She opened the company after the second try, the name of EvoTalents came from meditating on Mount Annapurna, thought that recruiting was not for her and went to work as a make-up artist.
Read this article to find out what is true about the Founder of EvoTalents, Olena Volk.
Hello! Let's start with how recruitment appeared in your life and why did you decide to develop in this direction?
When I entered university, I already dreamed of my own business. I chose the Faculty of Psychology and at the same time started a second education: management-organization. I chose the direction that was most suitable for entrepreneurship. Then I dreamed of building my own psychological center. Why did I choose recruiting at some point? Because all this was at the very beginning. And in the end, when I graduated from psychology, I saw that I had two development paths: to go as a practicing psychologist or to go towards HR management. Then I realized for myself that I wanted to work in a company, in an organization, and I took the second path.
How did you come up with the idea of creating a recruiting agency? What was the main impetus for making such a decision?
Few people know, but the creation of EvoTalents is my second time organizing my own agency. The first time was much earlier. At that moment I left my office job. I realized that I didn't like it. Every morning when I took the bus to work, I didn't enjoy it, I didn't want to go to work. And at such moments - both the first and second time, when I created EvoTalents - I thought that it was as if I was not going my own way. I thought maybe recruiting wasn’t my thing. I ended up working for the company for two months. I realized that I just force myself to go to work every morning, I don’t like it, and I went nowhere. At that time, I had a small financial cushion, and I went to study makeup for myself. Almost no one knows, but I worked a little as a makeup artist. At the same time, I created the first agency. I made a website, came up with a name, and I even had two clients with whom I worked.
After a few months, I still did not reach the required level of income for myself and returned to the office again. I went to work for an IT company. After that, I worked in two IT companies for five years. And when I again had a strong feeling that I was not going my way, I quit my job, started working as a freelancer and moved to London. This is where the story of EvoTalents began.
What challenges did EvoTalents, as a new company, face in the beginning? What helped you solve them and move on?
Now, when I remember exactly how EvoTalents was created, I understand that I, like many people, already had certain difficulties at the start. But for the first six months of creating EvoTalents, I moved in a very cool flow. Clients came to me through recommendations. I very quickly recruited the first people into the team, we quickly grew to five people, came up with a name, and so on.
Talking about the difficulties, most likely, the first one is an unstable income, regardless of whether I worked as a freelancer or already had a team. And in fact, when there was a team, there were also small income gaps. These are the main difficulties. Next is the search for clients at some point. At one time there were a lot of them according to recommendations, at other times there were moments when there were a little less of them, or not enough. And, of course, coming up with a name for the company was a challenge. We thought for two months, we had more than a hundred options for names. When I went to the Annapurna mountains base camp, I told the team: “I will go to the mountains, I will not think about anything, and there the name of the company will come to my mind during meditation.” But two weeks later I returned from my vacation, and the name never came to me. For me it was quite a strong challenge.
*As a result, the name of EvoTalents became a combination of two original options from a huge list [EvoTeam and Talents]. Lena consulted with friends and acquaintances about choosing the best name. Then one of them suggested experimenting. This is how EvoTalents got its perfect name.
Have EvoTalents' values and approach changed over the years? Why? What influenced?
Yes, of course, over these 8 years our values and approaches have changed a lot. At the beginning, we had a very family-friendly culture in the company. And on the one hand, it was very cool, because the relationships within people, between me and my colleagues, were based on values and support. Now the values of EvoTalents have changed. We even rewrote them on the website because every year we moved more and more towards a results-oriented culture. We have become a more professional culture where we have specific goals. We help clients, we are results-oriented, but we maintain our warmth values, people-oriented and ethical approach. The main transition was from a family culture to a more professional and results-oriented one.
Can you highlight the top 3 challenges for the team during the entire existence of the agency? What were they and how were they solved?
I think, like for most companies and businesses, the main challenges were during the pandemic and during the war. At such moments we are very dependent on how our clients and other IT companies feel. When IT companies begin to freeze vacancies or reduce staff, we, as a recruiting agency, also feel this. Therefore, the main challenges were in finding clients and creating a systematic approach to marketing. After the covid period, there was one year when all companies began hiring a lot, and salaries increased. We are faced with the fact that our recruiters began to actively leave, offering salaries 2-3 times higher. Despite the fact that we had many clients, the agency’s rates increased, but it was more difficult for us to fill vacancies. We had a hard time scaling due to the difficulty in finding experienced recruiters for our team.
Many people are interested in what the Founder does in the company. Please tell us about your main responsibilities.
I believe that one of the most important tasks of a founder is to engage in the development and strategies of the company. I have my main tasks that I focus on. Separately, we have an operation director. She is more responsible for the results and for achieving the goals that we have now. We build a specific vision of the company, strategy, goals and see how we move towards them. And here it is very important to have time and space to think: “Where do we, as a company, want to go.” I recommend that all founders communicate with other entrepreneurs in order to learn from their experience and improve the scope of their thinking. Including networking and studying the market and some related niches. And development overall, constant study of business in order to look: “How can I improve?” Because sometimes even a small change can affect the results of a company. The main result of the founder’s work is constant development and scaling of the business.
What drives you most in your work? What, on the contrary, can take away a resource?
I enjoy communicating with cool people. I enjoy conducting either calls or meetings in London with potential clients and with other entrepreneurs when we exchange experiences. I really like when I start thinking and looking: “Where do I want to go?” I take a vision when I'm doing development and getting involved in different parts of the business to see, “How can we improve here?” During team calls, I also like to interact with the team. This is what I love to do. And what I don’t really like is if some problematic, operational, small tasks appear that need to be solved. For example, recently we needed to purchase laptops. Or something related to documents. I have very little such work now, but when I need to, for example, fill out some signs or calculate something, this is something that I also don’t like to do and always put it off until the last minute.
What victories (cool results) of EvoTalents can you celebrate over the past year?
I would say that one of the coolest results is that we actually improved our results last year. We grew by 20%, and for a year when many other companies were doing worse, I think this is a great result. The fact that we have emerged from some kind of instability, crisis situation. This is also a very good indicator. The second cool indicator is that this year we have grown in the number of people: we have doubled the team in a very short time. Somewhere we deliberately went into such challenges. And we managed it successfully thanks to the fact that when planning an increase, we automated adaptation. We prepared for this, and thanks to this we were able to grow so quickly and find the people we needed. This is one of our team's latest results that I'm really proud of.
What is the agency's focus now? What goals do you set and how do you achieve them?
Our focus now is to reach a steadily developing state, to achieve our goals for this year in all key indicators. This is the speed of filling vacancies, our results in work, and so on. And, of course, access to foreign markets. We are now actively taking our first steps to enter the British market. And one of the goals for this year is to have several British regular clients.
What is the EvoTalents team like? What do you value most in people and what qualities are needed to work in an agency?
Oh, the EvoTalents team is very cool now, I’m really proud of every person who is now on our team. And what I really appreciate is just this combination: focus on results, the ability to take responsibility, maturity, when everyone is really ready to be responsible for results, move, communicate as a partner both within the team and with clients. And on the other hand, this is such a very strongly expressed humanity, warmth towards each other, mutual assistance, common values. Probably, these are the two parts I really value in every person. Therefore, we choose people who are similar to us precisely according to these values.
Tell us about your main approaches to business management as a leader.
I believe that I am the wrong leader, because in my management of the company a lot of things go through intuition. Of course, I completed my business studies, but still I often do not act based on logic. I am open with the team and talk through all the points - this is about honesty and transparency. And at the same time, I very often focus on my feelings. My intuition is quite well developed. I look intuitively at where we want to go and how. Based on this, some kind of vision is built. I can see opportunities in advance. Thanks to this approach, relationships with the team are also built. Yes, I see that, perhaps, somewhere in the process of such management I make management mistakes, but I give both the team and myself the opportunity to make them. At the same time, I see that the relationship with the team is building quite warm and open, and indeed we can discuss all the points on both sides. This is how I build this management. It doesn't look like very classic, book-correct management. But this is my style that I came to.
