking Into The Future
Although it has just been six months, I feel like I’ve found the perfect place for myself. During my nine year career, I haven’t come across a company that invests in the wellbeing of their employees as much as TalentHub does. This is a place where I can fulfill my potential and where I could never get bored. There’s always something going – whether it be new cool clients coming in or having interesting interactions with existing partners and candidates.
Within the first six months, I’ve been fortunate to help many awesome companies fill key roles. At first, I didn’t quite grasp the influence of my work, but I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from clients and candidates, saying how happy they are with me, their new employee or new workplace. One of our biggest partners, Ampler Bikes, recently hit a milestone of 100 employees and I’m glad to play a role in that.
My mindset going into the future is to be better than I was yesterday. The next step for me as a recruiter is to get more technical knowledge. This would allow me to hire for even more different roles.
I’m also striving to work smarter. This is something that we at Talent Hub preach daily. I’m tracking my everyday work and based on that, making decisions on how I can become a better recruitment partner, sourcer, interviewer and provide a better experience for both our partners and candidates.
I look forward to new challenges and experiences in the future.
