INTERVIEW Calin Stefanescu, Happy Recruiter: “Going digital is essential to be competitive in the HR market”

Happy Recruiter is a tech company who developed Dora, the Recruitment Robot. Dora was launched on March 1st, 2018 and finds candidates on Social Media. Dora asks the candidates custom questions, just like a human recruiter would, schedules face to face or phone interviews, sends reminders, for the candidates not to miss interviews. 60-70 percent of the recruitment process is automated and Dora is an extension of recruiters, being available for the candidates 24/7. Dora has performed over 600.000 interviews for over 1.000 companies from 9 countries. The Diplomat-Bucharest talked to Calin Stefanescu, CEO & Co-Founder of Happy Recruiter to find out more about the company goals and its plans. 

Which are the HR processes that firstly need to be digitalized within a company in your opinion and how much the digitalization has been applied so far at the level of the companies, from your experience as recruiter – in terms of HR tools, software?

The digitalisation in a company should start in steps. Automating repetitive tasks like searching for candidates, screening, asking job specific questions are tasks that can be done very precisely these days by computers, these activities are in general most time consuming and stressful tasks that a HR person is doing.

Implementing digitalisation in HR is at the beginning, most companies are aware that new tools for recruiters are available on the market and the implementation trend already started and more and more companies are doing the step towards digitalisation. In the coming years it is a must to go digital to be competitive in the HR market.

How well do you think it is understood and applied the digitalization at the companies’ level in Romania? How can this be improved?

Romania has a big advantage due to access to fast internet speed. This opened the door to companies to develop useful software helping companies to go digital easier, faster and cost efficient.

New software is easy to be tested, some of them offer free trials so companies can understand if they really can be helped or not, but as any new thing needs a bit of effort from the users.

In some cases recruiters don’t believe that a robot or process automated software can release most of their stressful tasks and offer them time to be more creative and productive. It is just a matter of time to understand that digitalisation for a recruiter is like a hammer for a carpenter. 

Which are the leading benefits of HR process automation and digitization for a HR department and the company’s business processes in general?

Leading benefits are: time saving, better matching candidates with jobs, less stresful and repetitive tasks, more productive and high satisfaction of their jobs.

In the current ‘war for talent’, speed is essential for those wanting to find the best candidates for their jobs. Meanwhile, technology is strengthening its grip on the HR-world. Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Big Data: they all have a tremendous impact on the way we work and do business.

By doing the ‘no-brain’-parts, digitalisation will give human recruiters more time to add their brains to the process, by having active conversations with candidates. Think of checking cultural fits, motivation etc. Dora is nothing but an assistant to the human recruiter, not a replacement.

How do you perceive the role of the HR specialist and recruiting companies in the future in Romania?

We are living a technology revolution, that will have a major impact on the way we are doing our jobs.

HR are specialists future roles in the future are limitless but full of challenges and responsibility, due to the tools which are already HR specialists will be able to match candidates with jobs very precisely, especially that a wave of new jobs will appear and others will disappear.

HR specialists are in the front line and need to learn and adapt to digitalisation fast.

About gamification and  AI in recruitment – How do you see the expansion of this new recruitment tools in Romania – timeline perspective, companies’ approach, candidates’ approach.

Gamification or know how learned from gamification and Ai in recruitment will help recruiters be more precise in recruitment, analyzing temperaments of people and in essence help people have a job where they are really fitted for. This will create more stability to employees and higher performance of teams and companies.