Lina Kucinskaite is not only Internal Talent Partner at recruitment startup WeAreKeen, but also ‘The Most Influential Recruitment Talent of 2018’ (#MIR2018). We spoke with her about recruitment, trends, recruitment technology, WeAreKeen, moving to Amsterdam and much more.
From Lithuania to Amsterdam
Lina Kucinskaite came to The Netherlands about two and a half years ago to study. “I moved here to Amsterdam from Lithuania to get my Master’s degree. I started working in marketing & communications but soon I ended up being a campus recruiter. That was my first steps in recruitment and not long after that, in the summer of 2018, I switched from a big corporate to a startup and I joined WeAreKeen.”
About WeAreKeen
WeAreKeen is a strategic Tech Talent Partner for scale-ups and enterprises. They support global talent acquisition teams by delivering tech recruiter apprentices and senior tech recruiters in a flexible model. 
Their recruiters work alongside in-house recruitment teams to design recruitment strategies, hiring plans and source top talent from around the globe. “Easy said: we recruit recruiters. We are working specifically in the Tech Recruitment field and focus on tech profiles, so it’s quite easy for us to understand what our partners are looking for. We have a pipeline of really cool tech recruiters so that we can help our partners as soon as possible. We also offer learning programs for example to junior recruiters with 1-3 years of experience so they can directly add value when they start at one of our partner’s teams.”
Be nice
In just a couple of months, Lina earned the title of ‘The Most Influential Recruitment Talent of 2018’ in The Netherlands. “It gave me more confidence, it gave me a bit of a boost and motivation to do better. It’s great to get the feeling that you are doing something good according to a selected jury. I believe these initiatives are also good for WeAreKeen as a brand. Some of our clients actually contacted us because they heard about the prize and ended up as our partners. What does this prize tell me? That it’s important to understand the whole logic behind the recruitment process. 
Don’t just try to fill the position, but also be nice to people. You can reach so many more good candidates with only personalizing your approaches for example. In general, that’s also good for the reputation and the image of recruiters. Just putting a bit more effort and being attentive for the candidate is really a good step forward.”
Automation vs personalization
“Technology definitely comes in handy while attracting talent. Scheduling tools come in real handy when you want to speed up the process and make it easier for the candidate to get in touch with you. I like using tools for emails as well that make my message more data-driven and interactive. The best thing that could happen for recruitment is that it will be more automated but still personalized. I still really believe in the human touch, so I don’t think that recruiters will be unnecessary in twenty years. Tech makes the process way faster, helps organize data and also track data, look for people on different platforms but the relationship part is the part that can’t be replaced.”
Technology
Lina Kucinskaite uses different types of recruitment tech tools at WeAreKeen. “We use Bullhorn as our Applicant Tracking System, you really need a good ATS to build a database. For sourcing I build Boolean strings, use X-Ray search, Facebook Intelligence and like to experiment with other tools and explore different platforms, not only Linkedin. When it comes to emails and outreaches, I like to make it fun and interactive so I use MixMax and throw in a few funny emojis. We post our jobs on Indeed, Angel List, Facebook, Linkedin and other job boards, you need them to be visible. But we focus more and more on sourcing and finding the talent ourselves.”
Video
The Most Influential Recruiter of 2018 also mentions the importance of video. “It’s good to use video in your recruitment process, we ask our candidates to make a video pitch of one minute to tell about themselves, why you want to work for this company etcetera. Of course you get the resume but with the video you can see how the person is, the way they express themselves. That’s a nice recruitment trend for this year. I think that will be the future of recruitment: the merge of tech, visual and personalization.”
