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Responsible recruitment: the Aircall case!

Published on

03

July

2023

Published on

03

July

2023

Hello Nicolas! I'm sure many of our readers already know about Aircall, but could you give us a little presentation of what you do?

Nicolas Serva, Global Director Talent Acquisition, Aircall

Of course you can! In a few words, Aircall is a cloud telephony solution, offering a highly intuitive user experience, rather like Apple. Our focus is on small and medium-sized businesses, and our mission is to make technology accessible and easy to use and implement. We focus on bringing value to their sales and support teams, so that they can extract insights and data from every phone conversation to better understand their customers and ultimately gain in productivity and efficiency.

‍Whatreally sets us apart is our ability to build scenarios based on the type of discussion or level of support required. Our integrations with major CRMs (such as Salesforce and HubSpot) or Helpdesk tools (like Zendesk or Intercom, for example) enrich our platform. Recently, we added AI and coaching functionalities, which is a real plus for our customers.

You mentioned the intuitive experience you offer. However, let's be honest, the telephony sector isn't the most glamorous. I read an interview with your CEO in Les Echos where he said that the more "unsexy" a sector is, the more potential it has. You joined Aircall in 2021, a period of hyper-growth for the company. How did you manage to make the Aircall project attractive to candidates?

Indeed, that's an excellent question! We've always been very clear about our proposition: we offer more than just a telephony tool, and we do it with proximity, responsibility and also a lot of fun. And we've always emphasized our corporate culture. We have always valued honesty and clarity in our exchanges, avoiding the "bullshit" that can sometimes be encountered. We're proud to say that we don't oversell our company

As far as recruitment is concerned, we have always been selective about the profiles we seek, and place great importance on diversity of backgrounds and experience, as well as technical and interpersonal skills. We have built up strong teams throughout the world. On top of this, we offer a great deal of flexibility in terms of work location. 

In 2021, you almost doubled your workforce with the recruitment of nearly 400 people. Can you tell us how this came about?

Well, I have to say that 2021 was a particularly intense year, but that wasn't a bad thing, given that I'd started that year, I was really immersed in the rhythm. The excitement of saying "Ok, we've got all this to do" was pretty incredible during that period. It's very stimulating when you're building a team and you wonder how you're going to manage to recruit so much. 

There were challenges, of course. One of the main challenges was to recruit recruiters. This was no easy task. So the first step was to put together a team, then define priority objectives. We also had to manage the international dimension of recruitment, which added a certain level of complexity. 

Then we were quite open about the profiles we were looking for. For example, two sales people joined the team. There were also internal transfers, which meant we had to make cultural adjustments, which was also great. We really had to think outside the box for these recruitments. 

We trained these new recruits, because you don't become a recruiter overnight. Some aspects were common in terms of experience and others were a little more complicated. But all in all, it was a real success. 

We also looked for people with international experience. We adapted the way we sourced our talent. For example, some of my colleagues live in the south-east, near the sea, in Montpellier. Others are in California, not necessarily on our premises. We've been very flexible about where we work.

Our aim has always been to create a united team which, even if they can't see each other every day, has a real sense of belonging. This was undoubtedly the most important point, because corporate culture is a very strong value for us. 

Among the 400 recruitments we made, some were difficult, depending on the country. But we also looked for the best talents where they were. We didn't limit ourselves to any particular country.

We went to India when we found an excellent talent pool, and recruited some incredible back-end engineers. We also went to the United States when it was relevant, for example to recruit managers. In Europe, we increased our presence in Madrid, which was very useful. We also recruited in Portugal for security.

So we've really opened up our horizons to find the besttalent. I have a feeling that this is a trend that will continue in the future; companies will be increasingly open to finding talent on a global scale, rather than limiting themselves to a certain location or country.

Can you tell us about the recruitment process you've put in place to structure this hypergrowth?

Of course, it's essential. We always talk about the customer's experience or the employee's experience within the company, but we rarely think about the recruiter's experience. So, when we recruit a team and they start working, there's a support phase to consider. How do we train the team, how do we make them as productive as possible, as quickly as possible and in the best possible working environment? All these questions need to be considered from the outset.

What we've done is to simplify the recruitment process and tools as much as possible. Today, we use a CRM called Lever, which enables us to centralize all documents and information flows (Google Sheets, contracts, etc.) in one place.

This is essential for traceability. We can retrace our steps, find out where the information is, what may be missing, etc. But above all, it's more reassuring for managers. But above all, it's calmer for managers because they have an immediate view of opening requests, and if they don't have all the signatories, they can check whether finance has validated, etc. 

This is a structural challenge for any company with ambitions to grow. This is what we had in mind and what we have put in place.

For day-to-day support, it's also important for our team to be able to ensure that each recruiter has an adequate workload. We don't want some recruiters to have one talent to recruit, and others to have two, for example. So we set up a task management system with Kanban, etc. It's an agile methodology that enables us to track recruitment in a very simple way, from the first contact right through to onboarding. 

The employee in charge of onboarding then organizes weekly integration sessions with the people starting their Aircall assignment. And then, the same task management system is used for IT, to place orders for laptops and so on. It' s all very connected. At the touch of a button, information is sent to the new employee, to the person managing onboarding, to IT to place the necessary orders. We like the idea of having "one tool to master them all". The idea is really to be able to simply maximize the use of our tools. I think about what this kind of hypergrowth must have been like when the technology didn't exist. Companies that had to double their workforce, or experienced hypergrowth, at a time when there was no artificial intelligence, when there was no CRM, it was probably hell!

I'm thinking in particular of the operational HR teams, who are a bit in the background and not much talked about. Now that they have adapted and integrated tools at their disposal, there are enormous gains in efficiency and productivity. Before, there was no such thing, they had to do everything by hand, and so on. It's really another world. I honestly think that in phases like this, it's very, very difficult.

What's next for Aircall recruitment?

For us, the challenge will of course be to recruit with full responsibility, in order to stabilize our teams and continue to strengthen our core competencies in areas such as data, AI and marketing. We really need to continue recruiting these skills if we are to pursue our international expansion. 

We must also continue to train and coach our teams, so that they are constantly upgrading their skills. We rely heavily on our in-house talent. I'm interested in evaluating skills. Our ambition is to become a "Competency Driven Company". So the people who join us will come from diverse backgrounds, but they'll have the right skills.

"We want to recruit with full responsibility so that every recruitment counts." 

Many thanks for your time, Nicolas!