Mateusz HR

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the general manager of European operations for a medium-sized company in the US. I set up our Poland and Netherlands offices. As general manager, I’m in charge of local compliance, setting up the office, workplace management, hiring and onboarding, basic IT administration services, and finance and law compliance. On top of that, I play a dual role as head of people operations. Therefore, I’m also in charge of defining our HR strategy and implementing HR platforms and technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Mateusz HR?

We needed to recruit people for our office in Poland. Our initial goal was to recruit data scientists, software engineers, and supporting staff.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Mateusz HR provided recruitment services and quickly evolved their role to become our HR specialist. From the beginning, they collaborated with our hiring managers and heads of divisions to develop the job descriptions. They guided our managers to set the professional level we’d be looking for and reviewed the relevant skills in the job description to ensure we targeted the right people. They also ensured we had the proper hiring process in place.

Our typical hiring process was standard. First, Mateusz HR was in charge of the screening. Secondly, candidates had an interview with the hiring manager. The last step was getting to know the candidate in an interview with a broader part of the team. Depending on the role we needed, we devised an offline technical assessment or anything else we could require to secure the right candidate. Once we had the right candidate lined up, we sent the offer to close on them.

After accepting the offer, Mateusz HR was in charge of setting up the onboarding process and working with IT, procurement, and the team to ensure employees had a successful first day. They set up the policies and processes for onboarding, attendance, leave of absence, and so on. They also handled basic training around policies and procedures as part of the induction; they presented the company, structure, and activities and provided basic onboarding into our tools, ecosystem, and HR processes. 

What is the team composition?

We only worked with one teammate.

How did you come to work with Mateusz HR?

They were already working with Mateusz HR when I joined the company, so I don’t know how they began the partnership.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $3,000–$4,000 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from April–December 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Mateusz HR was quintessential in scaling our company from zero to over 50 employees. Moreover, they were a key part of defining and managing our onboarding process. They ensured we adhered to local compliance policies and were at the forefront of supporting our staff whenever they needed help. From the employee experience side, Mateusz HR built trust with our teams; our engineering groups recognized them as the single point of contact for all HR-related issues.

How did Mateusz HR perform from a project management standpoint?

Given the urgency of their initiatives, their project management was successful. They delivered on time and within our expectations. In terms of responsiveness, they always prioritized our requests, so we were exceedingly happy with them.

We communicated through email, phone, and Slack. In fact, they had access to our full breadth of communications to keep in touch with us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their specialty was IT recruitment, but their overall services were more successful than other service providers in the space. Mateusz HR understood the relevant skills, programming languages, and technologies we required for specific roles, so they had an ideal sourcing strategy. They were able to get suitable talent and close them off successfully more than any other internal or external recruiter.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could’ve done better in terms of transparency; they could’ve used more practical project management standards and methodologies in their work. However, their lack of management foundation didn’t hinder their ability to deliver.

Additionally, they would benefit from being more open about their availability. They could do less rather than take on many things simultaneously.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I suggest relying on their expertise to develop HR processes. Recruitment processes tend to be easy to figure out, but onboarding people successfully and creating an employee experience is challenging.