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#130 - Giorgia Altavilla | TA Operations to grow from 300-700 HC organization
24 Plays1 day ago
Giorgia Altavilla leads Talent Operations at Satispay, where she builds scalable recruitment systems and drives HR tech transformation. She lives at the intersection of data, ops, and people experience.
Shownotes
00:00 - Intro & Context
05:30 - From recruiter to Talent Ops lead: fixing broken hiring processes
18:45 - How Talent Ops drives efficiency and scalable growth
42:10 - Quality of hire, automation, and AI in modern recruiting
Links
Guest Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giorgia-altavilla/
Thomas Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-kohler-pplwise/
Thomas e-mail: thomas@pplwise.com
pplwise: https://pplwise.com/
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Transcript
Introduction of Joe and His Role
00:00:08
Speaker
Today's guest, Joe, Talent Acquisition and Operations Lead at Satis Pay. So i'm I'm really looking forward to this episode. We know each other, I think, for five years maybe now, I think.
00:00:21
Speaker
um You and me met when I am participated the first of these talent acquisition dinners. I host a lot in the meantime already, but I think the first one I ever attended, not even hosted by myself, is where I met you. It was back then with Ashby and Willem, I guess, in Berlin. Sure.
Joe's Career Journey in TalentOps
00:00:45
Speaker
But today we want to talk about... um talent acquisition operations and everything, but maybe we start with a bit of a context about yourself by yourself.
00:00:54
Speaker
Thank you, Thomas, and thank you for having me. This is going to be fun. um So, yeah, I'm now leading ah the TalentOps function at Satispay, but this hasn't been my role since the beginning. I've just started as a recruiter as anybody else that wanted to enter the HR space but didn't have a background in HR.
00:01:16
Speaker
And um I remember my first agency at a recruiting job and I thought, this is broken. This is not working. This is not what I was thinking I was going to do. I was a bit naive, I have to admit.
00:01:29
Speaker
um I was coming from a completely different world. And what I figured out is that there were two things missing. Efficiency on one side and the candidate experience on the other.
00:01:42
Speaker
And I think this was where um two things could happen. Thankfully, the second de But the first um possibility option was me just dropping out of the space because it was going so much against where where my values and drivers at work.
00:01:58
Speaker
um And then the other one was to fix the problem. And this is how I discovered what RecOps was, because I had no idea. um And I... think a lot of people also confuse it with its scheduling, right? yeah If it's from the very surface, but that's definitely not the case.
00:02:17
Speaker
That's not the case. And you can see this confusion also from the job job descriptions on the market, right? There is the talent ops and then the description is all about coordinating. That 2025, 26 is also um not on point given what the tech stack offer. That is a lot of automations.
00:02:34
Speaker
are you But yeah, this is... how I joined the space of talent acquisition and then I managed to move in-house and tech was always my ah core, um which is weird because I never thought of myself as a person that could enjoy so much space.
00:02:53
Speaker
um And then I had the chance, thanks to my leaders, um years after years to to discover more about the rec-ops space and then become, um had the possibility with Satispe to build an entire function, which is fun.
Growth and Evolution of Satispay's Talent Acquisition
00:03:08
Speaker
At what stage um was Satis Pay when you joined and at what stage of the company are you now? Maybe overall and also with the talent acquisition function?
00:03:20
Speaker
So when I joined Satispay was a couple of years ago. um We were around 350 employees, a lot of um innovation happening, a lot of projects and products on the roadmap. talent acquisition team was around 15 people, but revamping all the processes, way of work, um and also we're shifting to a more data-driven approach. And today we are more or less the same number of people, 15 to 19 people, but we have three very distinctive functions. We have the talent partners, talent sourcing and talent ops that did actually change face and hats a couple of times during the past two years because when I joined, it was purely coordination and also taking a few um um a few tasks from the space.
00:04:17
Speaker
um And today instead we managed to build ah an engine that works in parallel on the coordination piece, a little bit less because most of it is automated on the process improvements and team enablement side and project program management, right? So introducing new practices and new tools, and um consolidating even more and taking care of the analytics.
00:04:45
Speaker
And um what changed now in terms of how you how you perceive the talent acquisition function and also how the talent acquisition function is is perceived maybe from the business?
Strategic Role of TalentOps
00:04:57
Speaker
How I perceive that? Okay. i I always thought and I still believe that in general, I'm not talking of my current company, but the talent ops function can be more of a business partner.
00:05:10
Speaker
And I also think that the way it's developing in the market, regardless so of the company you join, is more of um is a a wider function. You can see where it starts, but you cannot see where it ends.
00:05:23
Speaker
It could cover a bit of the um of those more administrative tasks, ah but could also bring together ah different HR teams, um ensuring that all those processes that start at the beginning of the journey of the employee with the hiring experience, um it's actually coherent until they stay with us and then and they perform and then eventually leave.
00:05:49
Speaker
And um what ratio do you have from um maybe how many roles does a recruiter carry in parallel? And then also how many um sourcing support?
00:06:03
Speaker
Or yeah maybe let let's start with the first question. Well, I think that really depends on the business and what they need. um The good thing is that when you have a great team, you can be flexible and you can play around according to what are the business needs. And we know the scale-ups may change needs every quarter, if not even more often. So you need to be ready to cover everywhere, anywhere is needed. um There are some numbers that everybody knows, right, in the space. ah You will have ah one coordinator supporting up to three to five recruiters according to the volume they have. And then you'll have a sourcer for, I don't know, five roles, 10 roles if it's volume and evergreens. But I think it really depends on what the business needs to achieve. Is it um scaling? Is it more of a focus on quality of hire?
Structure and Flexibility in Recruitment
00:06:59
Speaker
I think the key, especially nowadays when a lot of new tools and AI are um changing how the space looks like and how we can operate, to the key is to stay flexible and have a team that knows how to adapt to So I think also at your size, right, with 350 people, just putting this into perspective um that you have a talent acquisition organization of around 15 and also a setup with um and sourcing um ops recruiters structured. This is very sophisticated and um a lot of companies don't have that and at all.
00:07:36
Speaker
and Also later stage. and And what I see at that size um that I think A lot of companies or a lot of recruiters, they just sometimes need to be flexible, as you said, right? they need to maybe jump from a region, let's say Italy, to maybe another a region.
00:07:58
Speaker
It could be, i don't know, France, Germany, UK, or sometimes maybe even going a bit abroad. and Or you then need to also jump into different functions. First, you ramp maybe a tech organization and then...
00:08:13
Speaker
within a tech organization, you can also jump from a very specialized special specialized engineering role, let's say in security to, okay, now we need to find somebody that is um doing a lot of, um I don't know, front-end engineering, and which is a different way of recruiting as well, right? And different people. yeah um And therefore, I think depending on also the the level of and focus you can keep and also the level of different stakeholders you have to engage with because maybe it's part of a different organization, hiring maturity might be different, but also maybe the processes and also the biases. So there's so many different um and also just having a different stakeholder and is an effort, right? And this all factors
00:08:55
Speaker
In where I think that the talent acquisition operations function can be a big lever because um you have somebody that is ideally also delivering the insights, the data, and also making sure that the systems are set up in the right way, used in the right way, that you collect the right data, that you can trust the data, that you can then also use it to predict, to forecast,
Mindset vs. Team Size in TalentOps
00:09:21
Speaker
to predict.
00:09:21
Speaker
engage and influence certain decision making, right, on why a region is more suited or another, for instance, or um why we don't need more recruiters, why we just need a bit of a more hiring maturity in terms of decision making, for instance, right, instead of just putting people on on the problem. um And this is what I learned in the past is when the talent acquisition organization has a good TA ops muscle, it doesn't have to be an entire function, but if the mindset is still there, it is also often good enough at that size, right? but what you have, I think, is already sophisticated.
00:09:58
Speaker
Well, we needed this function because we doubled in size and we keep um we keep growing. So now we're around 700 people. We still have to hire. so And also one thing is that I noticed is that then all the skills that a talent function, i'm sorry, a talent ops or a coops function brings to the team can be transferable, right? You can use them also across other HR teams. But I've seen... ah a one woman or man show in TalentOps so leading um and a lot of transformation and bringing those values that you were mentioning to their theme. doesn't need to be a huge function. You even just need a recruiter that has that approach and then knows how to cascade it to the rest of the recruiters or sourcers or even hiring managers. There are amazing um model models of hiring where hiring managers are actually working
00:10:54
Speaker
the first people to approach candidates and are owner of the, of those hiring processes, but this needs certain and degree of maturity. Also may work at smaller scales or maybe a very mature, but bigger ones, and larger ones. So yeah, I don't think that talent operation means you need a team or a big team.
00:11:15
Speaker
Yeah. You just need the mindset. yes Yes. And then of course, right, depending on size and so on, it makes sense also to have the function and, um, and What is the tool stack you use?
Tools, Technologies, and Compliance in Talent Acquisition
00:11:28
Speaker
um We are spoiled and lucky. and We use Ashby as our applicant tracking system. And um I've been a user of Ashby for a while now, also before Satispay. I have to say it's fun to use.
00:11:43
Speaker
It has everything you need in one place. You don't need to go fancy, you need to go smart. um once you have this platform. I'm positively biased towards the tools, so I don't want to spend too much talking about it because I know it may be um not really impartial. um But it allows you to do basically anything you need, except, of course, LinkedIn that is always there and you need to use. But there is a lot more on the market. ah We are quite of a big team and that allows us to experiment.
00:12:16
Speaker
We've been piloting a few not takers, but also sourcing tools. And um when you finish a pilot, you think, okay, you're ready to make a decision, but there is another player coming out or um releasing new features that makes it a little bit harder to decide.
00:12:34
Speaker
It's also hard to stay compliant, at least in the European Union. And um especially for bigger companies, heavily regulated in the space we work at, We need to be extremely careful.
00:12:47
Speaker
um But there is a lot more. And I just would like to stress that the way I think of it is because there is a lot of talks around ah these automations, NAI, NHR and recruitment.
00:13:02
Speaker
Yes, can be used, but the human is always there. um Not only because of what the regulation says, but also because... It's a new technology and there is too much risk also for the company to lose the right person, the qualitative candidate, future employee that can raise the bar for the company.
00:13:23
Speaker
um So a human would always be there to lead both candidate experience and and and bring revenue and success to the business. um But there is, again, a lot more to say on this topic. I will say that the new tools and especially in the iSpace can help increase ah efficiency and productivity but rather than um replace people.
00:13:51
Speaker
And this is extremely true in the HR space and recruitment space.
Measuring Hiring Quality
00:13:56
Speaker
And um what are the... the reports or insights you can, so what are the metrics you can show and with your function and what are you measuring?
00:14:08
Speaker
Good question. What are we measuring? Basically everything is how you put those metrics and results and insights into context that can help you tell a story. um Besides the most traditional metrics from how long it takes you to fill a role, to hire someone, to offer to someone, so the velocity one, to the most basic of metrics, but always present, conversion, funnels, activities, tracking that are always there.
00:14:37
Speaker
ah Something we are now focusing and we've been focusing in the past year and half besides the, um well, we started with the candidate experience and trying to improve our processes based on what our candidates will say.
00:14:53
Speaker
And now we are transitioning the to a net where the quality of buyer will be the focus. Oh, nice. um Yeah, very nice. hot topic for many companies, especially those that need to focus more on quality. And it comes to that point where the scaling part is there.
00:15:11
Speaker
But once you have a talent function that is solid, You know you can rely on the team, the processes are there. You figure out what is winning for your team, then you can focus even more on quality.
00:15:26
Speaker
So now we, thanks to Ashby, we do have a few metrics that we take into consideration already for quality of hire and we're going to launch a couple of features from the tool that will allow us to track it better and get more consistent feedback, not only from the candidates, but also from our IA&T members. What your current, because I think quality hire, it's a big hole, yeah? It is.
00:15:48
Speaker
what attributes are you focusing on? Is it more um if they pass probation? This is a very simple way on on how companies doing it but then the question is okay how good is your performance rating feedback process right? If you even manage probation for instance at all right?
00:16:06
Speaker
um Some also track some metrics especially in sales um that they also track okay what are the um target attainments I think there it's a bit more easier to say okay that that's the target that's then the first year um achievement blah blah blah and then it's a bit more feasible you can also put an ROE on it very easily um but for other functions it's not so easy but this would be interesting for me but what what are the the attributes doesn't need to be the very clear methodology on how you do it but the thinking process behind it
00:16:39
Speaker
So I think it depends on the company. I cannot talk for for ah my business because we are currently in the process of discussing which approach to use. But in general, what I've seen is common in the space is you can have the approaches you were talking about. So you can tie it to to goals, OKRs and KPIs, and you you know what's happening, you know where you need to go. And you know that if you achieve that, well, that the hires that you brought to the company, they with the broke qualities. Then there is also the approach you were talking about of relying on the um on the performance cycles, but then it depends how often do you run a performance cycle during the year. um
00:17:23
Speaker
All the cohort of new hires to fall in this um in these performance review cycles and do you have enough ongoing data so that you can actually monitor it i mean I would say what I saw, there are two ways of um monitor monitoring quality of hire, one it is focusing on the performance of the talent team. So what is quality of hire for the talent team? And those are the metrics I was talking about. So the hiring manager experience, the the conversions, ah the target achievement um and others. And then there is the cross-organization quality of hire. There are a few companies that talk um about talent density. So they do look at what is their talent density, what are what is the percentage of people that do perform the best.
00:18:07
Speaker
And they also, of course, take into consideration the performance review results. And then they look at the same result of the new hires cohort at six months' time. And then they will just see look at the difference. If it's positive, then it means that the cohort of new hires that you brought in the company is raising the bar, right?
00:18:29
Speaker
and There are so many models out there. ah You can see what Revolut does, but you can look at the bar raisers programs ah at Amazon. Also Google has um its own ah Netflix. um Those are very nice models, but I don't think there is one-fit-all solution. Yeah.
00:18:49
Speaker
and it'll I will go backward. will How does the company define quality of hire? Is it the person that stays longer? Is it the person that hits the target? Is it the person that performs higher than the average of the company? Once you have that definition, yet then you can backtrack the way to calculate it and monitor it.
00:19:09
Speaker
Yes, and it can also change over time, right? So maybe one framework is the right when you're early on and the one isn't anymore.
ROI of TalentOps Mindset
00:19:18
Speaker
and Maybe talking about returns, what do you think is the return on investment for REC Ops function?
00:19:34
Speaker
I, if you allow me, I will rephrase your your question that is, what is the i roi of a recops approach or talentops approach in a company, even without having a function.
00:19:45
Speaker
Um,
00:19:48
Speaker
Definitely, you'll see an increase in efficiency and as a consequence, productivity of the team. And this is will be the easier one to track because numbers we talk. it will So conversion rates go, for instance, up or down in the right direction. And then you also have a higher velocity, so faster time in process, for instance.
00:20:11
Speaker
that faster time in process, and ideally and faster time to fill a but then there is all the rest that is less visible and less on the surface.
00:20:24
Speaker
That is... the For example, let's say when you have the same team or a team of five that needs to hire so many people and then you manage to make their workload and their daily tasks more efficient, faster, and delivering also a better candidate experience in the meantime, you get to two different outcomes. It will be easier to attract um candidates that heard amazing things about a company.
00:20:54
Speaker
So that's the first thing will be easy, easier to convert them into um new team members that will join them because they truly enjoy the process with you. Then at the same time, you'll have team members that have the time to grow more, focus on more strategic projects instead of hiring, maybe enabling the interviewers and the hiring managers on how to recognize so who is the great fit for the company, on how to run proper and unbiased interviews, on what is the right way to talk to a candidate or um how to be more aligned so that you have a consistent way of evaluating the people you meet in the process. um If you have a team of talent partners, recruiters, sourcers that need to focus on bringing in talent and, you know, focusing on the upper part of the funnel, they don't want to want't have the time to actually invest in these strategic initiatives.
00:21:48
Speaker
So you can look at the ROI from numbers perspective that is there. You can look at the cost per hour that will talk. And they will probably talk to the executives and the leaders of the business because you can translate into money.
00:22:05
Speaker
whatever improvement that been. Yeah, you can do more with existing resources you have. Just that, I think also just a great indicator is that the talent acquisition team at Satispay overall was around 15 people at 350 people overall in the organization.
00:22:21
Speaker
Then in the past, let's say two years, you grew to 600 to 700 people. Yeah. And the team the team stayed at the same size.
00:22:32
Speaker
Exactly. And all we did was just, to be honest, for only the first year, we're just to fix broken processes. that And then investing on the enablement of the team that can cascade that knowledge across the IRE team members.
00:22:49
Speaker
And they are amazing. There is always space for improvement for all of us and yeah learning and growing from each other. But I can see that in two years, a lot has changed.
00:22:59
Speaker
If people listen are listening and they are um also want to achieve what you achieved, um growing the the company by 300 people in two years and while not growing the the team, and what are some practical tools, frameworks or examples you have for us? Some nuggets, what they can apply? Okay.
00:23:20
Speaker
Nice question. Without even maybe spending some money. Without, okay. um This is one of my favorites. Before looking outside, look inside. There's for sure some other um team in the company that is using a tool that you could leverage.
00:23:37
Speaker
um It could be in a smaller team, could be Notion, could be um Zapier for some automations um so that you can really reduce the manual work on um the team. You can look at TIGIN systems so that maybe the CS team is using or the product team is using to see if you can use it then for the application. possible TalentOps function. You can look at what marketing is doing for EB initiatives. So you don't really need to first buy the other of a new tool. The other thing that you can do is looking at the tech stack you're using. Are you using it properly?
00:24:17
Speaker
Do you need to change? Do you really need to go for a more expensive version of the same tool you have or you just need to clean it up? and use it better. And usually, it's the second, so you need first to clean it up and use it better. And even if you then after three to six months, you figure out that the tool is not anymore scaling with you and you need a better version, another one, that work that you've done of cleaning and mapping will be very useful to better understand what you're missing, what you need, and then to find out who's the best vendor for you in the future.
00:24:53
Speaker
So definitely garbage in garbage out is another of those practices that will save your life as a recops. um And less practical, but they really taught me most of what I know that is not enough is relying on the community.
00:25:12
Speaker
There are are tons of communities out there that can teach you so much on what's next. and What are the best way to do it? I had great mentors. um thanks to these communities and peers that I still learn from today.
00:25:27
Speaker
um So also that I will talk to your leaders in operations because they probably know more than you on how certain processes have failed in the company, especially if you're a new team member and you need to fix whatever is broken in the talent team.
00:25:45
Speaker
Um, cause certain skills and processes are transferable actually, and they may have known what has worked and what is not so far. Great.
Automation in Recruitment Processes
00:25:58
Speaker
Um, did you also automate anything with Zapier, for instance?
00:26:02
Speaker
Did we automate what? Sorry? With Zapier, did you also automate something? um We do not use it because we do use another orchestrator, ah but we did automate a lot.
00:26:14
Speaker
Thankfully, though, Ashby allows you to automate 90 to 95% of what you need. what translate to automate what are some, let's say, automation quick fixes what everybody can maybe apply?
00:26:26
Speaker
and Scheduling is the main pain point, right? um So I will start from there. But what we've been focusing in the past months on is to better... sync data flows from ah the talent tech stack to other ah HR and finance related tools.
00:26:44
Speaker
So thanks thanks to also the support of our IT team, ah but not only, um we managed to improve the type of integrations we have or to build from scratch a new ones. and It could be to have in the same place in a visualization tool, in a BI tool, the data coming from all the HR platforms so that you have one um source of truth.
00:27:08
Speaker
It could be also to better automate your onboarding processes for new employees ah with the rest of the teams that are involved. ah We have in the current company I work for, we do have several entities, we do have several locations, we onboard the um and employees, team members in, and it's a huge team effort from the people ops function that needs to, you know, get prepare everything related to contracts. ah um The rest of the people and culture team that does a wonderful job in organizing onboarding days.
00:27:46
Speaker
IT and security with, you know, all the equipment and taking care of the accounts to not talk of facility for the people that are not remote. So there is so much happening in the background. And when one of these automations or connections is not working, you miss a piece. And maybe the good candidate experience you were delivering so far does not necessarily translate in a great employee experience, especially in the first couple of weeks. It is super important.
00:28:15
Speaker
aing So this is, in a generic way, wider way, what you can automate. From a pure talent perspective is definitely the scheduling. There is way more that you can do around feedback collection. And if you look at the talent ops, the rec ops space, a lot of things that helped the automation alert.
00:28:40
Speaker
the automations is ah alert um or notifications. Think of what I like to think of as is ah that function that ensures that the overall talent team can succeed. If something doesn't work as it's supposed to work or corey's a process is not followed the way it's supposed to, um it may not everything then end up well, from a candidate experience to conversion to hiring manager alignment. um
00:29:11
Speaker
And then, of course, it cascades in other consequences. What helps us is and creating a few hours when something that should have happened did not.
00:29:22
Speaker
A referral has been sitting in application review for more than a specified number of days. We really don't want that to happen. yeah Or ah we have a candidate that does submit a um candidate experience survey with a negative score as and it's not neutral or positive. So you really want to know want to go and understand what happened. you of course, are not able to figure out who was the candidate, but you can look at the feedback and you can take an action on those um or share them with the right people. and
00:29:57
Speaker
If you have state candidates, you can work on that. If you have referral bonus that have not been paid, you can work on that. If you have new joiners that all of a sudden decide to not join anymore at the company, you can act on that. But when you are um when you are processing thousands of candidates a week, a month, you could easily miss these tiny...
00:30:21
Speaker
um Yeah. And automating all these notifications and alerts does help, but you can do it in these tools only when the process is actually built properly so that you know where what should trigger that alert.
00:30:38
Speaker
Nice. Cool. Thank you so much. and We are already... um done. I would really love to ask more questions, but maybe we can do another episode at some point. um I will stop here. Thank you so much. um And it was great talking to you again.