Case Basware
Direct search success resulting in 3 stellar hires - Lead UX Designer & two Cloud Infrastructure Architects
Finders Seekers x Basware
Basware needed a boost with their talent strategy when it came to securing some key (and challenging) hires in their Design and Cloud teams. Basware called in the Finders Seekers Direct Search team hoping they could deliver. A new Lead UX Designer and Cloud Infrastructure Architects were at the
top of the list.
Results
3 excellent hires in total
1 Lead UX Designer and 2 Cloud Architects
Good talent market interest levels
10 shortlisted for Lead UX Designer, 5 for Cloud Architect
Diversity as a key metric
for the UX role 36% of candidates contacted identified as women and 21% were non-Finnish speakers
Great candidate feedback on both roles
Basware (founded 1985) is a Finnish software company selling enterprise software for financial processes and management. The company has operations in more than 70 countries worldwide, and as an employer is renowned for its international outlook and varied roles. Basware is the ideal employer for people who are looking for a good place to develop themselves professionally.
Meet Basware 👋
Challenge
As well as wanting to raise their overall talent profile in the industry, Basware needed quality talent to fulfil certain key roles in the organization.
The first Finders Seekers/Basware collaboration started when Basware started looking for their new Lead UX Designer in early 2022. A challenging role to fill with a variety of stakeholders, it was all about finding the right person with the right skillset who would also fit the team. Basware knew that a talent partnership with Finders Seekers would help them reach a wider talent pool.
Jobin James, who heads up the Experience Design Team of both UX and Content Designers and has almost 7 years at Basware behind him, was acting as hiring manager for the Lead UX role: “This was really a specialist role – we were looking for someone who would be able to lead through craft. We wanted someone who would be able to lead the UX activities of one of our business areas. The key to a UX role like this is really figuring out what is the problem that the user is trying to solve, asking the right questions, and then solving for that problem. A Lead UX at Basware would not only be working with product management to pinpoint the problems to be solved, but they would sometimes also be working on those solutions themselves. It is a collaborative role that stretches across different departments – product, tech, marketing.”
"This talent project really required the ability to do a thorough deep dive. Even though we could also do public search and direct sourcing internally, I could see the value of getting the whole process sorted by Finders Seekers.”
Tytti Miskala
Senior Talent Acquisition Partner, Basware
For Basware, it was clear that an external partner was needed to help succeed with these challenging hires. Even though Basware had great internal talent processes, partnering with Finders Seekers would allow for a more concentrated recruitment effort.
The first hire was for a Lead UX Designer, a role that Basware had not found easy to fill despite searching for a few months. As Jobin explains “This is a tough role to recruit for. In terms of design, enterprise UX is perhaps not seen as interesting as some other environments such as B2C UX or Design Consulting, plus there is also a huge talent demand in IT in general right now which feeds into it. Although Basware is well-known and respected in enterprise software development, specifically in the Fin-tech domain, not everyone is aware of the brand yet.”
From the Finders Seekers team, Roosa Holkko, Oksana Mysko, and Elena Koivumäki worked on this hire. Jobin reflects: “We are a small team with a lot of responsibilities, including recruitment. We appreciated the support we could get in terms of screening candidates. Most UX designers are good at selling themselves, so you need to be able to look at the designers and their skills and really understand what their profile is. Elena really made a good impression on this and showed that she knew about UX, always asking candidates the right questions. It was a good candidate qualification process that fed into a good overall candidate experience.”
Elena breaks down this process further, “During interviews we always tried to understand the bigger picture: what role does a candidate play in the current organization, how do they collaborate, who are they as designers? We would then translate this into an accurate profile and see if this could be a potential match for both parties”.
A few months later, Tytti Miskala, Basware’s Senior Talent Acquisition Partner, based in Tampere, Finland, required talent support when it came to succeeding in some challenging Cloud Architect roles. Tytti handles the end-to-end recruitment process at Basware, focusing on IT and tech recruitment in Nordics – a big draw for Tytti herself when joining Basware was the brand’s international nature.
Tytti always has a variety of roles in her recruitment portfolio and knew she would benefit from outside resources: “I pretty quickly saw how beneficial support would be with recruiting for these roles. These are the sorts of roles where you need a 100% focus. This talent project really required the ability to do a thorough deep dive. Even though we could also do public search and direct sourcing internally, I could see the value of getting the whole process sorted by Finders Seekers.”
Acting as hiring manager for the Cloud Architect roles, Brent Biggs, DevOps Manager, acknowledged that Cloud roles have historically been challenging to recruit for: “These are essentially hybrid roles, requiring people to understand both more traditional networking, as well as the cloud environment and development. We are on the cusp of a talent shift when it comes to roles like these as the industry moves into more inherently DevOps environments. For these roles the challenge was to find someone with the right skillset who can work in a cloud environment, but also gets traditional networking.”
Brent himself has been at Basware for 8 years and finds it a great company to work for, enjoying working with team members all over the world.
Solution
For this role, it was key to champion a great candidate experience and highlight Basware’s reputation. Finders Seekers had a strong mandate to ensure that candidates left with a good impression of Basware – in fact, this was one of the key reasons for partnering with Finders Seekers. “We also had good numbers on diversity on this one, with 36% of candidates contacted for the Lead UX role identifying as women, and 21% were non-Finnish speakers”, Elena adds.
As Roosa summarizes, “In total, we found 10 interested candidates to start conversations with for the UX role, and we ended up having a more extended interview with 8 of them. From those we qualified 4 candidates that were the best fit for Basware, and they hired one of them”.
For the Cloud roles, Sami Ranta-aho worked hard to find good matches for the demanding job spec, mining their tech talent expertise. Expertise in the tech talent market was matched by a keen understanding of Basware as a working environment – the Finders Seekers team got to interview people currently working in the roles to help flesh out the roles. Finders Seekers was also able to provide candidates with a realistic view of the team thanks to talent collateral such as team videos.
As Sami explains, “To kick off the sourcing process, you have to have a solid understanding of the role, be clear on search parameters and then niche down, while also conserving a wide enough range. It’s about considering different profiles, and then reflecting on how they would benefit the team and vice versa.”
The approach taken by Finders Seekers was pretty straightforward: sending out direct InMails to potential candidates, contacting 150 people in total over roles for different departments, with response rates ranging from 44% to 67%. From that initial talent pool, 5 candidates were interviewed further, and 4 candidates were ultimately presented to Basware.
Another mutually beneficial element of the collaboration that was a value-add for Basware and a priority for Finders Seekers: coaching and mentoring candidates for a smooth interview and recruitment process. This obviously ensured that the candidate experience was a positive one, whilst allowing hiring managers at Basware to get things done faster. As Oksana highlights: “The initial vetting process was something we invested in. During initial phone screenings, we always went over key questions with candidates: salary expectations etc.”
Sami explains how the process played with the Cloud roles: “The role specification was clear, so even if it was a challenging role, it was possible to find spot-on candidates. We had a 67% response rate, with a very engaged talent community. We managed to find some great candidates, but we knew the ideal candidate would be someone who would appreciate the opportunity to get hands-on experience. We really wanted to give people a realistic idea of what they’d be doing, really explaining what they’d do on a day-to-day basis.”
“The quality of candidates put forward by Finders Seekers were very focused, more than I had seen before.”
This was a very straightforward, efficient talent collaboration – one where expertise, background research, and an appreciation for the roles on offer enabled Finders Seekers to succeed.
“We were really happy with the recruitment process. Finders Seekers came in and were able to close it quickly. We had been trying to fill the role for a while before, so this was massively appreciated”, Jobin sums up the successful Lead UX hire.
There was always a clear connection between the candidate and the role and how they would be able to add value to the team. A shared desire for a stellar candidate experience helped Basware and Finders Seekers get on the same page fast. The Finders Seekers approach prioritized candidate diversity, supported by an open dialogue with internal teams. This made sourcing and contacting a smooth process. Finders Seekers put a lot of effort into that initial contact, really focusing on the candidate and the role. It was important to get people interested in the role, but at the same time take a holistic approach where expectations aligned.
Sami paints a picture of how engaged the talent community were: “For the candidates who had heard of Basware: they were very excited. We got a lot of good feedback about the roles. Some things that definitely resonated were the career opportunities within AWS architecture and the focus on the role and responsibilities.” As Oksana emphasizes, the key was to try to find a really good match, not only skills wise, but also personality wise: “For us, it was really always about recruiting to last.”
Candidate presentation was another Finders Seekers strongpoint: Basware were presented with great candidates who were prepared and able to engage with the interview process, making hiring a lot smoother. Brent definitely felt that “the quality of candidates put forward by Finders Seekers were very focused, more than I had seen before.” Tytti agrees, stating how “pre-interview qualification checks saved us a lot of time.”
Impact
What Basware thought about working with us?
Tytti, Brent, and Jobin all praised the Finders Seekers team for getting the job done, and for getting it done efficiently. The project timelines were adhered to, and everyone was kept up to speed.
Brent felt that working with Finders Seekers definitely helped, especially when it came to casting a bigger net – knowing they were on the case meant that he could get on with his work: “I mostly had interactions with Sami from Finders Seekers, which were all good. We had a check-in call once a week, and comms over email. It was all quick and efficient, not a complicated or novel process. Straightforward, yet flexible.”
Tytti specifically praised the controlled way in which the project was delivered: “I really appreciated the project-like nature of the work. Everything was clearly scheduled and always knew what was happening. It was very well-managed from that perspective.”
Brent also appreciated how the ways of working were set and there was a good working process, with some outside room for flexibility where needed.
Tytti saw “the managed vetting process as a huge benefit to us. Having a headhunter background myself, I really appreciated the great candidate experience: it was great to know that people are taken care of and are always up to date.That’s always a challenge when headhunting. It was great to have such efficient comms from Finders Seekers about the process, but even more importantly, it was great to know that the candidate experience was so great.”
Looking to the future, having access to such a diverse talent pool and getting feedback from the talent market directly helped Tytti and Basware gain invaluable insights:
“For a Direct Search case like this, you really need to work with specialists like Finders Seekers. I wanted to ensure our employer brand was in good hands.”
