How Celonis “Raised the Bar” of Their Recruitment Process with HiPeople

At a glance
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- Company: Celonis (www.celonis.com)
- Size: 1500 people (as of June 2021)
- Industry: Tech
- ATS: Greenhouse
- Location: Munich & NYC HQs, 15 global offices
- Hiring goals: Continued growth in 2021 (1000 hires in 2020)
- HiPeople results: Better candidate insights, reduced hiring bias

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“From my perspective, HiPeople will revolutionize the HR tech scene, and it will be a game-changer in our business.”

Who is Celonis?

In June 2021, Celonis was named “the biggest startup in both NYC and Germany” after announcing a $1bn Series D funding round, and a $11bn valuation.
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Founded in Munich in 2011, Celonis’s Execution Management System provides companies with a modern way to run their business processes entirely on data and intelligence.
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“We’re a global team of 1500 people, and we’re hiring at a large scale,” says Anouk Fechner, Celonis’ Global Talent Acquisition Enablement Lead. “Last year we hired 1000 new people to the team, and we’ll continue growing at this pace. Since I’ve been here, we’ve doubled in size every year.”
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This is Anouk and Celonis’ story so far...
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Why did Celonis choose HiPeople

When I moved into this position last year, one of my first tasks was to do an analysis on our current recruiting process. My goal was to find out if the process which we had in place was still sufficient for the situation we were in and the growth we were facing.
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I quickly realized it wouldn’t be.

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“HiPeople made our hiring process much better and really raised the bar.”

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Our overall goal was to raise our recruitment bar, and align our hiring processes across our North American and EMEA territories.
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Previously, our processes were very lean. Hiring took place in three stages — a recruiter screening, a hiring manager interview, and a senior manager interview.
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Every recruiter and hiring manager had their own way of doing things. Some did reference calls, some didn’t. Some conducted them in the style of a background check, to see if there were any reasons not to hire. This gave us very few insights to work with — individually and as a global team.
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We looked at many different vendors to improve our reference process, and as soon as I saw HiPeople, I had the feeling they were creating something really special.
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Hiring managers were initially uncertain about the changes — they weren’t sure we would get the same level of insights compared to taking a reference call over the phone. But once they saw the value HiPeople delivered, this mindset changed completely.
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HiPeople made our hiring process much better and really raised the bar. From my perspective, HiPeople will revolutionize the HR tech scene, and it will be a game-changer in our business.

‍How HiPeople Improved Hiring Insights at Celonis

Efficiency was a very important driver for us — we wanted to get more insights from references in a shorter time.
But with HiPeople, the quality of insights made the most noticeable difference.

‍“Because HiPeople’s insights are standardized and scientific, we can be confident about the decisions they’re informing.”

HiPeople allows us to build out our reference process the way we want — globally. We can make sure we ask the questions we want to ask, and get the candidate insights we want to get.
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Now, we get in-depth insights into candidates’ work styles, work values, and areas for development opportunity.
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Before, every hiring manager was taking their own approach to reference calls. This caused many different ways of collecting insights, and we were lacking consistency across our global team.
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Because HiPeople’s insights are standardized and scientific, we can be smart about how we use them, and confident about the decisions they’re informing.

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How HiPeople Reduced Recruitment Bias at Celonis

One of my goals when I started was to reduce bias, and I’ve done that by introducing HiPeople into the recruitment process.

‍“[HiPeople] really helps to reduce hiring bias. I’d even say this is the most important part for us right now.”

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Previously, only three opinions were involved in making a decision about a candidate — the recruiter, the hiring manager, and their senior manager.
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Now it’s mandatory for us to get at least four candidate references. This more than doubles the perspectives that inform a hiring decision. And these perspectives are based on scientifically-valid questions.
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This really helps to reduce hiring bias — and I’d even say this is the most important part for us right now.

‍What’s Next for Anouk and Celonis?

We are a data-driven company by heart, and having data in the recruitment process — in our perspective — is very important.
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Our next step in raising the bar will be to leverage HiPeople’s insights alongside performance management.
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We want to use HiPeople’s data to help our new recruits grow, with tailored onboarding and personal development. But we also want to start understanding the kind of people who are successful at Celonis, and identify the work styles and values that best complement our team.