Reaching for the sky in the middle of a pandemic? I sure did!
Looking for a new job? Accepting the challenge of an RPO experience starting at the beginning of a pandemic? Yes, I did that. And it was amazing!
My name is José Baptista, and I have been working at Damia as a tech recruiter for 1 year now! But I’ve actually never worked in Damia’s office! I went directly to “touch the Sky”.
This is my story and experience of an amazing journey as an RPO for Damia Group Portugal
One year ago, I moved from Coimbra back to Lisbon (my hometown). I was looking for a new job opportunity in the recruitment field and I found Damia’s job post for an RPO at Sky. At the time, I didn’t even know what an RPO was, but I found out in the most awesome way.
An RPO (short for Recruitment Process Outsourcing) experience is when someone joins a company for a short period of time to help scale up the recruitment numbers, achieve good results and after the work is done, come back to the original company. This person’s job is to act as an extension of the company’s Recruiting Team 🚀
In my case, Damia was looking for someone to do this at Sky until the end of the year and then he or she will become one of Damia’s internal recruitment team!
I accepted the challenge, and after just one week of working on-site at Sky’s office, the country was locked down due to the COVID-19 outbreak so I had to start working remotely full-time. This was only possible thanks to the great team I found at Sky.
I had the most amazing online onboarding experience with António Fernandes (my manager) and Marlena Szylar (my recruiter colleague).
They were incredible! We built a working relationship based on trust and communication, something very important for remote work — Thank you!
Trusting that the work is being done even though we’re not able to see each other physically every day can be challenging, but we managed it. There was never even an inch of competitiveness between us, and we were always there for each other.
Another great thing was that even though I was technically working at Sky, I still managed to create strong connections with my Damia co-workers and was always included in their activities. It was something I had never experienced before:
Working in two different companies simultaneously and having two separate teams.
During my time at Sky, we hired more than 70 people and had more than 100 offers 😱 Great results for a small team in such a strange year like 2020, right?
Sky was really welcoming and even though I was only working on-site for one week and the rest of the RPO remotely, I still felt very much like part of the team. Aside from the work-related stuff, we also managed to schedule some after-work activities and went out for dinner a couple of times (with all the respective safety procedures, of course) and we were able to achieve a strong team chemistry!
At the end of my time at Sky, I was kind of sad to leave, but I already knew that was going to happen. One of the advantages of an RPO experience is that you always know when the job starts and when it ends, being able to prepare yourself for the departure and manage the time you have to do your work to the best of your ability.
Earlier this year, I returned to Damia but, well… not for long. After my experience at Sky, Damia challenged me to do another RPO this time at OLX.
I’ve been working there since January and it has been a rollercoaster! But hey, if you’re curious to know more you’ll just have to wait until I finish this new journey and write about it.
Here’s a tip: if you’re afraid or unsure if you should do an RPO, just go ahead and do it! It really is an amazing experience. It’s a challenge to manage all of the stakeholders between the RPO company and the service provider’s company — no doubt about that — but you’ll learn a lot from it and you’ll grow exponentially both on a personal and professional level. This type of service is something we at Damia have been putting a lot of effort into and we intend to invest and grow even more. Stay tuned!
Kudos to Damia for giving me this opportunity!
Kudos to Sky for having me!
And a very special kudos to António and Marlena for being the most amazing teammates during my first RPO experience!
About Damia Portugal:
We are an international innovative IT recruitment company with over 25 years of experience working across all levels, from support right up to executive board level, with our HQ based in the UK.
We came to Portugal with the promise to shake up the market and redefine how one engages with clients. Our core goal is to develop relationships across the market, offer a disruptive (but positive!) approach with both clients and candidates, always based on open and transparent communication.
We take the stresses out of recruitment and engage the right professionals who will excel in your organization.
We use out-of-the-box sourcing techniques.
We are innovative, disruptive, transparent, and relaxed.
We came to the market to do it differently and we love it!
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About José Baptista: (best known as just Zé):
He’s a tech Recruiter, Human Resources, Diversity and Employer Branding enthusiast.
With a master’s degree in Organizational and Work Psychology from the University of Coimbra, he has 2+ years of work experience in Recruitment (mostly in product tech companies).
José is currently doing a PhD in Human Resources at the University of Lisbon while recruiting the very best tech talent at OLX Group with his Damia’s colleague Inês Silvestre (they make a great team).
Say Hi 🙌 to Zé and give him feedback on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josediogofbaptista/
