Founded 10 years ago in Sweden, LeoVegas Group develops software for online casinos. As Humeo Recruitment Geeks, we supported our client in setting up an IT hub in a new location – Poland. In this case study, we describe the effects of this project from January to June 2022, but we continue to provide recruitment support to LeoVegas.
LeoVegas Group operates chiefly in Europe. It is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden (it has offices in two more locations in Sweden), but it also has offices in Italy, the UK, the Netherlands, and Malta. LeoVegas recently started working closely with MGM from the United States, and the two businesses are about to join forces. The organization employs over 1,000 staff and keeps bringing new people on board. This year, LeoVegas intends to hire around 40 new employees for the Polish office alone, using such solutions as Humeo’s RPO.
Challenges & tasks
Humeo’s tech recruiters, Lidia and Patrycja, were tasked with recruiting programmers in Poland and helping LeoVegas develop recruitment and onboarding processes for the newly-established IT hub in Poland. As the project progressed, its scope and the client’s needs expanded. Ultimately, as part of the RPO service we provided, we were tasked with recruiting:
- 30–40 Java Developers (by the end of the calendar year);
- 2 QA Engineers;
- 2 Network Operations Center Engineers;
- 1 Team Leader for the newly-formed IT team in Poland (this person would also work closely with the Swedish managers);
- 1 HR Manager to manage the newly-formed team and the office in Poland.
In addition, our services included:
- providing consultancy on choosing a new office in Warsaw for the Polish team of developers;
- creating and optimizing end-to-end processes for the recruitment of developers in the Polish market;
- developing a long-term strategy for recruiting and matching developers to LeoVegas teams;
- helping create an employer branding strategy for the Polish market;
- educating the client’s hiring managers on the characteristics of the Polish job market and the Polish IT community;
- participating in the development of the onboarding process for the newly-established team of developers from the CEE region.
Needless to say, working on all these tasks in a way that would ensure top-quality recruitment processes and the best possible candidate experience was quite challenging. Our tech recruiters’ knowledge of the Polish IT sector proved invaluable here, but so did the ease with which they handled the tasks and their flexible approach to making decisions. This was possible because they were in constant and direct contact with our client (chiefly thanks to the RPO model), and consequently thanks to the trust that LeoVegas continues to place in us.
Client’s Review **Humeo’s RPO solution proved to be a perfect fit for a company like ours.
When we decided to open an IT hub in Poland, we knew that the biggest challenge would be to hire programmers.
The RPO service allowed us to start recruiting quickly without wasting our time searching for recruiters.
We are working together with very good results.
In addition, we enjoy the flexible approach and access to Humeo’s knowledge of the Polish market, which they have gained by working on other projects.
Magnus Gagnelid
SITE MANAGER @ LEOVEGAS GROUP
Task implementation, the current status of the project
The project is ongoing, and the contract with LeoVegas has been recently renewed. In the period from January to the end of June 2022, LeoVegas’s recruitment partnership with Humeo has brought the following results:
We have hired:
- 14 Java Developers,
- 1 QA Engineer,
- 1 Team Leader,
- 1 HR Manager.
In addition, we were involved in the opening of LeoVegas’ new office in Poland in Warsaw (Mindspace at Koszykowa 61).
The newly-hired developers have already had the opportunity to integrate as a team, and some of them have already visited the HQ in Sweden. Every new employee is invited to visit the Swedish office to get to know the Stockholm team and go through the first stage of onboarding. Of course, such visits are arranged flexibly, and they are optional because some people may be forced to postpone their trip to Sweden or may not be able to go.
Detailed information from the project of recruiting developers for a new IT hub in Poland
The strategy and action plan
How Humeo structured the recruitment rollout
Setting up a completely new branch office in a new location meant staying close to a fast-changing situation. One of the biggest challenges was adopting an agile mindset and adjusting quickly to LeoVegas’s evolving hiring priorities.
Briefing, decisions on goals and priorities
- Defining the scale of the recruitment process to select the right tools and pace.
- Discussing the actual recruitment needs with both senior managers and Team Leaders.
- Creating a candidate persona and mapping the right recruitment market, including whether to hire outside Poland and when.
Job offers
- Deciding on the content of job offers based on recruitment needs, the candidate persona, and the target market.
Intensive sourcing and job listing distribution
- Testing several job boards, including Just Join IT, No Fluff Jobs, Bulldog Jobs, and LinkedIn.
- Analyzing candidate sources and choosing the best-performing channels. In practice, Just Join IT and No Fluff Jobs worked best.
Candidate processing and onboarding
- Making screening calls and scheduling the next stages of recruitment.
- Providing feedback to candidates after each recruitment stage.
- Presenting job offers to selected candidates.
- Planning and implementing onboarding for the new hires.
Market analysis and continuous improvement
- Observing the Polish job market and advising the client on current conditions.
- Designing a CX survey questionnaire and collecting candidate feedback on a regular basis.
- Implementing improvements in the recruitment process.
- Updating job offers and benefits, including a more personalized candidate approach and a monthly budget for selected benefits.
In this case, the recruitment strategy involved repeating the above plan periodically, by regularly asking the LeoVegas Team Leaders about their current needs and their requirements for IT specialists. In addition, Humeo’s recruiters continued to re-map the market, analyze candidate behavior and sources, and suggest solutions that would allow our client to hire more effectively and ensure the best candidate experience possible.
The client’s key requirements for IT specialists
LeoVegas wanted the candidates to have technical skills but also to fit into the Swedish work culture. When recruiting candidates and presenting them with job offers, we paid attention to such areas as:
- Technology stack for IT professionals: Must-haves: Backend: Java, Spring, Springboot, MySQL
- Nice-to-haves: Backend: Kotlin; Agile; cloud solutions: Google Cloud Platform; microservices
Attaching importance to work-life balance;
Understanding LeoVegas’ organizational culture and being open to integration into an international team;
Having a proactive approach, showing initiative and teamwork skills;
Openness to:
- a rapidly-changing environment at the intersection of a startup and a corporation;
- the opportunity to meet in person the Sweden-based team in LeoVegas’s HQ;
- continuous development (the company offers development opportunities, but the candidate must want that too).
Additional support for the recruitment of developers in Poland
To better understand the client’s organizational culture and to get to know the product and the people behind it, Humeo’s recruiters also made three business trips: to Sweden (twice) and to Malta.
Importantly, LeoVegas employees were very open and welcomed them as if they were in-house recruiters. The Team Leaders from Sweden were also eager to visit Poland, and they’ve already made such a visit.
When setting up a new office for LeoVegas in Poland, we also helped arrange the space to provide new hires with the equipment they needed to work and to promote the Swedish work culture. Its important elements include joint celebrations of important moments in the life of the company. In addition, each new hire has some say in how the office looks. One of the ideas was that the office should have… a throne!
Summary
The recruitment project we have carried out for LeoVegas has been very successful. Above all, however, it has been an amazing experience and an opportunity for both sides to learn and grow. Here is how our recruiters summed up the project:
From a recruiter’s point of view, this project has been very challenging, but also very rewarding. It went far beyond standard IT recruitment, so I had the opportunity to learn a lot. The project redefined my view of recruitment. I now know that it does not stop at moving from point A, which is attracting candidates, to point B, which is hiring. There are many factors behind the success of every project. It is a complex picture, but also an interesting one. I have also noticed a change in how I approach problems, or challenges. They have become the norm for me, and I am now confident that we can handle them as a team.
Lidia Skowrońska
TECH RECRUITER
I would sum up the work I have done for LeoVegas so far in one word: challenging. It was an interesting challenge that taught me how to be even more flexible. I now understand much more about the complexity of the business processes that go hand in hand with recruitment. Helping a company like LeoVegas grow has been a great experience. We started from scratch in Poland, and now there are 17 employees, an office, and a Polish company. On top of that, we are constantly improving our processes.
Patrycja Petrykowska
TECH RECRUITER
We cannot sum up this case study from the perspective of a finished project because we continue to provide recruitment support to LeoVegas, which has renewed its contract with Humeo. However, the experience we have had with this project allows us to say that we are proud of its success.
Finally, we would like to thank LeoVegas again for the trust it has placed in us and for the mutually beneficial business relationship. Above all, however, a huge thank you goes to our recruiters, Patrycja and Lidia, for all the work they have put into this project.
