Connections – Employer branding favoured IT recruitment during the pandemic

According to Connections data, leader in the Romanian digital transformation market, a solid reputation in the technology market, employer culture and complex projects developed by the company are the main reasons that facilitated the recruitment process and retention of employees during the pandemic period.

The recruitment process has been simplified by the context of the health crisis, and recruitment duration has been reduced by 30%, due to the flexibility that online interviews offer.

Currently, for middle-senior positions, recruitment takes up to a maximum of 2 months, and for niche positions (e.g. RPA) on the entry level, recruitment takes an average of 2-3 weeks.

“The duration of recruitment depends very much on the type of project – new technologies, impact area, innovative project, stability – on the employer brand and the salary package allocated for that position. Due to the complexity of the projects carried out, our focus is on attracting seniors and talents. We are one of UiPath’s main partners in Romania and we have implemented with them automation processes in key industries”, says Iulia Andreea Bădăuță – IT&RPA Talent Acquisition Connections.

Connections has created its own tool to automate and streamline the talent recruitment and retention process, and recruitment is done internally with a specialized team.

Connections has a solid company culture, and employees spend on average more than 4 years in the company. “We enjoy a high retention rate, and our colleagues appreciate the projects we run locally and internationally, that give them the opportunity to create a competitive professional portfolio. Last year, proactive demands for positions in our company increased by 18% in the middle and senior segment,” says Iulia Andreea Bădăuță – IT&RPA Talent Acquisition Connections.

Connections has adopted a dynamic strategy of support for companies that, faced with the health crisis, had to make the move towards managing their business online. Senior programmer teams have created specific products such as Digital Workplace – a product that provides turnkey hardware and software services for online business operation, a solution suitable for working from home, Tudor – The virtual accounting robot, as well as the ID Scanner app, through which you can extract data from ID cards with a simple photo.

Connections teams have also developed the SAM robot that helps manage patients administratively within a private medical institution.

“Our top programmers understood it is important to devote themselves to customers and to help them to get more easily through the crisis. The high level of our colleagues’ engagement resulted in exceptional ideas, implemented in very well received products on the market. Technology has facilitated our relationships, and employees consider us a destination, not a transit point,” says Bogdan Florea, CEO and Founder Connections.

Immediately after the start of the pandemic, Connections started to use an employee support platform and allocated important budgets to enable them to participate in professional and personal development programs. At the same time, Connections employees had permanent access to psychological counseling.

“Many colleagues turned to the free psychological counseling program that we designed and implemented during the pandemic, which helped them look at situations they go through more clearly, better manage stress and look at the loneliness automatically associated with the pandemic from another perspective,” says Aurelia Calin, Recruitment & Corporate Wellbeing Specialist Connections.

The pandemic has brought to the attention of employees the non-financial benefits, which are increasingly interested in team cooperation, management support, transparent communication, dynamic and complex projects, stability and great flexibility towards remote work.

ABOUT CONNECTIONS

Connections is leader on the digital transformation market in Romania, has 300 employees and offices in Bulgaria, Serbia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the USA, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan. The company specializes in Intelligent Automation, IT Infrastructure Support, Digital Business Process Management and Software Development On Demand. Connections customers are Romanian but also global companies in industries such as Banking, FMCG, Oil & Gas, Telecom and Retail. Since July 2018 Connections has signed a partnership with UiPath, the fastest-adopted Enterprise Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform with the fastest level of adoption worldwide, and it has already successfully implemented robotic automation processes in key industries. At the same time, Connections has invested over 200,000 Euros in the development of a fintech open banking platform designed to integrate the APIs made available by Romanian banks, with the application of the Revised Payment Service Directive (PSD2), which obliges banks to give access to information on online payment bank accounts to third parties that can develop information, payments and other financial services to bank customers. Connections ended 2020 with a turnover of 7 million euros.