Bee Talents

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a founder of Shuttout, a community-driven marketplace for photographers based on photography competitions and user proof.

For what projects/services did your company hire Bee Talents?

We hired Bee Talents to help us with the recruitment process to build our development and product team.

What were your goals for this project?

To recruit backend and frontend developers for Shuttout.

How did you select Bee Talents?

Bee Talents was recommended by our friends as the most effective recruitment agency in the area.

Describe the project in detail.

We were building the development team to build Shuttout from scratch and we reached out to Bee Talents to help us the best people available. They introduced us to a couple of people and we have been able to find our lead developer with their help.

What was the team composition?

We had an assigned recruited who discussed with us in details all our needs and was also screening the candidates for us which saved a lot of time.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

They were able to find us a lead developer very quickly and thanks to that we could start with the project very fast. During the process they were in constant touch with us, informing on the progress and new candidates. That was really transparent. It was clear that they focused on the result and the happiness of the clients.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I would say it was flawless. Whenever needed we could reach out to them, they were asking additional questions, they didn't have a problem to use Slack to communicate with us.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The most impressive thing is that it really shows that they care about the result and about achieving it as quickly as possible while delivering the best quality. Communication was excellent and the whole process very transparent and smooth.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Speed of recruitment, but it's something that's very hard to improve as there are many external aspects that influence it too.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of Spaceless, an IT infrastructure company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Bee Talents?

We hired Bee Talents to help our growing agency scale our team while maintaining the quality of our prospective resources.

What was the scope of their involvement?

It’s a straightforward partnership. We’re hiring for two separate positions — a senior frontend engineer and a senior lead security engineer. We’ve especially needed the resource for the latter position to be high-profile. Bee Talents has assisted us during our recruitment process for both positions. 

There’s already an initial list of candidates, so Bee Talents has screened their applications according to our preferred qualifications. Additionally, they’ve sent us the LinkedIn profiles of their top three picks, so we can identify our best option. We’ve also tasked their team with keeping in touch with the candidates throughout the process.

What is the team composition?

I work directly with Aleksandra (CEO), a coordinator, and a recruiter. Apart from them, there are also other people from their team who are in charge of talking to the resources.

How did you come to work with Bee Talents?

Aleksandra and I had mutual friends because we both worked in the IT industry. I knew that they were an enthusiastic recruitment agency, so it was an easy decision for us to hire them along with a few other agencies.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $15,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in November 2020. Bee Talents is currently working with our investors.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Bee Talents is a very well-defined team. They calibrate their targets well to meet our specifications for each role. Their recruitment process has allowed us to come up with the right resources for our team. They aren’t affiliated with the people who they refer to us, but they meet our needs by sending those profiles to us. 

Once we find our pick, they negotiate well with each resource to make them accept our offer. They get the candidates who have the specializations we’re looking for within two weeks — that’s just incredible. Bee Talents understands that we have to hire quickly, especially for our key roles.

How did Bee Talents perform from a project management standpoint?

We mainly communicate via email and Slack. Bee Talents is way ahead of time in providing us with the pool of candidates that we can consider to be part of our team. They have a vast database of people who are looking for jobs, and they maintain their relationships with those resources.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a very well-defined process compared to the other agencies we’ve worked with. They’re very good at splitting roles to speed up the process. Bee Talents provides us with sufficiently interested candidates who care about the job — their selection is just timeless and impeccable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Bee Talents is already a very good team — they’re the best I’ve ever worked with.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Start by knowing what you’re looking for. Try to come up with detailed profiles in advance so Bee Talents will know who they should be talking to.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Storm Ideas is a specialist agency focused on the intersection of media, entertainment, and technology. We provide content and digital services to some of the top brands in the US TV industry. I joined Storm Ideas in 2012 and am the CTO of the company responsible for all aspects of the company’s technical output including its growing suite of products.

For what projects/services did your company hire Bee Talents?

As a company, we were looking to establish a technology hub in Warsaw. We engaged Bee Talents to help with recruiting developers and working alongside our existing operations team to help us scale out to a new country.

What were your goals for this project?

• To hire 6 new developers who matched our requirements and integrated with our culture
• To set up an office for them to work from in Warsaw
• To improve our processes to allow for full remote working
• To overall improve our company’s approach to hiring and staff

How did you select Bee Talents?

We worked with a member of the local tech scene in Warsaw who had worked with BeeTalents in the past as CTO of another company. He recommended them highly to us based on that experience. We briefly spoke to 2 other Polish recruitment firms – but BeeTalents impressed us the most with their process and what they were able to offer.

Describe the project in detail.

We made use of BeeTalents’ RPO offering which means we had a dedicated recruiter who essentially became a member of our team for 6 months.

We conducted an initial series of sessions with our recruiter to identify our needs. During these meetings, we also designed the recruitment process and established how we would communicate candidate status. Our recruiter then drew up job adverts and began promoting our roles directly to candidates. She would then conduct an initial interview with the candidates and write reports on those interviews.

These reports were invaluable in judging the likely success of a candidate in the ensuing recruitment process – in general, nearly everyone rated highly by our recruiter did well. Alongside all of this, our recruiter helped with the process of locating an office for us to rent in Warsaw.

She worked with the building management company to establish how the building worked and how we interface with the members of staff there. This was invaluable as we were doing this from Scotland with little to no knowledge of the local language.

Our recruiter also designed our candidate onboarding experience – improving greatly the existing process we had in place as a company. She was also key in running the onboarding process for the employees we hired. Finally, our recruiter worked with our existing HR staff to improve some of our HR processes and in particular, to create written policies for areas that had previously had only unwritten rules.

What was the team composition?

We had an account manager who helped us with the selection of the type of engagement we wanted to use. They also selected our recruiter for us. From there, all of our interaction was direct with our recruiter who worked as part of our team.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We set out to hire 6 developers – and ended up hiring 7 because the quality of the candidates being sent to us was so high.

Potentially the most important thing to say about all of the HR, onboarding process, and office location work undertaken by our recruiter is that the processes and policies which she helped to create are still in use by the company over 6 months after the engagement finished. We have re-engaged with Bee Talents twice since this initial engagement concluded because we found them to be of such high quality.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our recruiter was excellent – she immediately integrated into our team and participated as if she was part of the company. Her attention to detail was superb. She was able to work on tasks independently, to a high quality, and with a high degree of self-direction.

Because we were able to work together with our recruiter to design the process from scratch, we found it very effective. The recruiter worked in our Slack instance and we were able to track candidates in a familiar Kanban-based tool. This meant it was always easy to chat with our recruiter and we could work asynchronously when required also.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

There are 2 things. One is the high quality of their recruitment staff. The second is, having worked with them again since are their processes which allow their staff to execute in an excellent manner. When compared to other recruitment firms we've worked with in the past their communication, attention to detail, and quality were unmatched.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None – except that we want to use them more than they have availability to do so!

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Talent Acquisition Manager for a business services company and I manage all European and Asian searches. WE BELIEVE IN THE ENTREPRENEUR We recognize that invention propels innovation, density spurs collaboration, and a shared purpose drives a thriving community.

As we race forward into an age of exponential growth and transformation, We provide a home from which to work, allowing innovators to easily access resources and create substantive, positive global impact.

We work with powerful, local partners to develop the critical networks that entrepreneurs need to grow effectively. For almost two decades, we have focused on strengthening vibrant communities, building collaborative work environments, and creating impactful programming to attract and support the very best entrepreneurs and their teams.

Our clients provide tomorrow’s answers to today’s problems. They renew our economies, create gainful and rewarding employment opportunities, and frequently crack tough problems facing humanity.

For what projects/services did your company hire Bee Talents?

We hired Bee Talents for the Global Head of Software search.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to find a seasoned and experienced professional who would lead a change and manage our global systems.

How did you select Bee Talents?

We did a thorough research on Polish market.

Describe the project in detail.

Our first meeting was organised by Paweł Pisanko and since then Paweł has truly been a great partner that put his thoughtfulness, preparation and personal approach into understanding our unique recruiting needs and tailored the approach appropriately.

What was the team composition?

A formal cooperation between us and Bee Talents started in March 2020 and involved a series of preparation meetings, position scoping, adjusting the methodology of work, assigning a recruiter with in-depth knowledge to land a successful candidate for us.

The recruiter that was assigned to the search was Adrianna Gęsiarz.

Adrianna diligently followed the agreed process: scoped the responsibilities and the company needs, sourced and headhunted matching candidates, provided us with weekly reports and insights, followed up in any case needed and did all her responsibilities efficiently to find us a talented senior professional that could join our company in September in the Global Head of Software role.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

In September we had a successful candidate joined our team.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was very effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

At all times we have found the Bee Talents team members to be reliable, dependable and efficient partners to cooperate with.

They are trusted professionals that come with transparency, enthusiasm, dedication and flexibility and these are the characteristics that we also value as a global company.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of the second-largest credit intermediary in Poland. We help people get mortgages for houses.

What challenge were you trying to address with Bee Talents?

We were expanding our IT team.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Bee Talents helped us find two great developers. We had an initial video call with one of their principals to discuss our needs. It was followed up by a meeting with the account manager assigned to us and one other person. They collected all the information about whom we were looking for and what skills we needed. We got candidates that were prescreened by Bee Talents, and each one corresponded to what we were looking for.

We started with one full-stack developer and decided to also search for a frontend resource mid-process. Bee Talents told us that they didn’t have any free slots to take that job, but they were willing to extend the existing job in order to find the second developer. It was nice of them to agree to this.

What is the team composition?

There were four people present for the first meeting, including the CEO.

How did you come to work with Bee Talents?

They were recommended to me by a friend. We trusted that recommendation and didn’t look for any other agencies.

How much have you invested with them?

Their offer was 15,000 Polish zloty ($4,000 USD) for one recruited employee.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Bee Talents in July 2020, and we signed the contract with the second employee in September.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re very happy with the results. Bee Talents’ process was transparent and they did a lot of work for us. A lot of agencies can find suitable candidates, but we got exactly the people we needed. We didn’t just a post generic job description for a full-stack developer. It was very specific. The advantage with Bee Talents is that we only got a few candidates, but they were perfect matches for us.

How did Bee Talents perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated through Slack, email, and phone calls. They were available anytime we wanted them, and the collaboration was 100% excellent.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve had good collaborations with a few talent agencies, but this one was simply excellent. They were very precise with the candidates they delivered, which isn’t always the case in my experience. I’m sure that I’ll be calling Bee Talents the next time I need support.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They were available to us at any time, and we received emails outside of working hours, either very late or very early. This was both an advantage and a disadvantage because we weren’t always available at those hours. The complaint is minimal at best.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should be as precise as possible in defining the requirements. It’ll allow Bee Talents to match their needs exactly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO and founder of Whites Agency. We’re a digital agency specializing in SEO as well as social media, content marketing, and other things. 

We target enterprise companies like large organizations, mostly from Poland, but also from other countries in Europe, the States as well as others.

What challenge were you trying to address with Bee Talents?

At the time, we were much smaller than we are now and we had no HR team whatsoever. We were struggling to hire people because we didn’t have much knowledge about the process and there was a lot of work to do. We hired Bee Talents to help us with the process.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We outsourced hiring to Bee Talents, with the goal of hiring four or five people at the same time. They handled the whole process with initial calls and first talks with potential candidates. Along the way, they showed us how it was done in a professional way through some transfer of knowledge at the same time.

In hiring four or five interns, there were a lot of applications. They handled the whole process and I believe they also arranged the classifieds. They reviewed all the applications that came through, and they chose some of them for initial calls. The team delivered several candidates for me to choose from. In the end, they delivered pretty good candidates and we chose from that group.

What is the team composition?

At that time, I believe there were four or five people. I believe they are larger now, with 20 people or more. We were mostly in touch with Maciej (Co-Owner & COO) who handled our account and did most of the job himself. 

We also worked with the founder at the beginning and at the crucial parts. She also showed us how the process would look, the key points as well as KPIs, and what would make it successful and smooth. She was more responsible for transferring the knowledge to us. Maciej was responsible for handling the process with the candidates.

How did you come to work with Bee Talents?

We had a mutual connection, and he recommended Bee Talents to me as he knew that we were struggling with this process. The founder was at the beginning of starting her own company.

How much have you invested in them?

It was a few thousand dollars.

What is the status of this engagement?

I don’t remember exactly when it was, but I believe it was in the summer of 2016 and it lasted two or three months.

We felt it was a crucial part of our business as a whole so we decided to internalize the process.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

In general, the cooperation was successful as a result of hiring the right people. However,  they also helped us understand how crucial the recruitment and hiring process is and how it could be done. I believe the value was great and the value for money was even better. 

We were completely happy with the decision to work with Bee Talents as well as the results we got. They helped us hire the right people at the right time.

How did Bee Talents perform from a project management standpoint?

I was also very happy about the project management aspect. They showed us how smooth and organized the company could be. We had been on the market for a couple of years, and with their previous experience from larger organizations, they demonstrated a higher level than what we were doing at that point.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There are a couple of things. I was in contact with Bee Talents even after we finished our cooperation and we stayed in touch. They are very dedicated, and they try to think from our perspective and our business perspective. 

The team worked to understand our situation, goals, objectives, and so on. We felt like Bee Talent was a part of our team and that’s what differentiates them from other companies, especially other HR companies.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could have charged more. They learned that lesson and they do charge more at this point. My experience was purely great, so there is nothing that comes to my mind when it comes to areas they can improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Talk to them and make sure that they understand your business. Also, make sure you know who you’ll be working with because, in this business of B2B services and the consulting business in general, it is important to know who actually will be working on your account. 

I don’t know their whole team, but everyone I have met was great. Make sure there are senior people on their side and not junior people. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of Rebased, a software development agency that focuses on Ruby on Rails and JavaScript. We create bespoke software, and we maintain, develop, improve, and rescue existing projects that have proven to be viable business models.

We’re brought in after the startup or MVP phase has ended, and the concept is validated. We make products work not for 100 users, but 100,000. We focus on complicated products that are worth developing further.

What challenge were you trying to address with Bee Talents?

Bee Talents has looked for experienced and battle-hardened developers for us. Developers that work on startup or early-stage products are fine, and it’s fine to have a software built by a developer with 2–3 years of experience, in order to validate an idea and build the first version of a software.

In order to take that software further, we get into scaling, maintenance, high availability, high data volume, and high usage problems where we need a way more experienced developer. We require developers with at least five years of professional experience, and that had soft skills as well.

The developers working with us have to be not only good at technical aspects and at identifying pain points and business requirements but also have excellent interpersonal skills. They have to be assertive but polite and respectful. They needed to be good at working with others.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had an initial call to discuss the specifics of our work and how we differ from other software development agencies. We’re usually brought in as an augmentation of existing in-house teams, and often as more experienced developers that can take the projects further.

The developers needed to be able to organize brainstorming, gather requirements and basically help the existing team achieve better levels of software quality than they’d had before we stepped in. We weren’t looking for genius coders who couldn’t talk to people. This is how we described the perfect candidate to Bee Talents.

We described how we work and what some of our projects look like so that Bee Talents had enough information to pitch candidates. We needed to prove to them that we were going to give them enough challenges, but also enough support to grow further and have some interesting challenges in their careers.

After that, we started the process of finding candidates.

For them, combing through people is always a case of the same-kind complexity. They have to search through hundreds of LinkedIn profiles, reach out to 20–30, and recommend 10 for us to talk to. They prefer to have contracts that span recruiting 2–3 people, which equate to 2–3 success fees for the same amount of work.

After giving out invitations through LinkedIn, Bee Talent handles the first phase of interviews, basically early screenings focusing on the person’s language abilities. Bee Talents checks how comfortable the person is with using English. They also do the first assessment of the person’s soft skills, looking at whether they’ll fit into the team and work properly with other people.

After they’ve greenlighted all the fields we’re looking for, they’ll send the candidates to us. We handle only the technical part of the interview, after which we make a decision.

What is the team composition?

Our main points of contact are a recruiter and an account person. I know that there are other people on the Bee Talents side doing the initial reach-out, including a language expert.

How did you come to work with Bee Talents?

I trained CrossFit with one of the people who later became a sales associate of Bee Talents. It was essentially a personal connection. I’d also heard about Bee Talents before because they were founded by Aleksandra (CEO), who was already well-known and respected in the development community.

It’s kind of rare to have a recruiter that’s respected among developers. There’s an incredibly low signal to noise ratio when developers are getting lots of offers from recruiters, which are usually completely unfit to their experience and technologies.

Aleksandra had worked for a well-known software company, so she already had the social capital to attract clients. Everybody we talked to about Bee Talents was happy with them, so we decided to give them a chance.

How much have you invested with them?

As far as I remember, their fee is a single monthly salary of the developer we’re hiring. Half or a third of that is paid upfront, and the rest is paid after signing the contract with the developer. This might sound small since other recruitment agencies request two salaries, but we’re a company that pays a lot.

Bee Talents is happy to get a single month’s salary as a fee. For us, the ballpark is €4,500 (approximately $5,100 USD) per person. I believe we recruited two people in 2018 and three in 2019.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our first collaboration was between December 2017–January 2018. The second collaboration was in 2019, and we’ll sign another contract with Bee Talents the next time we’re going to be recruiting.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We first went to them to recruit two people, and Bee Talents was so good that we went to them again the next year.

Their contracts are exclusive in that they’re going to be the only recruiting agency working with us at that particular time so that other agencies don’t interfere. They’ll allow us to have our own independent recruitment process running in parallel, and the developers we find that way aren’t subjected to the fee.

The model works, and no one’s trying to outdo or cheat the other side. We have a healthy, honest agreement, and it works. We’ve done it twice, and we were happy with the entire process.

I’m always super happy with their services. Whenever we had a hiccup, or there was something that had to be communicated differently, we told them, and they immediately adjusted their communication process.

They respond very well to feedback, and I can’t find anything bad to say about working with Bee Talents. That doesn’t happen very often in my case. Working with Bee Talents has been a breeze so far, and I hope they keep up the good work.

How did Bee Talents perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re happy not just with the quality of people they’ve brought to us, but the communication is also great. Our contacts are on our Slack channel dedicated to recruitment where we bounce ideas back and forth.

They’re responsive, and they send nicely-formed emails about the candidates. They have a well-defined template for the candidate assessment results, with sections for their soft skills, language skills, areas of improvement, and their recommendation level.

We’re definitely going to work with them again.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve talked to quite a few agencies, and Bee Talents was the first one that listened and properly identified and understood what set us apart from other development companies and what our expectations are. They found candidates that fit those requirements. This is something I haven’t found with other agencies.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t find anything they could improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I advise clients to give it a try. They should set up a call and see if there’s a common vibe–if they think and communicate in a similar way.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the leader of the HR and recruitment department for a software house.

What challenge were you trying to address with Bee Talents?

We wanted to quickly hire developers, but we didn’t have the capacity to hire many people at the pace we wanted. They’re enabling us to reach out to more candidates.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve worked on four different recruitment projects since starting our partnership. It’s been their responsibility to support our company in many recruitment processes, as we search for remote Ruby on Rails development teammates. They reached out to candidates for us and sent recommended candidates to our team. That allowed us to focus on a smaller pool of applicants.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with several dedicated consultants on their team. 

How did you come to work with Bee Talents?

They were recommended to us by one of our employees, who had a great experience with them in the past. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $5,000 on their services.  

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since July 2018.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Because of their services, our company only had to interview 29 candidates to make four hires. I was pretty impressed, and they made sure there was still a wide candidate pool to choose from.  

How did Bee Talents perform from a project management standpoint?

All of their consultants were well-prepared for the recruitment process and knew what they were doing. They were timely as a company. We established a Slack channel as our main source of communication, which allowed us to speak pretty quickly. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Our relationship has grown over time. For instance, they invited us to participate in a webinar on remote work with them. They’re a very specialized agency in IT recruitment. They’re dedicated to each recruitment effort, and their expertise helps them be effective.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’d love for them to begin approaching international candidates.