TA Operations to grow from 300-700 HC organization with Giorgia Altavilla

Thomas Kohler:
Today’s guest, Gio – Talent Acquisition Operations lead at Satispay.

So I’m. I’m really looking forward to this episode. We know each other, I think, for five years maybe now. I think you and me met when I participated the first of these Talent Acquisition team dinners. I host a lot in the meantime already, but I think the first one I ever attended, not even hosted by myself, is where I met you. It was back then with Ashby and Willem, I guess in Berlin. But today we want to talk about Talent Acquisition Operations and everything, but maybe we start with a bit of a context about yourself, by yourself.

Gio Altavilla:
Thank you, Thomas. And thank you for having me. This is going to be fun. Um, so, yeah, I’m now leading the TalentOps function at Satispay, but this hasn’t been my role since the beginning. I’ve just started as a recruiter, as anybody else that wanted to enter the HR space but didn’t have a background in hr. And I remember my first agency recruiting job and I thought, this is broken. This is not working. This is not what I was thinking, thinking I was going to do.

I was a bit naive, I have to admit. I was coming from a completely different world. And what I figured out is that there were two things missing. Efficiency on one side and the candidate experience on the other. And I think this was where two things could happen. Thankfully, the second did. But the first possibility option was me just dropping out of the space because it was going so much against where my values and drivers at work. And then the other one was to fix the problem. And this is how I discovered what ECOPS was because I had no idea.

Thomas Kohler:
And a lot of people also confuse it with its scheduling. Right. If it’s from the very surface. But that’s definitely not the case.

Gio Altavilla:
That’s not the case. And you can see this confusion also from the job descriptions on the market. Right there is the Talent Ops and then the description is all about coordinating that in 2025, 26 is also not on point given what the tech stack offer. That is a lot of automations. But yeah, this is how I joined the space of Talent Acquisition. And then I managed to move in house. And tech was always my core, which is weird because I never thought of myself as a person that could enjoy so much space. And then I had the chance, thanks to my leaders, years after years, to discover more about the recop space and then had the possibility with satispay to build an entire function which is fun.

Thomas Kohler:
At what stage was Satispay when you joined and at what stage of the company are you now? Maybe overall and also with the talent acquisition function.

Gio Altavilla:
So when I joined Satispay was a couple of years ago, we were around 350 employees. A lot of innovation happening, a lot of projects and products. On the roadmap, the talent acquisition team was around 15 people. But revamping all the processes, way of work. And also we’re shifting to a more data driven approach. And today we are more or less the same number of people, 15 to 19 people. But we have three very distinctive functions. We have the talent partners, talent sourcing and talent ops.

That did actually change face and hats a couple of times during the past two years. Because when I joined it was purely coordination and also taking a few, a few tasks from the HR op space. And today instead we managed to build an engine that works in parallel on the coordination piece a little bit less because most of it is automated on the process improvements and team enablement side and project program management. Right. So introducing new practices, new tools, consolidating even more and taking care of the analytics.

Thomas Kohler:
And what changed now in terms of how you perceive the talent acquisition function and also how the talent acquisition function is perceived? Maybe from the business.

Gio Altavilla:
How I perceived it, okay, I always thought, and I still believe that in general, I’m not talking of my current company, but the TalentOps function can be more of a business partner. And I also think that the way it’s developing in the market, regardless of the company you join, is more of a wider function. You can see where it starts, but you cannot see where it ends. It could cover a bit of those more administrative tasks, but it could also bring together different HR teams, ensuring that all those processes start at the beginning of the journey of the employee with the hiring experience. It’s actually coherent until they stay with us and they perform and then eventually leave.

Thomas Kohler:
And what ratio do you have from maybe how many roles does a recruiter carry in parallel and then also how many sourcing support or maybe let’s start with the first question.

Gio Altavilla:
Well, I think that really depends on the business and what they need. The good thing is that when you have a great team, you can be flexible and you can play around according to what are the business needs. And we know the scale ups may change needs every quarter, if not even more often. So you need to be ready to cover everywhere, anywhere is needed. There are some numbers that everybody knows, right? In the space. You will have one coordinator supporting up to three to five recruiters according to the volume they have and then you’ll have sourcers for, I don’t know, five roles, 10 roles if it’s volume and evergreens. But I think it really depends on what the business needs to achieve. Is it scaling? Is it more of a focus on quality of hire? I think the key, especially nowadays when a lot of new tools and AI are changing how the space looks like and how we can operate, the key is to stay flexible and have a team that knows how to adapt.

Thomas Kohler:
So I think also at your size, right. With 350 people, just putting this into perspective, that you have a talent acquisition organization of around 15 and also a setup with sourcing ops, recruiters structured. This is very sophisticated and a lot of companies don’t have that at all. Also later stage and what I see at that size that I think a lot of companies or a lot of recruiters, they just sometimes need to be flexible, as you said. Right. They need to maybe jump from a region, let’s say Italy, to maybe another region. It could be, I don’t know, France, Germany, UK or sometimes maybe even going a bit abroad. Or you then need to also jump into different functions.

First you ramp maybe a tech organization and then within a tech organization you can also jump from a very specialized, specialized engineering role, let’s say in security to okay, now we need to find somebody that is doing a lot of, I don’t know, front end engineering, which is a different way of recruiting as well. Right. And different people.

Gio Altavilla:
Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
And therefore I think depending on also the level of focus you can keep and also the level of different stakeholders you have to engage with. Because maybe it’s part of a different organization, hiring maturity might be different, but also maybe the processes and also the biases. So there’s so many different. And also just having a different stakeholder is an effort. Right. And this all factors in where I think that the talent acquisition operations function can be a big lever because you have somebody that is ideally also delivering the insights, the data and also making sure that the systems are set up in the right way, used in the right way, that you collect the right data, that you can trust the data that you can then also use it to predict, to forecast, to engage and influence certain decision making. Right. On why a region is more suited or another, for instance, or why we don’t need more recruiters, why we just need a bit of a more hiring maturity in terms of decision making, for instance.

Right. Instead of just putting people on the problem. And this is what I learned in the past is when the talent acquisition organization has a Good TA ops muscle. It doesn’t have to be an entire function, but if the mindset is still there, it is also often good enough at that size. Right. But what you have I think is already sophisticated.

Gio Altavilla:
Well, we, we needed this function because we doubled in size and we keep, we keep growing. So now we’re around 700 people, we still have to hire. So. And also one thing is that I noticed is that then all the skills that a talent function, sorry, a TalentOps or records function brings to the team can be transferable. Right. You can use them also across other HR teams, but I’ve seen a one woman or men show in TalentOps leading a lot of transformation and bringing those values that you were mentioning to their theme. Doesn’t need to be a huge function. You even just need a recruiter that has that approach and then knows how to cascade it to the rest of the recruiters or sourcers or even hiring managers.

There are amazing models of hiring where hiring managers are actually the first people to approach candidates and are owner of those hiring processes. But this needs certain degree of maturity also may work at smaller scales or maybe at very mature, but bigger ones, larger ones. So yeah, I don’t think that talent operation means you need a team or a big team. You just need the mindset.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes, yes. And then of course, right, depending on size and so on, it makes sense also to have to function. And what is the tool stack you use?

Gio Altavilla:
We are spoiled and lucky. We use Ashby as our applicant tracking system. And I’ve been a user of Ashby for a while now. Also before satispay. I have to say it’s fun to use. It has everything you need in one place. You don’t need to go fancy, you need to go smart. Once you have this platform, I’m positively biased towards the tools, so I don’t want to spend too much talking about it because I know it may be not really impartial, but it allows you to do basically anything you need.

Except of course LinkedIn that is always there you need to use. But there is a lot more on the market. We are quite of a big team and that allows us to experiment. We’ve been piloting a few note takers, but also sourcing tools and when you finish a pilot you think, okay, you’re ready to make a decision. But there is another player coming out or releasing new features that makes it a little bit harder to decide. Is also hard to stay compliant. At least in the European Union and especially for bigger companies, heavily regulated in the space we work at we need to be extremely careful but there is a lot more and I just would like to stress that the way I think of it is because there is a lot of talks around these automations and AI in HR and recruitment yes can be used but the human is always there. Not only because of what the regulation says, but also because it’s a new technology and there is too much risk also for the company to lose the right person, the qualitative candidate future employee that can raise the bar for the company.

So a human would always be there to lead both candidate experience and bring revenue and success to the business. But there is again a lot more to say on this topic. I will say that the new tools and especially in the AI space can help increase efficiency and productivity rather than replace people. And this is extremely true in the HR space and recruitment space.

Thomas Kohler:
And what are the reports or insights you can so what are the metrics you can show with your function and what are you measuring?

Gio Altavilla:
Good question. What are we measuring? Basically everything is how you put those metrics and results and insights into context that can help you tell a story. Besides the most traditional metrics from how long it takes you to fill a role to hire someone, to offer to someone so the velocity 1 to the most basic of but always present conversion funnels, activities tracking that are always there something we are now focusing and we’ve been focusing in the past year and a half besides the well, we started with the candidate experience and trying to improve our processes based on what our candidates would say and now we are transitioning the two where the quality of buyer will be the focus.

Thomas Kohler:
Oh nice.

Gio Altavilla:
Yeah, very nice. Hot topic for many companies, especially those that need to focus more on quality and it comes that point where the scaling part is there. But once you have a talent function that is solid, you know you can rely on the team, the processes are there, you figure out what is winning for your team then you can focus even more on quality. So now we thanks to Ashpee we do have a few metrics that we take into consideration already for quality of IR and we are going to launch a couple of features from the tool that will allow us to track it better and get more consistent feedback not only from the candidates but also from our I int manage.

Thomas Kohler:
What is your current Because I think quality hire it’s a big hole. Yeah, it is. What attributes are you focusing on? Is it more if they pass probation? This is a very simple way on on how companies doing it but then the question is okay, how good is your performance rating Feedback process. Right. If you even manage, manage probation for instance. At all. Right. Some also track some metrics, especially in sales that they also track.

Okay, what are the target attainments? I think there it’s a bit more easier to say okay, that’s the target, that’s then the first year achievement, blah blah blah. And then it’s a bit more feasible. You can also put an ROE on it very easily. But for other functions it’s not so easy. But this would be interesting for me. What are the attributes doesn’t need to be the very clear methodology on how you do it, but the thinking process behind it.

Gio Altavilla:
So I think it depends on the company. I cannot talk for my business because we are currently in the process of discussing which approach to use. But in general what I’ve seen is common in the space is you can have the approaches you were talking about so you can tie it to goals, OKRs and KPIs and you know what’s happening, you know where you need to go and you know that if you achieve that well, the hires that you brought to the company, they brought qualities. Then there is also the approach you were talking about of relying on the performance cycles. But then it depends how often do you run a performance cycle during the year? All the cohort of new hires to fall in these performance review cycles. And do you have enough ongoing data so that you can actually monitor it? I will say what I saw. There are two ways of monitoring quality of ir. One, it is focusing on the performance of the talent team.

So what is quality wire for the talent team? And those are the matrix I was talking about the IR manager experience, the conversions in target achievement and others. And then there is the cross organization, quality wise. There are a few companies that talk about talent density. So they do look at what is their talent density, what is the percentage of people that do perform the best. And they also of course take into consideration the performance review results. And then they look at the same result of the new highest cohort at six months time and then they will just see look at the difference. If it’s positive then it means that the cohort of new hires that you brought in the company is raising the bar. Right? There are so many models out there.

You can see what Revolut does. But you can look at the barraisers programs at Amazon. Also Google has its own Netflix. Those are very nice models. But I don’t think there is a one one fit all solution. I will go backward. How does the company defines quality of hire? Is it the person that stay longer? Is it the person that hit the target? Is it the person that performs higher than the average of the company? Once you have that definition yet, then you can backtrack the way to calculate it and monitor it.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes, and it can also change over time. Right? So maybe one framework is right when you’re early on and another one isn’t anymore. Maybe. Talking about returns, what do you think is the return on investment for a recOps function?

Gio Altavilla:
If you allow me, I will rephrase your question. That is what is the ROI of a RECOPS approach or TalentOps approach in a company even without having a function? Definitely you’ll see an increase of inefficiency and as a consequence productivity of a team. And this is will be the easier one to track because numbers will talk. They will.

Thomas Kohler:
So conversion rates go for instance up or down in the right direction and then you also have a higher velocity, so faster time in process, for instance.

Gio Altavilla:
Faster timing process, ideally faster time to fill a position. But then there is all the rest that is less visible and less on the surface. That is the. For example, let’s say when you have the same team or a team of five that needs to hire so many people and then you manage to make their workload and their daily tasks more efficient, faster and delivering also a better candidate experience. In the meantime you get to two different outcome. It will be easier to attract candidates that heard amazing things about a company. So that’s the first thing will be easier to convert them into new team members that will join them because they truly enjoy the process with you. Then at the same time you’ll have team members that have the time to grow more, focus on more strategic projects instead of hiring.

Maybe enabling the interviewers and the hiring managers on how to recognize who is the great fit for the company, on how to run proper and unbiased interviews, on what is the right way to talk to a candidate or how to be more aligned so that you have a consistent way of evaluating the people you meet in the process. If you have a team of talent partners, recruiters, sourcers, they need to focus on bringing in and talent and you know, focusing on the upper part of the funnel. They don’t want to have the time to actually invest in these strategic initiatives. So you can look at the ROI from numbers perspective that is there. You can look at the cost per hour that will talk and they will probably talk to the executives and the leaders of the business because you can translate into money, whatever with existing resources.

Thomas Kohler:
You have just that. I think also Just a great indicator is that the talent acquisition team at Satispay overall was around 15 people. At 350 people overall in the organization. Then in the past, let’s say two years you grew to 600 to 700 people and the team stayed at the same size.

Gio Altavilla:
Exactly. And all we did was just to be honest, for only the first year we’re just to fix broken processes and then investing on the enablement of the team that can cascade that knowledge across the IRENE team members. And they are amazing. There is always space for improvement for all of us and learning and growing from each other. But I can see that in two years a lot has changed.

Thomas Kohler:
If people are listening and they also want to achieve what you achieved growing the company by 300 people in two years while not growing the team. What are some practical tools, frameworks or examples you have for us? Some nuggets, what they can apply.

Gio Altavilla:
Okay, now spending some money without okay, this is one of my favorite before looking outside, look inside. There’s for sure some other team in the company that is using a tool that you could leverage. It could be in a smaller team, could be notion, could be zapier for some automations so that you can really reduce the manual work on the team. You can look at ticking systems that maybe the CS team is using or the product team is using to see if you can use it. Then for the possible TalentOps function you can look at what marketing is doing for EB initiatives. So you don’t really need to first buy the other a new tool. The other thing that you can do is looking at the tech stack you’re using. Are you using it properly? Do you need to change? Do you really need to go for a more expensive version of the same tool you have? Or you just need to clean it up and use it better.

And usually it’s the second. So you need first to clean it up and use it better. And even if you then after three to six months you figure out that the tool is not anymore scaling with you and you need a better version another one that work that you’ve done of cleaning and mapping will be very useful to better understand what you’re missing, what you need and then to find out who’s the best vendor for you in the future. So definitely garbage in, garbage out is another of those practices that will save your life as a record and less practical. But really taught me most of what I know that is not enough is relying on the community. There are tons of communities out there that can teach you so much on what’s next, what are the best way to do it. I had great mentors thanks to these communities and peers that I still learn from today. So also that I will talk to your leaders in operations because they probably know more than you on how certain processes have failed in the company, especially if you’re a new team member and you need to fix whatever is broken in the talent team because certain skills and processes are transferable actually and they may have known what has worked and what has not so far.

Thomas Kohler:
Great. Did you also automate anything? With Zapier for instance?

Gio Altavilla:
Did we automate what?

Thomas Kohler:
Sorry, With Zapier, did you also automate something?

Gio Altavilla:
We do not use it because we do use another orchestrator, but we did automate a lot. Thankfully though Ashby allows you to automate 90 to 95% of what you need from schedule.

Thomas Kohler:
Automate. What are some, let’s say automation, quick fixes, what everybody can maybe apply.

Gio Altavilla:
Scheduling is the main pain point, right? So I will start from there. But what we’ve been focusing in the past months on is to better sync data flows from the talent tech stack to other HR and finance related tools. So thanks to also the support of our IT team, but not only we managed to improve the type of integrations we have or to build from scratch new ones. It could be to have in the same place in a visualization tool, an API tool, the data coming from all the HR platforms so that you have one source of truth. It could be also to better automate your onboarding processes for new employees with the rest of the teams that are involved. We have in the current company I work for, we do have several entities, we do have several locations, we onboard employees, team members and it’s a huge team effort from the people ops function that needs to, you know, get prepared everything related to contracts. The rest of the people and culture team that does a wonderful job in organizing onboarding days, IT and security with you know, all the equipment and taking care of the accounts to not talk of facility for the people that are not remote. So there is so much happening in the background and when one of these automations or connections is not working, you miss a piece.

And maybe the good candidate experience you were delivering so far does not necessarily translate in a great employee experience, especially in the first couple of weeks is super important. So this is in a generic way wider way. What you can automate from a pure talent perspective is definitely the scheduling. There is way more that you can do in around feedback collection and if you look at the talent of the Record space. A lot of things that automating that helped via automations is alert or notifications. Think of what I like to think of as is that function that ensures that the overall talenting can succeed. If something doesn’t work as it’s supposed to work or a process is not followed the way it’s supposed to, it may not everything then end up well from a candidate experience to conversion to hiring manager alignment and then of course it cascading other consequences. What helps us is creating a few alerts when something that should have happened did not.

A referral has been sitting in application review for more than a specified number of days. We really don’t want that to happen. Or we have a candidate that does submit candidate experience survey with a negative score and it’s not neutral or positive. So you really want to go and understand what happened. You of course are not able to figure out who was the candidate, but you can look at the feedback and you can take an action on those or share them with the right people. If you have state candidates you can work on that. If you have referral bonus that have not been paid, you can work on that. If you have new joiners that all of a sudden decide to not join anymore at the company, you can act on that.

But when you are. When you are processing thousands of candidates a week, a month, you could easily miss this tiny. Yeah, and automating all these notifications and alerts does help, but you can do it in these tools only when the process is actually built properly so that you know what should trigger that alert.

Thomas Kohler:
Nice. Thank you so much. We are already done. I would really love to ask more questions but maybe we can do another episode at some point. I would stop here. Thank you so much and it was great talking to you again.