What kind of team in the world can achieve this much growth? In the following interview, Stephanie de Booij, HR Manager at Tiqets, shares with us the secrets of hiring the best people who drive Tiqets’ burgeoning business. Some key points:

• Having a structured hiring process is key
• Happy employees make the best referrals
• The importance of being open and honest to candidates
• Pinpoint cultural differences via assessment
• Two superb hiring advice for fast-growing startups

Having a structured hiring process is key

We see that you have a lot of job openings now. What is your goal by the end of this year?

"By the end of this year, I think we will have 85 people working for us; but not only in the Netherlands. We have three people in Spain already, one in Paris, one in London, one in Vienna, and one in Rome. So we’re expanding outside the Netherlands."

Could you walk me through your typical hiring process?

"We’re still evaluating our process because we’re quite new. In the beginning, we just used Gmail and pasted them on maps. It doesn’t work like this anymore, of course. Because we’re well-known in the industry, people come to us. If I put out vacancies – it depends on the jobs – sometimes 130 people apply per position. So it doesn’t work with Gmail and maps anymore. We were looking for a tool that was going to help us with processing the candidates. I came out with a few of those tools and tried Recruitee by the end. Now we’ve worked with it for eight months.

So what do we do? First, we make up job openings and put them online on several job boards. When people apply, Recruitee helps us with sending general emails like “Thanks for your application. Within two weeks you will receive our feedback.” I used to do that all manually before. Copy-paste, copy-paste. It doesn’t work. I’m happy with tools like Recruitee that helps us with that. When this is ready, we decide per job which people are going to be involved in the recruitment process. With key positions, you want one or two key members to join. Also depending on the jobs we have, we can do recruitment assessment.

Then I have phone conversations with people to see if they could be suitable based on a few points. Then I swipe them to the hiring manager and say: “Hey, these are four candidates. I think they could be suitable.” We then have a phone call via Skype together to see if the candidates really match the profiles. If that’s the case, then nine out of ten times, we invite one or two people to Amsterdam. We book flights for them and arrange if they need a hotel. They’ll have meetings here at the office for the assessment with me, two team members, and one person who comes out of the field.

After that, we decide within the management team if we’re going to hire him or her. If so, I will make sure that the person has a contract according to the law in the different countries they would work in. We really hire them according to the legislation of those countries. It takes a lot of time to establish that, for example, in Spain or France. The process takes about – depending on the vacancy – maximum six weeks from A to Z. Maybe four, or it could be a bit longer. But we want to do it as speedily as possible. Because there are a lot of good people right now on the market and the economy is attracting."

Happy employees make the best referrals

How many job boards do you normally use when you look for candidates?

"When I look at Recruitee, I always click the free job boards. A lot of times, nine out of ten people we hire via LinkedIn or via our own network. For us, LinkedIn and our network work the best.

If we look at developers, for instance, they used to work with a lot of different developers. They have colleagues. It works best when you have a developer working for you and they could be your ambassador. If the developer is very happy at a company, he’s going to tell his friends and former colleagues about you for sure. A lot of developers know each others already. You have to make sure that your employees are the ambassadors of the company. That’s the first thing I’ve learned. If people are really comfortable and happy with working with us – not only for the salary but just because they find it very nice to work here – and as long as we have that, that could be the nicest referral for our company."

Do you have a program or a detailed plan to make employees happy?

"No. We believe that we can have a whole handbook of “How you can pamper your employees,” but the best thing of how it works is that when people are happy, they’re going to organize it themselves. So we have football matches. We have pizza and beer section. We have Friday evening drinks. We have all that stuff and everything comes out of the employees. We can say from above: “Hey, next week we have to do this and everybody has to join.” But it isn’t always going to work. There are a lot of people who just like to organize things for the company. And if you join, you join. If you don’t, it’s fine as well. And we lunch together. That’s also important. Lunch is paid; we have healthy lunch. I think they just like it to have a talk with each other and it’s open space. CEO, HR, technical people in product and development – everybody sits together. That’s the most important thing."

What is the one thing that contributes significantly to your hiring success so far?

"It’s hard to say what it exactly is. We have a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 57 from employees. Really high. Also our customers give the same score of 57. We’re quite successful. I don’t really know what it is. But I have the feeling, and people tell me, that it really feels like a family. It is pretty strange, though, but we really care for each other. We’ve hired a few people outside the Netherlands and they’re staying there. Still they have the feeling that they are really part of the team. Because we take them over to the Netherlands sometimes to meet everybody, we have close contact via Skype. Also, because it’s a flat organization."

The importance of being open and honest to candidates

During the phone calls or interviews, how do you already impress the candidates?

"I’m just honest to people. If I have the feeling that they are a fit or they are not honest to me, I will tell. Also I’m not going to tell them fairy tales like: “You can come with us and earn 100k euros and you don’t have to do anything for that.” I’m not going to say that. I’m being honest and normal to them, but not that formal. Then they feel that they can share things with me as well. As long as you’re honest and nice and friendly to people, not just as if you’re friendly, but really friendly, then you will get that back as well. That’s my idea.

There is a time I say: “Ok, we’re a startup company and we’re going to hire you to work in Spain. Here is the letter of employment. This is what you can expect. Maybe a week or two weeks after you start, you will receive your actual contract. But trust me, this is what we agreed on, so it’s going to happen. It’s just not going to happen as a machine immediately.” And people respect that. They’re happy with honesty and they can always email me, WhatsApp me, or send me a message, and I will help us send them a message back. I think it has to do with being really open to people."

Is that something that you already knew since you start, or is that something you’ve learned along the way?

"This is what I feel the most comfortable with. So you will not find me in a formal organization where this is not a standard. But of course, you learn. In the beginning, when I was hiring the first person outside the Netherlands, I had no idea. I thought that I knew what we’re looking for. But you just have to wait and see if that person is going to present Tiqets, for instance, in France. You don’t know. So of course, you can make a mis-hire. That’s possible. But from your mis-hire, you learn. Also with hiring more and more people, we create a certain identity together. It just happens. When you have some people, you know a bit more if the newcomer is going to fit in the organization or not. That becomes more and more important besides the hard skills that people are bringing. Of course, if you can’t program, you can’t work in the development team. But if you can program a bit and it could be better, and you have a nice personality, I believe that is more valuable than the other way around. I really believe that. Because in the end, you can learn a lot. But if you’re not nice to work with, you won’t change that easily."

Pinpoint cultural differences via assessment

Are there any hiring tactics that you use now that you didn’t use before?

"In the beginning, we didn’t use an assessment tool. But when you hire someone outside the Netherlands, there are different cultures coming in place. The Dutch culture is completely different from the Spanish or Italian culture. You have to see things in perspective. For instance, when you say: “I’m a hard worker,” that has such a big difference when you say that in the Netherlands or when you say that in Italy. Therefore, we want to use an assessment tool that says whether somebody is a hard worker, that should already take into consideration all the other people in Italy. It really makes the difference. Also, it’s just what kind of personality we’re dealing with. People can be so friendly and honest and nice, but in the end, that isn’t the case. It also has to do with cultures. The assessment is really helpful for us when we’re hiring people outside the Netherlands. Other things that we’ve learned: Not only trust your own feeling, but really see what other people from the company think. If I and my hiring manager are positive, but some people say: “Oh ok, but this may not be a real fit for Tiqets,” then we can discuss and together we decide if the person is going to be hired or not."

Do you also do trials?

"Yes, it depends on the job. For technical jobs, product and development roles, we do assignments. Also for marketing positions. We’re giving them assignments with data from our company. There is no right or wrong. It’s just to see how they think, how they are going to work on this thesis. Then they are allowed to present it to a few team members in a meeting room to show “Ok, I have chosen this decision for this and this reason.” We just need to see how they think and there is room for discussion. I think it’s really good for the employees and for the new hires."

Two superb hiring advice for fast-growing startups

Do you have other tips and advice for hiring, especially in such a fast-growing company?

"Well for sure, use a recruitment tool. I’ve spoken to a lot of startup companies, and they asked: “How did you do this?” Then I said: “It’s not that hard, you know.” If you use a recruitment tool, it’s going to help you a lot. You want to be polite and personal to people, so you want to give a response to everybody. You need a recruitment tool to do that in order to make sure that you have some spare time to focus on some other things. That’s the first step and it’s not that expensive. People always think that it’s expensive to use tools and they’ll just use their Gmail accounts. But it’s not expensive and if you’re on holiday, someone else can take it over from you and they can just use Recruitee. That’s the first advice I’d give.

Second advice is about when you’re a startup company, you might get lost in what you’re really looking for. Because you’re new, nobody knows you, so they can be better working for other established companies. When someone says: “Ah, I want to work for you,” then you are tempted to just hire that person. But you don’t really know if the person is going to fit in your organization. A bad hire in a small company has a huge impact. It’s better to wait than just hiring someone. I’ve spoken to a lot of startups, they just don’t have a clear idea of what they’re standing for, what they’re looking for. They just hire someone because they think: “Oh, I have a friend, he is a smart guy, so he can work for me.” But sometimes it just isn’t the right decision for the company. You need to brainstorm together with a few other people to see what you’re really looking for. That’s important."

Thank you so much Stephanie, for joining us!

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Read the full version of this post on Recruitee Blog (newsletter: eepurl.com/bMHiZD) 

Hagi Trinh is an avid recruitment writer at Recruitee. The team is working on the greatest hiring platform of all time. You can sign up at recruitee.com to try it out and follow us on Twitter @recruiteeHR.