Sometimes, it seems that good employees are hard to find in the US and Western Europe. This is often true, especially when the market is saturated with vacancies.

However, there are countries where the dynamics are different. You probably know about India or the Philippines, but there’s also Eastern Europe, where there typically are more good candidates than jobs.

This market is filled with employees who are eager to learn and work within a competitive budget, people who are interested and try their best.

My video editing company has over 100 employees in Eastern Europe, and we’re more than happy. So, how do we hire in this market? I’d love to share our approach, which will be particularly effective for hiring line personnel.

Step 1: Investing time in preparation

First, we need to determine what personality type we would like to hire for a particular position.

According to the Competency-Loyalty Framework, every employee can be placed on a scale and fit into one of four categories:

• High competency and high loyalty
• Low competency and loyalty
• High competency and low loyalty
• High loyalty and competency

For us, it’s important to find and train highly loyal employees, even if they are a bit less competent. Everything we do during this hiring process is aimed at finding potential.

Our system is designed to help people improve and grow over time. It’s important to mention that this system only works if you have a strong department leader who can mentor their employees.

After we decide on the desired characteristics, we describe the candidate, outline their responsibilities, and write an engaging job description. We publish it on both paid and free channels and move on to the next stages.

Related: Here’s What to Expect in a Job Interview in Today’s Job Market

Step 2: Collecting the right number of applications

We have specific expectations for every hiring situation. For example, we know that out of 70 applicants, only one video editor will be a match. When hiring a manager, we typically need to consider 100 candidates. This helps us project how many applications we need to collect.

These proportions have proven consistent, with only minor fluctuations, allowing us to plan our team scaling. We’ve learned that hiring the required number of people from fewer applications simply won’t get us the results we need.

We are ready to go on once we reach our target number of applications.

Related: How Long Should a Cover Letter Be in 2023?

Step 3: Conducting two interviews

Since we usually get so many applications, conducting over a hundred interviews would take weeks.

That’s why we implemented a more efficient approach – group interviews. We usually invite 10-15 candidates to these sessions. We evaluate candidates’ experience, how well they align with our position and company values, and observe how they interact in a competitive environment.

This method also saves us a lot of time when introducing the company. Instead of doing it 10-15 times, we do it once for the group.

After the group sessions, our hiring manager discusses the candidates with the Head of the corresponding department. Together, they identify the people who impressed them the most and schedule individual interviews.

Those are more traditional: we talk about a candidate’s ambition, discuss how our company can support their career growth, and ask detailed questions about their previous work experience.

Step 4: Giving out test tasks

The next step in our hiring funnel is a real-world test task for the candidates who’ve made it this far. We give them a few days to complete it, ensuring the task reflects the actual work they’d be doing with us.

Over the past year, we have had to redesign all our test tasks to be AI-proof. With AI assisting candidates, it has become harder to assess their true skill levels.

Once the tasks are submitted, I review every task for customer-facing positions. For technical roles, the Head of our video editing department takes over.

We provide detailed feedback to every candidate, whether they’re a good fit or not. We highlight what stood out, areas for improvement, and tips for their job search. This way, we ensure that everyone who invests their time gets something valuable in return. Plus, it leaves the door open for future hires.

Related: 5 Personality Traits Hiring Managers Should Look for in Candidates

Step 5: Internship

After this review, we invite the top candidates to join us for a paid two-week internship, which is a serious skill-boosting opportunity. This experience allows them to learn more about our work environment and demonstrate their skills.

During this period, the top candidates work on real tasks under the supervision of a manager to apply their knowledge in practice.

It’s a win-win for everyone. The candidates get a real taste of what it’s like to work with us, and we can see how they perform in a real-world setting.

It’s not just about the hard skills. We give them a mentor who provides guidance and observes how well candidates can listen, receive feedback and adapt — in other words, whether they are a good fit for our corporate culture.

If they do, this is a strong indicator that they have the potential for growth and success in our team, and it is also the main green flag for us.

In the end, we stick with the candidates who do that the best. That’s how we went from 100 candidates to 2.

In the hiring world, both sides must put in much effort. It’s not just about time but also emotional investment. However, the energy we get from a successful hire is multiplied many times. Once we’ve nailed down our process and tuned our approach, there’s no turning back.

We’ll lose much more than we save if we miss any step in our hiring funnel. However, if we do it all, the payoff at the end makes the effort worth it, giving us a fantastic return on our investment.