Today, it is impossible to imagine any IT specialty without a remote work format. Covid-19 turned everything upside down: speaking of Avarn’s portfolio, the number of vacancies among our clients for remote workers was 2% of all hired candidates in 2019; 3% — in 2020, 74% — in 2021 (after Covid-19), and today this ratio is 81.3%.

Currently, 18.7% of our portfolio consists of office vacancies. This may be due to various reasons: starting from the corporate culture, which involves being in the office, ending with the difficulties of legal registration. Avarn works closely with each of our 500+ clients, to do that we have a special account department whose task is to communicate closely with companies and clarify requirements for vacancies, as well as day-to-day work with HR no matter if it is remote or office position.

We want to tell you about several cases of Avarn, when, thanks to the transition to a remote format, we managed to expand the pipeline of candidates and close vacancies in the shortest possible time.

Case №1

A company of up to 5 000 people with a head office in Riga, Latvia.

In the beginning, the search was slow. They needed employees in the office, “for a long time” and preferably local. The position was also difficult to close — there are a few SAP consultants in the market, especially with SAP HANA (this very one was obligatory).

Such conditions imposed quite strong restrictions, our primary research on our database and the database of job boards showed 112 potential candidates. Our recruiters contacted potential candidates, conducted initial screenings and sent 19 resumes to the company, but they didn’t find the “one” among those candidates.

Then we started a negotiation process with the company — we already had the experience of hiring SAP specialists for a German company remotely and wanted to suggest that opportunity to our client.

We organized a meeting with hiring managers, where we explained the market situation to them, offered several ways to solve the problem and showed our analytics on the candidate funnel. The result of the meeting was the expansion of hiring opportunities — now we were looking not only in Latvia and in the region, but also in other locations for remote work.

This expansion allowed us to organize 32 more interviews for potential applicants with the company, the results of which were 5 offers, 3 of them were accepted. After that meeting, we closed the vacancy exactly 3 weeks later (2 weeks of searching and passing the stages, the candidate was ready to start in a week) instead of 3.5 months the company spent hiring such a specialist.

The more, the better: such a great pipeline provides more opportunities — instead of hiring 2 seniors for this position, the company had found 2 seniors and 1 middle+ which fitted it better.

Case №2

Another example, a Data Science specialist position in a foreign startup in the beauty sector. The company wanted an employee in the office, and difficulties arose there at the negotiation stage. Since the startup is based in the Netherlands and the company did not have the opportunity to organize a relocation package, negotiations dragged on.

Firstly, the corporate culture of the company implies high involvement in the project and the management of the company is located in the office, for whom it is VERY desirable to be present at the workplace.

Secondly, a remote workplace for employees was not organized. Its development is exactly what we could not influence. Due to these reasons, the company had not been succeeded in hiring a candidate for 4 months. Despite the difficulties, we set to work.

We based the presentation of the company primarily on the product — it was an innovative platform for organizing an AI-based recommendation system. We built an individual dialogue with each of the candidates, presenting the Netherlands as a dream country. You can see the first results in the diagram below.

During the first two weeks of work, our recruiters found 97 potential relocators, of which only 3 people reached the stage of interview with the company.

The conversation about changing the office to a remote location in this case arose even at the presale stage — our manager was trying to defend the opinion for hiring remote employees, in particular, using the case with a SAP specialist that you already know as an example.

After two weeks of work with the vacancy, he also had the first results of the pipeline for candidates, and very convincing ones. With these figures, he went to negotiations for the second time, after which the managers of the company from the Netherlands agreed to try a new format.

We assured them that we would make all necessary efforts to make the cultural fit take place, despite the fact that the candidates would be from different locations. There is some research that shows employees involvement in work processes is 41% higher than that of office workers.

More to go — we calculated the cost of the office expenses and realized that the company can save up to 10% if the remote desktop would be set up.

The result of our cooperation was a tight pipeline, thanks to which the company found the right person within a month. The funnel expanded by 226% in terms of contacting, we were able to show 207% more candidates. The flow of candidates who were ready to communicate with the company and work remotely on the foreign market turned out to be 8.6 times more than those who were ready for relocation (without the relocation package). Moreover, we found a candidate with average salary expectations and saved 15% of the prior budget for this position.

Both of these cases show how important it is to be flexible in hiring. Presence in the office has its benefits, helps to strengthen team spirit and coherence of processes, but also narrows the recruitment funnel dramatically. The remote format, on the contrary, offers greater freedom, a variety of candidates, interaction tools — the remote mode is the object of close attention from all sides, starting from huge worldwide conglomerates and ending with new innovative startups.

We hope these examples were inspiring for you and if you are still in doubt whether you should hire remote employees, then you will think about it and maybe decide. Avarn will be happy to advise you on organizational and legal aspects of registration of remote employees and will help replenish your staff with valuable personnel from new locations.