Season 2, Episode 8: The Candidate Feedback Loop: It's All About Karma

Roberta Cucchiaro (00:31): Hi, and welcome to the eighth episode of The Transform Talent Podcast. This is Roberta Cucchiaro.

Dominika Gałusa (00:38): And Dominika Gałusa. Today, we are talking candidate experience. When your candidate is your customer, candidate experience is everything, just like customer experience.

Roberta Cucchiaro (00:49): And to find the right qualified candidates, a business not only needs attractive incentives like salary benefits, advancement opportunities but also successful outreach and engagement strategy. So businesses may think of a brand as the face of the organization to a customer, but increasingly it's important to present a distinct brand that appears to job seekers as well. And that requires the same type of methods of the brand uses to appeal to its target audience.

Dominika Gałusa (01:17): For example, a few years ago, Virgin Media calculated the value of bad candidate experience, and their results were astonishing. Bad candidate experience cost Virgin Media almost 5 billion pounds annually. As the analysis had shown, rejected candidates were also Virgin Media's consumers, and they decided to switch their subscriptions to competitors.

Roberta Cucchiaro (01:40): So join us on this journey where candidates are at the center stage, and as more and more candidates look for security, sustainability of skills, wellness, and the ability to manage their work life, let's learn how listening to what workers want can help you attract and retain the very best candidates because feedback is everything.

Dominika Gałusa (02:01): And today, we're joined by Daniel Birkholm, an entrepreneur with the recruitment and talent  attraction space, co-owner of some of Denmark's most promising startups, Company Young, Talenthub, and Cand. As well as Anna Krogulska, Global Head of Recruitment and Employer Branding at Danfoss, a world leader in engineering solutions and present in the field of renewable energy as well. Funny enough, I'm Polish just like Anna, and I lived in Denmark for a while. So Daniel, Hvordan går det?

Daniel Birkholm (2:34): Det godt, rigtig godt. Hvam med dig?

Dominika Gałusa (2:37): Fint, tak! Anna, jak się masz?

Anna Krogulska (2:41): Dziękuję, bardzo się cieszę z zaproszenia.

Dominika Gałusa (2:44): Miło Ciebie tutaj mieć.

Roberta Cucchiaro (02:47): That's a great start. So let's keep this episode on a fun mode. So why don't you share three fun facts about you, Daniel and Anna.

Daniel Birkholm (02:57): Well, should you go first, Anna?

Anna Krogulska (02:59): Of course. I found some facts that could be interesting in the context of today’s discussion or conversation or dialogue that we are going to have. Well, I'm the representative of Generation X, meaning that I was born two years after Apple was founded and they just announced or launched their second computer. And smartphones were not available and the internet as a concept was announced only four years before I was born. And the last interesting fact about me is that my first job at McKinsey & Company, I got by bringing my CV in paper directly to the company headquarter in Poland.

Roberta Cucchiaro (03:41): That's nice. And sometimes, it might still work if you really want to be going in and just being there.

Anna Krogulska (03:50): Maybe not in COVID times, but definitely I can imagine it can happen. Daniel?

Daniel Birkholm (03:57): Yes. I have some fun facts related to a more personal profile, for instance, I play the piano when I relax, but I don't read any notes. And I can also become a dad any minute right now. So, we are a bit in a hurry on this podcast. But the most funny fact is that I've worked with recruitment, I have done so for 13 years, and now I'm the founder and CEO of a candidate experience company, but I have never really tried to apply for a job.

Roberta Cucchiaro (04:27): You got around that.

Daniel Birkholm (04:31): Yeah. So that is a bit of fun, I think.

Dominika Gałusa (04:35): So it connects with my next question. How did you come up with the idea that sits behind Talenthub? You said that you never were looking for a job, so perhaps something or someone else inspired you?

Daniel Birkholm (04:48): Yeah. Sometimes as an entrepreneur, you are having days where you consider another job. But my first company, I founded that when I was only 18 years old and that was Company Young, a market leader today in Denmark within the attraction of younger generation for either traineeships, graduate programs and educations and so on. And it was actually during that journey that I just remember, I had a meeting with one of our biggest customers, I think it's five years ago now. And then he said to me that, "You know what, Daniel, we are not in the business for recruiting, we're in the business of rejecting because we are rejecting a lot more people."

And that mindset was just at that point, totally new to me because most of our work was related to attract enough applicants, creating enough awareness about, and companies talked a lot about the amount of qualified candidates and to get enough and so on. But none of our customers really talked about all the ones they reject. And I started looking into it and found out that, it is 98% of all applicants. They end up being rejected, right? And no one had strategies for it. In that sense, there were no data into it and so on. So that was basically how we identified the gap. And then we got the first customers, got the proof of concept and then now we're here.

Roberta Cucchiaro (06:12): And can you tell us a bit more about what Talenthub focuses on?

Daniel Birkholm (06:16): After identifying the problem and the idea back in 2016, we ran a few projects together with a few of our biggest customers here in Denmark, and basically found the product market fit for a platform where customers or companies can collect feedback from their candidates and anonymously throughout their recruitment process. And instead of just running that as a project in my previous company, then we decided to found it as its own company in 2017.

As we truly believe that candidate experience will be and become a big trend, a big thing within the whole recruitment talent acquisition space. So Talenthub is a candidate experience company. We have built a platform for measuring and optimizing candidate experience. And the roadmap for us is basically to improve and develop candidate experience together with our customers. So one thing is the data that we are right now, focusing a lot by identifying what is good candidate experience, what is bad candidate experience, measuring it. But we are also looking into products that in a scalable way can actually improve candidates.

Roberta Cucchiaro (07:29): And I know that you've been working with Danfoss for a while. So turning over to Anna, and I know you are passionate about driving a user experience approaching HR processes. So I was curious to know what was the challenge you saw in Danfoss candidate experience before you started working with Talenthub?

Anna Krogulska (07:46): Well, Danfoss is collecting feedbacks from different audiences, but of course, the key audience is candidates, but we also collect feedbacks from hiring managers and recruiters. And we've been collecting that for years. And it's just part of company DNA. I would say that the continuous improvement approach, this is on one side. On the other side, we are also a company with a very strong focus on employees and future employees and their engagement and respect. This is the keyword. So we were collecting feedbacks for years. Last year following the company strategy, we have changed our ATS system and we moved to a new one that was not providing us with a solution to collect the feedbacks from different touchpoints during the candidate journey. And this is how we connected with Talenthub.

Roberta Cucchiaro (08:45): That's interesting. And I went to the Danfoss career site to just have a look and I saw the Talenthub feedback chatbot popping up. So I was curious to hear from you, what kind of feedback do you receive and what do candidates say? And are you able to improve and what can you improve based on the candidates' feedback that you receive?

Anna Krogulska (09:08): Before I go directly to answer your question, just a few facts. We started the corporation like really, you can say full wing, full speed, four months ago. And we already have, I checked today, 20,000 feedbacks collected through the candidate journey, hiring manager journey, and recruiter journey in eight different touchpoints. The one that you have seen on the career page is the first touchpoint. This is the feedback that we are collecting from the visitors of our career page to understand what is it that they are looking for so that we can improve our career page content if they have found it. And what is their impression about what they are looking for when they are considering Danfoss. And out of the 20,000 responses overall, I have to say, yes, we do a lot of feedback that you can easily cluster into the key topics. Of course, we are still collecting.

And it's a matter of getting a certain mass that we can build upon, but we can already see some topics that there will be the insights for our going forward investments into the technology, but also into the training of the hiring managers and the recruiters. The overall score, because this is the beauty of the Talenthub platform is that we can benchmark against the others. There is a group of companies that we can benchmark against. All the data is anonymous. So it's a secured environment, but we can see if we are doing better or worse against our peer group. And Danfoss is doing good in summary as we are doing better than the others, but this is not enough, we have a bigger appetite.

We want to be the trendsetter when it comes to the candidate experience. I know you will ask me about what we can read, what we can hear. And there's one general expectation from the candidates, not only applying to Danfoss, but also applying anywhere else is the quality of the response from the company and getting the response in a timely manner. And this is something that it's not a surprise. It's just a matter of it has to stay, I think, on the top of the agenda of every single company to make sure that we are responding to candidates fast, and that we are responding in a way that can help them to apply again and be more successful in the process. That would be my answer to that question.

Dominika Gałusa (11:53): Well, 20,000 responses, that's very impressive.

Roberta Cucchiaro (11:57): In four months.

Dominika Gałusa (11:59): So I have a question for you both. What constitutes a great candidate experience and what organizations should pay extra attention to during the hiring process? And I’d especially would like to know how organizations can make their virtual candidate experience stand out.

Anna Krogulska (12:18): Deliver upon promises. If you put anything in public sources, when it comes to how your recruitment looks like, you just have to deliver upon the promises. And I keep saying to my recruiters that are across the world, that one thing is absolutely common disregarding the corner of the world we are at, and this is respect. Treat the candidates like you would like to be treated. And for me, and for us, there is no excuse that there's a lot of recruitments, there’s a peak, there're a lot of volumes, it's just a matter of setting the right priorities and the candidate is always our top priority. So I would say this has to be in the mindset of every single person that is engaged in the recruitment process, if it's a recruiter, but also for the hiring managers or interview panelists. Again, waiting for feedback for two or three weeks after the interview is a no-go. It's just simply a no-go.

And the beauty, again, of the current ATS available on the market is that you can follow and track everything. So it's very easy to work with the data. And then if you add on top of that, the data that comes from Talenthub, where basically candidates can also give exact examples, this is a powerful data set that you can use to educate the organization to train the recruiters and to make sure that you basically lift up the overall recruitment culture, you can say.

Daniel Birkholm (13:52): And if I should add a few things, then. Collecting feedback from candidates might seem easy. Just build a survey and distribute it and then collect some feedback, but the magic happens when you are collecting feedback in a way that it's very easy to structure and identify your gaps and your areas of improvement. We have now been collecting feedback for companies for more than three years, have millions of data points on the platform. And we have been able to identify 10 drivers. That is what drives good candidate experience. I won't go through all of them in this episode, but it's things from the ease of use when you apply to the transparency during the process, the expectations setting, which is really, really important, also upfront.

So for instance, a very important touchpoint in a candidate journey, that's actually the email candidates are receiving just after that they have applied because you could do a lot of expectation setting there. It's also the duration of the process like Anna is saying. And one thing is of course being quick, but you can also be too quick if you're putting hours into an application and then you receive a rejection five minutes later because you have automated the process. That's really, really bad candidate experience. So that is basically what we also help companies doing that is measuring with the rival framework as our common language, and by that helping to understand the candidate journey better and the areas of improvement. So some companies, they are pretty good at the duration part of it being good of having a good speed in the recruitment process. But then they might struggle with transparency and expectation setting, which is another thing.

Another thing that, if we should go into the best case, the worst case examples, then I agree super much with Anna on the respect thing. And that elevating the overall standard is really, really important here. So you're not necessarily striving to... Some companies, they are sending out gift boxes to some of the applicants after the recruitment process. And then they post it on LinkedIn and it becomes this super good viral story. And that's perfect when that happens. But the really good candidate experience is basically just a process where you as a candidate, feel good and fairly treated where things have moved quite smoothly. And that you, as Anna also mentioned, are more qualified next time you apply for a job.

Roberta Cucchiaro (16:32): And you got me there, because that's the next question I was going to ask was exactly that. It's the horror stories of recruitment and the good stories as well. So I was curious to hear from you, if you have any stories from the best and worst candidate experience. I have many myself, but I was curious to hear from you, if something comes to mind in particular?

Daniel Birkholm (17:02): Some of the worst stories is just candidates not getting any information. Typically, we have conducted a study here in the Nordics and it says that candidates on average use between three and four hours applying for a job. And if they don't hear back, and a lot of candidates can maybe relate to that they don't hear anything after applying-

Roberta Cucchiaro (17:23): Yeah, not at all. Nothing.

Daniel Birkholm (17:26): Personally, I don't think it can be worse than that, but of course, you can also feel really disrespectfully treated during a recruitment process. And that might be even worse. But I just think that the least you can do as a company when a candidate applies for a job that is getting back to them.

Anna Krogulska (17:44): We have to remember how big the audience we are talking about when it comes to recruitment. I would only encourage all the companies basically to think about it as one of their marketing channels, not to sell products, but to sell the brand. We are talking about thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that are basically clicking that apply button. And we have natural traffic to our .com pages where you present the company. So it's a massive volume, I'm sorry for using that language, but from the marketing perspective, a huge audience will spread the word about the brand. I think what I would emphasize here, employer branding is not only an HR topic, employer branding should be a part of the overall branding strategy, because these people that are today applying to a job, we should always consider them as customers. And they will have an impression of the brand.

Daniel Birkholm (18:47): I agree with that. There is only one brand. That's just about employer branding and corporate branding, but it's just only one brand, right?

And if we should put some numbers into this, also putting things in perspective. I had a customer the other day, it's a global retailer where we did a temperature pilot, you could say, 60 days where we measured the candidate experience and found out that 56% of the rejected candidates, they were detectors. If we put this into some of the numbers where it says that some quite famous candidate studies out there, it says that 18% of candidates who have had a bad experience, they would actually stop using a company's product service, and so on. This company, they had more than 500,000 applicants yearly. So that's a loss. If we're just calculating these things up to 50,000 customers on a yearly basis. That's insanely high numbers. And if you calculate the customer lifetime value, then I totally agree with Anna, seeing this potential audience here as a marketing audience that can strengthen your brand, that can be customers, that can be brand ambassadors, that can be future applicants as well. And so on, right?

Roberta Cucchiaro (20:05): We often hear articles as well people saying that candidates are your customers, but they actually are. They are people that buy. And I have a nice story that I just wanted to share which came to mind. It was a couple of years ago when we could still go to events. I attended SourceCon, one of the biggest sourcing conferences in the world. They had the first European one. And I heard a story about candidate experience for them, a major retailer. That was really careful on how they were treating also those candidates that are at the very final stage but did not get the job, because they are really good, but maybe for a number of reasons, they just were not the best fit for that particular role, but they might be good for the future. So they would give them a voucher, for example, to shop in that with them. And that's, for example, a very nice idea of how to keep your candidates that are really good, but still happy even if they don't get the job because you never know, they might be the perfect candidate in a couple of weeks, in a month, or a year. So it's something as well, important to keep in mind.

Dominika Gałusa (21:17): And what comes to mind, also, a word "karma". Daniel, I love the believing in karma statement on Talenthub website. And as we just discussed, we know how difficult it is to land your dream job. But we also know the disappointment when we are rejected from the dream job. But with the right candidate experience, organizations could turn those disappointed applicants into excellent referrers, as Anna just mentioned, and brand ambassadors. So I'm curious to know more about it and especially why should we treat those candidates like customers.

Daniel Birkholm (21:58): First of all, there is the business side of it. If the cases that you are a B2C company, most likely. And of course, you can argue that B2B companies also have potential. But if we're just focusing on B2C companies where candidates are also either current or potential customers, then our studies find that it's up to 88% that would increase the purchase for the company after a positive recruitment experience. So that means better candidate experience is increased revenue. And we’ve also just heard that 18% would actually stop using a company's product after a bad candidate experience. So that will also be a loss there. Then we also see that the perception of the brand is heavily tied to candidate experience, which means that candidates having a good experience, they would most likely reapply, they would most likely refer others to apply.

And having, for instance, the amount of applicants that Anna is having, then it's a very, very strong media channel having the current talent pool of the current applicants as ambassadors, because they all know 2, 3, 400 people social media, and then we can just calculate some numbers and then we are suddenly out there. So that's the reason why. And then I would just like to say that I have also been in love and I'm still in love with the idea of using vouchers and all these things as a part of the candidate experience and the part of the candidate journey.

But when we look into it, candidates are just as interested in getting some more knowledge about how they can nail a recruitment process, how they can perform even better at a job interview, how they can do it better next time they apply. So if you are not a B2C company, having the opportunity to give a voucher, maybe what you can do to provide this state of the art candidate experience is to tell candidates more about your process and tell them how they can successfully go to a job interview and give them some tips and tricks, which might be very useful for them in the current recruitment process, but also can be useful for them in the next one.

Dominika Gałusa (24:12): Anna, I love to hear your thoughts too.

Anna Krogulska (24:14): Well, I couldn't agree more with Daniel on the idea of giving something away. It doesn't have to be material. In my recruitments, the one that I was running, I'm always giving personal feedback to the extent possible outcomes, but for sure, for those candidates that I was personally in touch with. Because also to put a little bit of chili flavor to this very nice colorful picture, looking into the data, we also see that there are of course applications that are completely not suitable for the positions that we are posting. So the respect has to go two ways. And this is what I also would to... I'm not afraid of saying that out loud.

If I see that somebody has not spent time, like Daniel was referring, to get to know the company, to really consider whether this could be a place for him or her. And then it's also a lack of respect. And the data is showing that we are seeing quite a number of applications when it's just simple apply, apply, apply. So, this is where I'm also missing a bit of respect to my recruiters at the end of the day. But when I know that there was a time spent on applying, I always feel that I need to talk to this person, or I need to send a message that will give this person an opportunity to understand what to do better next time. Recalling the previous question, what is the most scary finding and candidate experience?

The most scary thing is when I'm hearing feedback from my candidates who are saying, "Wow, this is amazing you're telling me that. Nobody ever before spent time to give me a call." This is the most horror story. Because if you invite somebody to a phone call, if you invite somebody to an interview or maybe just a chat, but you somehow get into this person, or you already sifted out this qualified candidates, because you know that there's no touchpoint simply. And then you spend some time with this candidate to get in touch with them, how come that you don't go back? I cannot imagine that you don't go back and you just don't share what is it? You have to be prepared though, that some of the candidates will completely disagree with you and you have to be professional in handling this kind of conversation as well.

And you cannot make everybody happy. Sometimes, people are really disappointed, even though you spend this time and you give the feedback, they are still disappointed. They don't understand your approach. Recruitment is of course also a confidential space, also a space with very strict rules when it comes to data privacy, the way you provide the feedback, et cetera. So it requires a certain set of skills to provide that feedback. Coming back to my conclusion, the most horrible thing that I have ever heard is that, "Wow, thank you for spending the time with me," it could be 7, 10 minutes giving me the feedback, "now I know what to do differently next time."

Roberta Cucchiaro (27:29): And as we talk about the rejected candidates, it must be hard to collect feedback from them as well, because they didn't get the job. And like you said, as well, it's mixed feelings. Some are more cooperative than others. Some are happier than other or less disappointed than others, let's say that. So what's the secret to approach those rejected candidates and how valuable is their feedback?

Anna Krogulska (27:56):  Super valuable. And we do get a lot of feedback. I checked, again, just closely before our meeting today that what are the recent numbers? And half of the approached respondents are actually responding to our surveys across all the touchpoints except for the career site. But that one we were actually expecting. There's huge traffic there. So the numbers are different, but whenever you start to apply then across all the different touch points, half of the approached ones are actually starting the survey. That's a good number and something that we can build upon. We collect feedback from candidates that were rejected as we call it before any personal touch. So those that are rejected due to a significant mismatch between the profile and what we are looking for.

And then we are also collecting feedback from those that were invited to the interviews. And they were rejected from the shortlist because we have selected somebody else. Yes, you're are right, of course, Roberta, there's a lot of personal feedbacks, but each and every one counts. And there are methods on also looking into all these feedbacks because they're written down. We were brave enough to open up for the text comments, not only one to five, that would be easy. We have methods also by using different software to analyze if there are any patterns in the text. The only difficult thing is if people are responding in other language than English, because then of course, technically speaking, it's a bit... Of course, we understand what is written there, but you cannot easily get the statistics out of it.

But other than that, we get the responses. People are willing to respond and we are able to analyze the data and make conclusions. To be specific, one of the topics that are definitely on our agenda going forward when it comes to our candidate experience tech solutions, let's put it this way, we will be looking into getting into the dialogue with the candidates on the career site. Roberta, you could say, "Anna, but there's plenty of chatbots." Yes, there are, but we are not super happy about how they communicate with the candidates. And we are carefully observing the markets to see how we could actually engage with the candidates when they are visiting the career site, to make sure that this is a solution that is adding value to the candidates, but also optimal from our end.

And what we would like to achieve with this technical solution, of course, is to make sure that we decrease the drop off rate of the people that are visiting us, but not apply for the jobs. And also to provide a helping hand to the candidates that are reporting issues with technical issues with applications, or basically they would just ask a question. So we will be looking into that, and this will be a very tangible result of cooperation with Talenthub.

Roberta Cucchiaro (31:06): Just to add to that point, and you're absolutely right. It does happen actually quite a lot that you apply for a job and there's literally no one to contact. And there might be technical issues or just a question. And I know that one of the reasons can be that you don't want to have thousands of applicants emailing recruiters directly. But some questions need to be asked and you're left alone, not knowing what to do. And then it plays with the overall experience and the idea that you have of the brand and the company as well.

Anna Krogulska (31:43): Exactly. And I can see these questions on the platforms from Talenthub, because people are putting the questions there. But of course, this is not a contact platform. We are not sitting there every day and checking if there is a question. So we are looking into a smart solution. It has to be smart. It has to be a business case that can defend itself. And we want to avoid something that we are observing with the chatbots. That when you have a chatbot that pops up every time you just switch from one page to another, users, and it could not only be recruits, they have a tendency just to kill it. So that's not a good solution. We need to find something else. But the market is developing so fast when it comes to these solutions. It may be Talenthub who’ll provide something cool.

Daniel Birkholm (32:32): I'm noting down here. Anna, thank you! And, Roberta, I would just like to add regarding the collection part of it, what is very crucial, that is that call to actions (CTAs) that are put in place with the candidates. So the whole engagement of it, we are doing everything we can for not making it a survey, but being more like, "Hey, share your opinion, share your feedback." We are doing a lot of investigation into the different call to actions and also the survey design. So we suggest Anna and our other customers not to build surveys longer than six questions, because it also has to be a good experience actually answering these surveys. And that's the secret, you could say, Roberta, to have high engagement on them. And then it's not an annoying, "Hi, thank you, customer. Please give us your opinion." And so it is more personal because they have invested time in applying for a job, right?

And if they have any suggestions to how you can improve, then we just also see that candidates are happy to share them.

Dominika Gałusa (33:36): That sounds like a really exciting feature. And I'm looking forward to seeing that in the future. So I have the last question to you both. While I was preparing for this podcast, I read an excellent article about Slack and how it's been outperforming other Silicon Valley companies when it comes to minority employees. And it's very interesting how Slack is when reporting on their D&I, and D&I is Diversity and Inclusion. So what is the link between D&I and employer brand and why should organizations pay attention to it?

Anna Krogulska (34:16): I'll take it first because it's something that I'm a strong believer in. It's evidenced that diverse teams are delivering better results. It's absolutely evident. We have absolutely unique situation right now on the job market. Also, we have at the same time, I think five, or maybe even already six different generations under one roof. Our customers are having very diverse teams. We are doing the global business and we have to respond to it. So there's no escape line from just thinking through Diversity and Inclusion lenses. And we do a lot of efforts at Danfoss to, especially that we are an engineering company, structurally and educationally across the globe. Of course, we are suffering from not enough diverse talent pool.

We need more representation of different talent pools in engineering schools, in the engineering environment, as such. And we are also using Talenthub for contributing to the journey that we are on right now by basically checking. Exactly on the career page, one of the questions is what is your association with our brand? To see if we're perceived as an inclusive company, if we're perceived as an employer who's creating opportunity and space for Diversity and Inclusion. There's no other way, but to just jump on that journey.

Dominika Gałusa (35:54): And Daniel, what do you think?

Daniel Birkholm (35:57): I agree, but Diversity and Inclusion, it's a trend right now definitely. And why is it a trend, you could ask. That is because it's totally important. And I’ve just mentioned some arguments on how a diverse team is performing better. And I would also just, from a talent attraction point of view, that diverse companies are the next generation of workers. They are more attractive. Then the point is, of course, okay, when you are having this Diversity and Inclusion agenda in your company, how do you then roll it out? And of course, you could focus on your current employees. That's a good way to start there. Planning the balance and so on, and things. Employer brand… we should go in that direction and candidate experience, they are so heavily intertwined.

So, if you're having this Diversity and Inclusion agenda, then that should also be somehow perceived throughout the candidate journey. And the question is, of course, how do we do that? And that's actually why we have developed a few questions in our platform. And we are adding more because this is something that the companies are using a lot of focus on right now that is basically measuring the Diversity and Inclusion part throughout the entire recruitment process. So how is the perception of the company also after rejection, after an interview? Because you could actually already there put diversity on the agenda.

Dominika Gałusa (37:28): And we have recently asked the same question to Marceline Beijer, who's our RPO Brand Leader. Marceline mentioned that you cannot sell a story, you need to be authentic and show intentions because this is what candidates are looking for.

Roberta Cucchiaro (37:44): And something else as well that comes to mind and talking about Danfoss, whatever you guys are doing, you're doing it right. Because I went on your LinkedIn page, on Danfoss’s LinkedIn page, and the About section was really simple, and it had two key facts that I still remember. I don't take notes of it. I just remember that the target is CO2 neutral by 2030 and 30% female in leadership in 2025. So those are two key facts that represent also the core values, what the organization believes in, and it's what candidates see what they remember.

And it's really so important for organizations to be clear on what their values are too because that's what speaks to a candidate. And it needs to be clear, it needs to be easy to remember. And one other thing that's worth mentioning is that it's also important to talk about this because, at the end of the day, you want candidates who believe in your values to apply so that they can fit into your culture and agree with what the organization believes in. So that's a really big takeaway to take from this. And I don't know if, Anna, you are behind the LinkedIn page of Danfoss, but compliments there, because it was really good.

Anna Krogulska (38:59): It's a team effort. That's what we are most proud of. I will do a bit of selling of Danfoss’s team. And this is why also it's so cool to cooperate with Talenthub because we are so similar. There's amazing team spirit. In Danfoss, there's amazing team spirit in Talenthub. And I did not agree with Daniel to say, it's just my personal opinion, Talenthub is basically walking the talk when it comes to the customers. We got absolutely amazing customer experience with Talenthub when it comes to implementation and then customer service. So whatever they do and sell, they just do it themselves. And this is referring to these authentic stories. This is very much an authentic story.

Daniel Birkholm (39:49): I didn't ask Anna to say this, it was just for that, but thank you, Anna, it's so kind of you. I would just to say that we meet with a lot of companies every month, every week, throughout most of Europe, also in the US, and I'm a little bit sad when I hear companies saying that they are not ready for candidate experience yet. Like we are not there yet. Anna and her team, they are doing a great job and they also, fun front as I would say in the market, they are doing many things better than average. But the point is candidate experience is already there. I would just encourage everybody to get started somehow by looking into these things. We have also made a free solution with a fixed service so you can to all your rejected candidates basically collect some kind of feedback.

Because I think that it's not a way to elevate candidate experience overall in the world saying that the timing is not there yet, because then it will never be. So that would just be an opinion, not phrasing this as this is something only done for us or only big corporations, it's something for everybody. And the karma thing, which is on our website, that is basically that if you are investing a little bit into these resources, providing a good experience, then it will come back to you somehow.

Anna Krogulska (41:15): You cannot manage what you don't measure. That will be my conclusion. And yes, it takes courage to read some of the comments, but this is the only way you can do it. I hate giving advice as if I'm not asked for it, but I'm going to do it. Everyone should think about his or her own shopping behavior. Before you shop, now, we all shop online, you go and check reviews, you go and check what the others are saying. Exactly as Daniel was saying, you cannot run away from customer reviews and candidates are your customers.

Dominika Gałusa (41:56): That's a great summary. I just wanted to say that as our conclusion, so again, candidates are our customers and to create a great candidate experience, you need to respond on time. You need to respect your candidates. You have to always reply and think of it as your candidates were shopping online. And to all candidates, you have to make sure that you do a bit of research before you apply for a job so that you get to respect the other side too.

Roberta Cucchiaro (42:32): Yeah, absolutely. I loved the discussion. It's my favorite here. But before I let you go, I have a very last question to you both. And if you've heard the other episodes, you know what's coming. If you were stranded on a desert island and you could only have three things with you, what would you bring?

Anna Krogulska (42:57): Knowing myself, I would enjoy it. Sometimes, I want to run away on a desert. I would take books with me. I'm definitely addicted to books. If there would be anything else that I could just take, my family, friends. I would load them on the boat and take them with me. So I wouldn't be alone there. I don't know what else. I wouldn't take smartphone, though.

Daniel Birkholm (43:32): I think I would go with actually the smartphone. Sorry. And then charge it using energy from the sun, because there would be the podcast and instead of the book, right?

Roberta Cucchiaro (43:47): True. Audiobooks.

Anna Krogulska (43:51): This is not the same, Roberta. I know I'm the generation X. I remind everybody.

Daniel Birkholm (43:59): Yeah. And then maybe a cold drink just to enjoy life.

Roberta Cucchiaro (44:03): Good luck for when it finishes. But you enjoyed.

Daniel Birkholm (44:06): Yeah. Then it would be 15 good minutes.

Roberta Cucchiaro (44:09): Exactly.

Daniel Birkholm (44:09): And the smartphone would be the rest of it.

Dominika Gałusa (44:15): But why not a boat, guys?

Daniel Birkholm (44:20): That's a good one.

Dominika Gałusa (44:21): Exactly.

Roberta Cucchiaro (44:21): Exactly.

Anna Krogulska (44:23): It won't be a popular statement considering that we're all locked down and we are all tired of it. But I think under normal conditions, sometimes we all need time for self-reflection and time for ourselves. This is how I would consider it. I agree, I would need a boat to come back.

Roberta Cucchiaro (44:51): At some point. But that's absolutely true. This year has been tough. It's really important to take care of yourself and also have some time off and just breathe, really think come up with new ideas while relaxing. But thank you so much for joining us today on our eighth episode of The Transform Talent Podcast. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. And to all our listeners, don't forget to subscribe in your favorite podcast listening app. And since we're talking about feedback, do leave us a review, hopefully a good one. And stay tuned for the next episode as we will be talking to ManpowerGroup and Junior Achievement, one of the world's most impactful youth serving NGOs with operations in over 100 countries. So see you on the next episode and bye for now. Bye!

Anna Krogulska (45:45): Thank you.

Daniel Birkholm (45:46): Bye!

Dominika Gałusa (45:47): Bye!