Backbase
Design Recruitment Strategy
A strategic restructuring of the Customer Success Design Team at Backbase, initiated after the company’s global expansion in 2021 due to increased demand for digital banking services. The project involved redesigning the recruitment process, leading to the team’s growth from 12 to over 50 UX designers across 11 global locations by 2023, with a 78% retention rate. As a result of this initiative, the recruitment timeline was reduced from 4-6 months to 2-3 months for Backbase and 2-3 weeks for candidates by 2024.
CLIENT: Backbase
WEBSITE: Backbase Careers
SERVICES: Talent Management and Retention, Data-Driven Decision Making, Process Optimization
Brief
Timeline & Stakeholders
First round: September – November 2021
Stakeholders: Gaia Armellin, Sr. UX Designer, Recruitment Teams in AMS, Hyderabad, Poland
Second round: 2022
Stakeholders: Gaia Armellin, Principal UX Designer, Resul Sr. UX Designer, Recruitment teams in AMS, Hyderabad, Poland.
In 2021, Backbase assigned me a design optimization project to restructure their recruitment strategy and uncover new opportunities.
I was responsible for project management, design, and evangelization of the design recruitment process for the global Customer Success department, helping them develop new methodologies and optimize the internal and external hiring experience for 2021 onwards.
Our Approach
- There was no offcial streamlined global recruitment process for the Customer Success Design Team. Each hub acted in autonomy.
- The Recruitment and CS Design Team barely spoke to each other.
- As there was no official process in place, there was no documentation either recruiters, designers supporting the recruimentt process, and candidates could review as reference.
This led to difficulties in sourcing the right candidates, biases, overly extended recruiting times, exhausted designers supporting the recruitment process, unhappy candidates, uneven quality of hired designers, and bad hires.
Sample of deliverables
Result
By 2023, the team grew to 50+ designers across Amsterdam, Atlanta, Guadalajara, Hyderabad, Krakow, London, Mexico City, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Toronto, and Tucson, with a retention rate of 78%.
By 2024, the recruitment time for new CS UX designers dropped from 4-6 months for Backbase to 2-3 weeks for the candidates and 2-3 weeks max for the recruits.
Learnings
MUST HAVE
- Simplified ongoing education and knowledge sharing for all recruiters and designers involved in the interview process.
- Alignment between documentation and daily CS UX practices for better expectation management.
- Alignment across hubs and support from the Global Talent Acquisition head
- Learn from other departments too (e.g., candidates handout FE)
FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES
The process is constantly evolving. The weeks before leaving Backbase, I was invited to attend another round of reviews led by Resul Caner and Danial Keshani and share feedback about the current version of the recruitment process.
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