Case study: how Aviasales optimized hiring processes

Aviasales is one of the largest meta-searches for air tickets, booking hotels, arranging travel insurance, and car rental. Aviasales was founded in 2007. Konstantin Kalinov is the founder and head of the project. The company’s headquarters are located in Thailand on the island of Phuket. Currently, the monthly audience of the service is estimated at about 15 million people.

Aviasales does not sell airline tickets, but due to an innovative search finds the best flight options that can be paid for through partner agencies or airlines. They search for flights in 728 airlines, 200 ticket offices, and 5 booking systems (GDS) using the latest technologies.

One of the main competitors of Aviasales is Skyscanner. The principles of operation and prices of both companies are approximately the same. The main difference is that Aviasales occupies a leading position when searching for tickets in Russia and the CIS. Skyscanner is strong on international flights across Europe and Asia.

The process before Approveit

The company was interested in optimizing and managing the demand for new hires and the onboarding process for new employees.

First, Aviasales was looking to automate the recruitment application process.

The processes of coordinating the search for new teammates were not formalized, approvals were managed in Slack channels. Requestors and approvers often did not know at what stage the hiring request was and had to spend a lot of time and effort figuring it out. Besides, since there was no strict data submission form, requests sometimes were lacking in specifics needed for their processing consequently delaying approval and HR work related.

 

Second, they buy laptops at the request of employees or give out existing ones and need inventory records for reporting. That workflow was manual and stole a fair bit of time from the HR team.

Client’s request

– a ready-made application form with required fields concerning hiring

– Slack and BambooHR integrations for easy communication and team’s data sync

– transparency of the approval process, so that each participant in the process (managers at different departments) knows where the request is

– delineation of areas of responsibility

– automated creation of inventory records concerning purchasing and giving out laptops

What we automated

1. HR approval process: one team creates a new hire request for HR by filling in the ready-made form right in Slack. The multi-step approval process is triggered and includes the approval of the line manager, head of the department, and HRBP. The HR team confirms this by starting the search for an employee.
2. Automation of laptop inventory records: once candidates are approved and hired, the purchase (or transfer from storage) of a laptop to the new hire is approved in Approveit. As a result, laptops are kept track of and new people have everything ready to go on their first day at work. Old laptops can also be updated for long-time employees using this flow.

Process now

When one of the departments needs an employee, they send a request to HR right from Slack. The HR team receives a request, approves it, then publishes a vacancy and looks for the right person.

When it comes to laptops, an employee creates a request for a laptop in Slack, a responsible team member (Line manager or Head of the distribution

department) approves it, and a laptop is ordered. At the same time, the task is created for the employee to confirm the successful laptop delivery.

As a result

– reduced review time for hiring a new team member;

– effective interaction between employees, managers, and heads of departments;

• –  transparency and manageability of the process;
• –  control of deadlines for completing tasks;
• –  improving working conditions for employees;

–  keeping automated records of issued laptops.
Goals accomplished!