"We have to be our best at everything," said Cecilia Frizell, Talent Acquisition Partner at Billogram. "We have to have interesting open positions, we have to have good benefits, and our employer brand has to be in everything we do."
Partnering with Alva Labs became a pivotal step in this journey. This customer story focuses on how Billogram integrated Alva's candidate assessment platform to enable them to quickly identify quality talent for its ambitious expansion plans, optimise how the talent teams work, and provide a seamless candidate experience to meet the demands of the market.
Adding weight to this transformation, Josefine Söderqvist, CHRO at Billogram, underscores the necessity of diversity and less bias in hiring. "We can't afford biased decisions or familiar profiles if we're to scale globally," she affirms.
Navigating the Modern Talent Market
In the competitive recruitment landscape, Billogram's challenge was both to attract talent and secure the right fit. This complexity is particularly amplified in the tech sector, where specialised roles require uniquely qualified candidates who are often in high demand.
The tech landscape in Stockholm is fiercely competitive, making the quest for top-tier candidates especially challenging. Alexander Petersson, TA Partner from Billogram, reflected on this, stating, "Our biggest recruiting challenge? It's finding talent for sure. Tech Stockholm isn't too big, so finding the right talent and getting them hooked on Billogram, it's not too easy all the time."
Alexander added that the best solution is a fast and seamless approach. If Billogram likes a candidate, then there's a chance at least 10 other companies like that candidate as well. So every step of the process, down to the communication, has to focus on speed and have a clear purpose.
Now let's dive into how Alva collaborated with Billogram to transform these challenges into a streamlined, effective recruitment strategy.
Cultivating a Candidate-Centric Experience
Cecilia and the team at Billogram were pleasantly surprised at how seamlessly Alva's assessments integrated into their process, aligning with their priority to maintain a candidate-centric approach.
Rather than feeling like an impersonal, bureaucratic hurdle, the assessments were perceived as a meaningful step that contributed value in the candidate's journey.
Candidates found the Alva assessments to be a constructive part of their application process. It allowed them to showcase their abilities and personality beyond what a CV could capture, and showed that the employer took the candidate seriously.
"I honestly expected a bit more resistance from the candidates, " Cecilia said. "Candidates nowadays expect to do tests, and it's more of a question mark if they didn't receive a test (as part of the process)."
Three defining characteristics of the Billogram recruitment process are structure, transparency, and openness. The aim is that candidates should remain in constant dialogue with a recruiter, so everyone is clear on what are the next steps in the process and what's expected from each side.
Alva reinforces this approach, making sure that candidates receive the same results as the recruiter, promoting a clear and objective evaluation process. This fosters a candidate experience that is simple, efficient, and resonant with Billogram's organisational values and practises.
"The tests are easy to use," Alexander said. "You click the link, take the test, and then you're done quite fast."
Streamlining Talent Acquisition for Success
One clear theme when talking with both Cecilia and Alexander is the attention to detail they place on how Billogram approaches Talent Acquisition. With objective data in place to support decision-making, Billogram could also increase the efficiency of their candidate pipeline. That ultimately led to the TA team removing one of their interview stages, thereby decreasing time to hire.
"Implementing Alva has helped us to take everything up a notch in how we work," Cecilia said. "We're more structured and continuously thinking more about every step in the process and what value it adds for the candidate."
Echoing this focus on structured methodology, Josefine emphasised, “It's crucial that we have built a foundation with structure and tools to help us stay on the right path when it comes to recruitment. Because that will enable us to do successful recruitments.”
The smoothness in how Alva implements with Billogram's ATS, Teamtailor, means the team could set up automations and triggers to save additional time. This frees them up to work on more strategic-based projects, despite Billogram operating with just two TA partners.
"Instead of sitting there doing a lot of administration work," Cecilia said, "we can focus on areas like coaching our hiring managers to be better interviewers or support them better in the final-decision process."
Additionally, both Cecilia and Alexander have been able to experiment with different strategies around recruitment and measuring the quality of hires. Alexander recently A/B tested the language being used in communications with developers, to see if more feminine-coded terms could help them increase their number of female developers. There was also an internal focus on overhauling Billogram's careers page, using specific campaigns to improve the candidate's overall journey.
"We're trying to measure as much as we can," Alexander said. "We track everything and try to apply a growth mindset to what we do."
Unleashing the Power of Coding Tests
As a FinTech company, Billogram is reliant on top-quality developer talent. Having Alva's Coding Tests at their disposal has helped Billogram improve how it currently assesses developers.
By being able to use real-world cases to test competency, Billogram no longer had to rely on producing internal cases that felt outdated, or time-consuming to candidates. Plus, the way results are displayed (with automated scoring) in Alva means that both the TA and the technical hiring manager can determine whether the candidate has the prerequisite hard skills for the role.
"Previously it all depended on how we looked at the test results," Alexander said. "And that is never a recipe for success. We want the (assessment) process to be seamless and for the candidates to have a better experience with the (Coding Tests)."
A Vision of Predictive Recruitment
Billogram's recruitment journey, enhanced by Alva, is one marked by intention, strategic alignment, and a commitment to candidate experience.
Cecilia underscored how Alva has been instrumental in honing their processes to be more objective and less biased. She noted a boost in confidence among hiring managers, reinforcing the decisions made during the recruitment process.
Echoing this sentiment, Josefine Söderqvist, CHRO at Billogram, adds: "Objective decisions based on skills and potential are essential. We need tools to succeed with that, and Alva is a tool that can help us."
Cecilia's advice to TA teams looking to integrate a tool like Alva is clear: ensure it aligns with your broader organisational strategies and objectives. It should go beyond being merely an additional TA tool, instead becoming a fundamental aspect of a more strategic, nuanced approach to recruitment.
Closing with a reflection on the integration of Alva, Cecilia likened it to a futuristic vision of recruitment: "It's like being able to predict the future," she said. "We'll never be 100%, but we want to see if the candidate has the potential to grow with us."
