BlaBlaCar’s Hiring Academy

At BlaBlaCar, we strive to grow and learn collectively as a team. In 2023, the Talent Acquisition team created and implemented a training program designed specifically for hiring managers called the Hiring Academy. Let’s explore why and how we created it!

A training program beneficial for hiring managers and the Talent Acquisition team

We wanted to create a training program that would be useful for both Talent Acquisition and hiring managers. The idea sparked with 4 main goals in mind:

• Share key guidelines, tools and processes with hiring managers so they can hire successfully and efficiently
• Allow hiring managers to share recruitment experiences and learnings amongst each other and with Talent Acquisition Managers. Why? At BlaBlaCar we love to learn from each other and I am personally very driven by our Share more, Learn more principle. Get to know more about our principles here!
• Standardize our recruitment practices. In 2023, we had over 250 positions to fill in 5 different countries! The objective was set to ensure that all hiring managers understand and apply our Talent Acquisition philosophy and processes
• Improve candidate experience, collaboration between hiring managers and Talent Acquisition Managers, and our efficiency such as time to hire (time between the recruitment launch and the offer date) and time to process (time between the candidate’s application and the offer date)

Defining and creating the content

To design a useful and efficient training program, we included both hiring managers and the Talent Acquisition Team Managers in the selection of the main topics covered.

On the Talent Acquisition side, we listed the processes that hiring managers should be aware of and the major pain points we face when working with them, such as:

• Some hiring managers have a tendency to compare candidates and often struggle with making a decision when only one person makes it to the final stage
• Lack of detailed feedback after interviews at times, which makes it difficult for Talent Acquisition Managers to share it with candidates

We then created a survey to know which topics hiring managers wanted the training to focus on. We realized that preparing and conducting interviews was a priority for them.

Thanks to this, we defined six main sections for our training program:

• Our recruitment philosophy at BlaBlaCar and our KPIs
• Setting expectations: roles of the hiring manager and the Talent Acquisition Manager
• Preparation: the different steps to tackle before launching a role
• Hiring lifecycle: the steps candidates go through in our standard hiring process at BlaBlaCar
• Interviewing: preparing, conducting an interview and sharing feedback
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: being an inclusive hiring manager

Once we selected them, we decided to design a 3-hour training program so we could deep dive into each section, while avoiding a too lengthy session that hiring managers wouldn’t be able to attend due to their schedules.

The Talent Acquisition Team Managers then spent 1 month drafting the content.

Rolling out the training

With over 150 managers at BlaBlaCar to train, we needed to be organized to implement the Hiring Academy!

First, we chose to limit the training program to 10 hiring managers per session, as one of our goals was to facilitate discussions around recruitment experiences, challenges and learnings. We made sure to prioritize hiring managers with the largest upcoming hiring needs.

Then, we also ensured our program was in line with our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion vision. We were convinced that each session should include diverse hiring managers, working in different departments and countries, with different cultural backgrounds, genders and levels of experience in recruitment. Discussions and learnings would be even more interesting within a diverse group! Also, given BlaBlaCar’s remote-friendly policy (30% of our employees are full remote!), we made sure to have a training program that could be followed online or onsite.

Finally, scalability of the program was also a main challenge: that’s why we created clear guidelines and content for trainers so that other Talent Acquisition Managers could be animators as well. Thanks to this, we will be able to do 1 training session per month next year.

Tracking the training’s success

Feedback is such an important part of our culture at BlaBlaCar. It’s key for us to gather and consider it so we can continuously improve our training program.

We organized a first “test” session with a group of 10 volunteer hiring managers to gather first insights. We also created a feedback form for them to fill out after their session. We ask how satisfied they were, what they liked the most and the least, whether the content was useful and if the format suited them.

After each session, trainers debrief and deep-dive into the feedback received and adapt the content based on it and their own observations.

We are proud of having reached an 85% satisfaction rate from 30 managers trained in 2023!

We received quite a few positive verbatims, highlighting that the content was very clear and structured, with concrete advice and engaged trainers. One manager said that “it was a great moment to discuss live hiring challenges, strengthen the link with you and get useful tips and new inputs to improve the hiring process”. Another stated that it gave them “a very complete vision that is very useful for a better understanding of the whole process and the different levers that can be used to improve our recruiting skills and experience”.

We were also pleased to hear that the main key takeaways from hiring managers from the training were to:

• Not compare candidates between each other but rather focus on checking whether each candidate fits the scorecard
• Ensure they conduct structured interviews

What’s coming up in 2024?

Continuous improvement and success tracking will remain top priorities to ensure we’re delivering a meaningful and useful training. We’re looking forward to assessing the training’s impact on our Talent Acquisition KPIs and on hiring managers’ ability to hire efficiently for their teams.

Now that we have successfully launched our Hiring Academy, we’re ready to scale and train 90 hiring managers next year!

If you’d like to learn more about this training or discuss what’s been done in your company, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn!

Many thanks to Sabrina Angersbach, Benjamin Rémy, Albane Hussenet and Victor Rubin for the help in writing this article.