Since Hege Hasla, staffing consultant at Acapedia, joined the company on the 1st of November 2021, she has sent out 14,400 shifts in just six months. Last month, on average, she placed 35 people into roles every day. Her impressive work so far using Globus means she is this month’s Globus Hero.
In this interview, Pål Torgersen, Director of Customer Success at Globus.ai, talks to Hege about her motivation, background, and experience so far using Globus.
P: Firstly, congratulations on your Globus Hero award! It recognizes the amazing work you’ve been doing using Globus to place impressive numbers of people into roles. Since you started, we saw you sent out around 14,500 shifts, placing around 25 people in jobs every workday. Last month you even increased your daily placements to 35, on average. Very impressive statistics!
H: It’s interesting for me to see the numbers as it’s not something I’ve thought about while doing my job. We use Globus all the time, so the sheer number of placements isn’t something I think about regularly and it’s great to see how many people we’ve helped.
When I started working in Acapedia I got familiar with Globus very quickly, it was such an easy system to get started with. Things ran by themselves, I simply had to add shifts and Globus would help me find the right people. It’s also brilliant that candidates get all the information they need automatically without having to ask us for more details.
P: It sounds like Globus is really helping you in your current role. I’m also curious about your background, what did you do before and how is that influencing your role at Acapedia?
H: I have a bachelor's degree as a kindergarten teacher and before my current role, I was working in several different kindergartens across Norway. I really liked working with the children and my co-workers, but also enjoyed working independently. After some years I felt I wanted to try something new, and I applied for this job as a staffing consultant at Acapedia. This was quite a transition and there were a lot of things I needed to learn. The change from working in a kindergarten to working in an office was a big change.
P: So, I assume your past experiences mean that you have a better understanding of your customers and their challenges?
H: Definitely, I understand what our customers need and my candidates’ experiences and concerns. Sometimes a candidate might need some moral support and my experience influences the way I help them. It’s also something I draw on when placing candidates, many people believe that working in a kindergarten involves just playing with children, but there are so many other important activities taking place. I use my background and experience to help my customers and the children get the best candidates. It’s crucial to provide the right people in the right place — and Globus helps me achieve that.
P: Do you have any thoughts on why candidates choose to work for you and not apply directly with kindergartens?
H: This varies a lot; some candidates just want to try something new. Many of our temps tell us that working for a staffing agency gives them the opportunity to work for several different customers so they can try out what they prefer. I had a new candidate working a few shifts here and there, after a few weeks she quit her other job working in a store as she enjoyed working with us. She is now a highly requested candidate and works full time.
There are also people that lost their job due to Covid-19 and we offer them the opportunity to try working in a kindergarten.
We also have a lot of students working part-time as we provide very flexible contracts so that they can adapt to their study schedule.
If one of our customers wants to hire one of our candidates full-time, we will always support the candidate however they like. Helping our customers and supporting candidates in finding the right work is our main priority.
P: Could you tell us a bit about your daily routine working in Acapedia?
H: The telephone starts ringing from about 7am and immediately we’ll create the orders in Globus. If candidates with scheduled shifts are sick, we register their unavailability and immediately try to find replacements using Globus. We use Globus for all requests and it’s very easy to create orders and collaborate with co-workers. Since we all follow the same processes, and all information is easily viewed in Globus, if a colleague is off sick or on holiday it’s simple to pick up where they left off. We also work together and help each other out when it’s busy, especially in the morning and early afternoon when we get the most requests. Whoever picks up the phone will create the order and just set myself or someone else responsible.
I often work from home in the morning and then head to the office, arriving around 8 or 9am. I can use Globus on my phone while commuting, so I don’t miss messages from customers or candidates and can continue to place people. It’s very convenient. Often, I’ll finish my workday from home too — Acapedia is very flexible, and Globus enables this well.
P: Any features in Globus you would like to highlight?
H: We use the availability requests and rarely have any issues with double bookings thanks to the conflict checking feature.
The link tracking feature is also useful, as we can see if a candidate or customer has opened a particular link. If they haven’t responded, we can follow up to understand why. I also really like the matching, particularly the distance-based one that tells me exactly who lives near the kindergarten.
As mentioned, the candidates also get all the information they need on where to go, what department and other practical details that we can include in the order. Not having to call all our candidates saves us a lot of time.
P: What do you think are the top three benefits of using Globus?
H: It's extremely efficient to use, I got the hang of using Globus after just processing a few orders in the system. I would not have been able to get so many candidates placed per day without Globus. Other systems we use are a lot more manual and tasks take longer to complete. Now it’s so quick and easy to reach out to a lot of people and find the right ones for a role.
We can also respond to job orders more quickly and that means a lot more successful placements and happy customers. I also feel that our feedback on functionality or requested changes are considered by the Globus team and we see new functionality coming that helps us a lot.
The system also considers the human aspect of staffing. One of my candidates that was unable to find full-time employment started working for us and just recently got a full-time position in the kindergarten she started working for via Acapedia. Stories like that make me happy. It's great that both the customers and candidates can test how well they work together before committing to a full-time position.
P: How would it be if you came to work tomorrow and no longer had access to Globus?
H: I would not have been able to place 35 candidates on average every day. I would have managed to place 2 or 3 candidates. Then I would have to call around to all the candidates which would be very time-consuming to do.
We would experience a dip in both revenue and the number of people we can get into jobs. It would be a lot harder to collaborate with my colleagues, I wouldn’t have clear oversight into what they are working on, and I couldn’t take over their work as quickly as we can now.
P: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us Hege. We really value the great cooperation with you and your team at Acapedia which helps us to deliver even more valuable features in the upcoming future. And again, congratulations on the award!