Video summary

Гра в довгу 3 – Модуль 4. Ринок праці: як ефективно шукати працівників. Ірина Тимощенко-Петрова

Main summary

Key takeaways

Business

Business-focused summary (Recruiting & retaining employees in a tight labor market)

Macro context: why recruitment is getting harder

  • Track labor-market and macroeconomic indicators to anticipate candidate availability and competition (e.g., GDP, consumer price index, unemployment rate).
  • Use official sources such as NBU, State Statistics Service, World Bank.
  • Examples cited:
    • 97,000 officially registered unemployed in Ukraine (NBU); expected to decrease in coming years.
    • Continued labor migration: 6.3 million Ukrainians displaced abroad (UNHCR).
    • Falling birth rate + wartime losses → likely fewer candidates and skill shortages.

Recruitment process as a playbook (don’t skip steps)

Core message: recruiting is not intuitive; it must be systematic—otherwise you create mismatched expectations and ineffective interviews.

Suggested end-to-end process (in correct order):

  1. Position / role profile (internal, confidential)
  2. Candidate profile (internal; personal use optional)
  3. Vacancy composition
  4. Choose search channels
  5. Design interviews
  6. Conduct interviews
  7. Make decisions

Risk if you skip steps

  • If you skip role/interview preparation, you’ll lack answers for the interview, can’t properly focus on vacancy requirements, and interviews may become “pleasant conversation” instead of skills/competency evaluation.

Documents & templates (frameworks)

1) Position/Role Profile (internal “single source of truth”)

Includes:

  • Position name, area of responsibility, and detailed job responsibilities
  • Accountability & control types
  • Management responsibilities
  • Key communications/relationships
  • KPIs & performance evaluation
  • Working conditions (e.g., irregular schedule, weekends)
  • Required knowledge/experience/skills/competencies (only what’s truly necessary)
  • Employment form, salary calculation conditions, bonus system
  • Hypothetical career paths: training, lateral project moves, career growth

Quality guardrails:

  • Don’t require “nice-to-have” credentials:
    • Example: don’t demand higher education unless required (doctors/teachers/lawyers); otherwise you unintentionally block qualified candidates.
  • Don’t list English unless it’s relevant to daily tasks.

Management note:

  • Role profile should be dynamic and periodically updated (especially before recruiting).

Review cadence:

  • At least review before recruitment
  • For systematicity: audit quarterly or every 6 months (frequency depends on how fast the business changes)

2) Candidate Profile (internal checklist for your own use)

Includes behavioral traits, habits, skills, motivators, professional goals, and other characteristics.

Purpose:

  • Reduce interview “bias traps” (e.g., liking someone by appearance → assuming skills).
  • Prevent unintentional leading questions that suggest the “right” answers.

Vacancy creation: content and anti-patterns

Vacancy structure (key blocks)

  • About the company
  • What you offer
  • What the specific role is
  • Why the role matters to the person (role value proposition)
  • Brief responsibilities + expectations

Must avoid (fairness + relevance)

  • Do not include: gender, age, marital status, place of residence.
  • Avoid long requirement lists that end with “modest salary” and “good team” → scares away strong candidates.

Make the vacancy attractive and differentiated

  • Where candidates are scarce, vacancy must clearly show employer value and competitiveness—with fewer but meaningful requirements.
  • No single “golden template”—the goal is to concisely convey advantages.

Practical QC method

  • Show the vacancy text to trusted people (friends/relatives/team).
  • Ask:
    • What interested them?
    • What alarmed them?
    • What impression do they have of the company?
  • Use their feedback to improve competitiveness.

Channel strategy: place the vacancy where the candidate will actually look

Recommended approach

  • Choose channels asymmetrically (minimum effort → maximum reach), based on your candidate profile’s habits.

Examples of channels by role type

  • Social networks (company page if you have one)
  • Recommendations / networks (friends/acquaintances)
  • Role-specific resources:
    • Programming: specialized tech resources
    • Low-skill roles (cleaner/cashier): bulletin boards, regional newspapers (if relevant locally)
    • Training roles: specialized schools/courses (e.g., marketing school)
    • Student centers / interest clubs / special groups on social networks
    • Communities (example mentioned): Prof groups and a cultural/creative sector community “Nazvayem”
  • Job boards (example mention): general job sites may broaden reach (e.g., “Robota UA”, “Workua”, “OLX Robota”).

Placement choice should match candidate seniority

  • If your candidate is highly professional (e.g., design/tech): use professional platforms like LinkedIn.
  • If the role is broader/in-person: consider physical/community visibility (example: “public transport stop”).

Interview design & evaluation (competency-based)

Two interview goals

  • Learn about the candidate’s fit
  • Show yourself/company/role as a compelling employer

Interview structure guidance

Avoid extremes:

  • Don’t interrogate with questions throughout (creates stress and reduces insight).
  • Don’t only talk about the company (candidate loses chance to demonstrate competency).

Preparation steps

  • Prepare what you’ll say about the company:
    • Mention “value platform” developments (speaker references a previous lecture framework).
  • Prepare a question list mapped to competencies from the position profile:
    • Target list size: ~4–6 key points (to fit within ~1 hour).
  • Use methods:
    • Competency-based interview
    • Situational interview

Example competency probe

  • For customer orientation: ask about a past situation when a customer was dissatisfied and what the candidate did—focus on specific past behavior, not generic “what I usually do.”

Candidate management and decisions

  • After the interview series: weigh pros/cons and decide.
  • If rejecting:
    • Give specific arguments immediately if you know during the interview.
    • Provide reasoned refusal later if you decide after.
  • Maintain relationship regardless of outcome to protect employer brand:
    • Avoid leaving candidates unanswered/ignored.

Onboarding & retention: treat adaptation as a management system

Onboarding tasks (formal + informal)

Formal (day-1 operational setup)

  • Introduce documents
  • Arrange workplace
  • Create email + provide access to required tools/programs

Informal (culture integration)

  • Use a Welcome/Newcomer Book (welcome pack):
    • contacts of key people
    • organizational structure
    • company mission/goals/values
    • team interaction rules
    • other basics depending on complexity

Timeframe

  • Adaptation can last several months to up to six months.

Ongoing management during adaptation

Monitor whether:

  • work formats fit the new hire
  • feedback/support is sufficient
  • the candidate aligns with your management style
  • the person finds value beyond “just salary”

Motivation & employer value proposition (retention playbook)

Competitive employers now offer more than pay:

  • Remote work (where possible)
  • Health insurance
  • Performance assessments
  • Training and benefits/services
  • Ongoing monitoring of engagement and satisfaction

Motivation logic (why people invest)

People are motivated when they see work helps satisfy needs/values:

  • learning opportunity
  • career growth
  • contribution to society
  • security/support/involvement

Gallup link (business impact)

  • Mentioned claim: engaged people positively impact business results.

Practical retention investment (don’t promise what you can’t deliver)

  • If remote/part-time matters to candidates, ensure you can manage it; otherwise avoid.
  • People stay longer with effective teams because they get more than money.

Corporate culture as a retention mechanism (and how to choose it)

Start with a semantic platform, then define the culture most effective for your business challenges:

  • Stability-focused: clear rules, reliability, loyalty
  • Trust/respect/team support
  • High-competition: rapid development and surpassing goals
  • Combine elements if it fits your strategy

Consistency rule:

  • Don’t claim “employees can make mistakes” if you instantly fire them—culture must be real and reflected in communications and decisions.

Culture in execution: innovation encouragement

If your business needs breakthrough thinking:

  • Add innovation to vacancies and training
  • Organize thematic meetings
  • Thank and celebrate non-standard solutions even before they succeed
  • Include innovation in bonus/promotion criteria

Outcome:

  • Strong teams align around common goals, clear “rules of the game,” and mutual expectations—enabling long-term relationships.

Key metrics / KPIs referenced

  • Labor-market indicators to monitor (macro-level):
    • Unemployment rate
    • GDP
    • Consumer price index (CPI)
  • Talent supply examples:
    • 97,000 officially registered unemployed (Ukraine; NBU)
    • 6.3 million Ukrainians abroad (UNHCR)
  • Role-specific KPIs included in the hiring system:
    • Position profile should define KPIs and performance evaluation (no numeric KPIs given, but it’s a required component)
  • Onboarding timeline:
    • Several months to 6 months
  • Interview design capacity:
    • ~4–6 competency areas targeted in an ~1-hour interview
  • Employer engagement:
    • “Engagement and satisfaction” tracked continuously (no specific percentage targets given)

Concrete actionable recommendations (checklist style)

  • Build and maintain a role profile (review it quarterly / every 6 months when needed).
  • Create a candidate profile to counter interview bias and leading questions.
  • Write vacancy content that:
    • avoids protected characteristics
    • avoids long endless requirement lists + vague low pay messaging
    • highlights employer value proposition (and differentiates clearly)
  • Distribute vacancies via channels matched to candidate habits (social networks → recommendations → role-specific platforms).
  • Prepare interview questions for 4–6 key competencies and use situational/behavioral prompts.
  • Provide reasoned responses and maintain employer brand even for rejected candidates.
  • Run onboarding as a system (Welcome Book + tools + structured feedback/support for up to 6 months).
  • Invest in motivation and culture consistency; encode innovation into training and bonus/promotion criteria.

Presenters / sources

  • Presenter: Iryna Tymoshchenko-Petrova (Director, master’s program in people management and organizational development at UKU Business School; co-founder of Supervise strategic support bureau)
  • Sources referenced (for context/data/claims): NBU, State Statistics Service, World Bank, UNHCR (Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees), Gallup, and E Ukraine (as mentioned in the subtitles).

Original video