Element ATS (Applicant Tracking System) Deals With the Covid-19 Pandemic

We talked to Maciej Michalewski of Element on how to recruit easily and efficiently and this is what he had to say.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Maciej Michalewski: Thanks for asking. Fortunately, we are fine. We had some cases in the family. However, everyone is okay, and we hope to stay this way until the end of the pandemic.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Element.

Maciej Michalewski: After nine years of running a recruitment agency, I decided to change my business goals. Previously I was recruiting, and now I am providing innovative technology for recruiters. This new business path is more aligned with my interest, which connects to science and technology.

Therefore, I founded Element, a completely new company, which serves as a vehicle for pursuing our ambitions to create the best possible technological solutions for recruitment. Element app falls into the ATS (applicant tracking system) category.

How does Element innovate?

Maciej Michalewski: We strive to challenge the current ATS market with new tools, features, and technologies that push recruitment processes’ effectiveness into new levels. Element’s innovative solutions, based on our long recruitment experience, robust software development team, and creativity. Element ATS is on its face very intuitive and easy to use. However, many innovative solutions in development implementation, like machine learning algorithms, candidate feedback, GDPR automation, or our Job Monit module, continually monitor dozens of job boards to provide our users with job market insights.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Maciej Michalewski: Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic has an enormous impact on recruitment activities. For the most part, the market significantly reduced employment opportunities. Therefore, the need for recruitment software was not on the priority list for most of the companies. It greatly affected our business and forced us to make some necessary changes to adapt to the new reality quickly.

We changed in our business to adjust to the new reality because we introduced a new set of tools for automating our daily operations, especially concerning sales and marketing. It helped us to reduce costs without sacrificing much of our marketing activities. 

We had to make some changes to our software development road map by moving some features to the next year.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Maciej Michalewski: One of the difficult choices made was terminating the contract with our employee. Other uncomfortable options related to the aforementioned reducing budgets for marketing and software development. The lesson learned was that we could do more with less, with the help of a set of tools that automate some of our processes. For the past year, we learned a lot about marketing automation tools. It allowed us to reduce costs spent on external marketing services significantly. In some cases, we now spend ten times less money on marketing tasks, only because we started to use specific tools. 

How do you deal with stress and anxiety?

Maciej Michalewski: The more stressed or anxious I am, the more I work. A feeling that I committed myself to resolve the problem that raises anxiety can ease my nerves. Commitment is everything when you are on your own. 

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Maciej Michalewski: There are many. Lever, Workable, Recruitee, Smartrecruiters are some of our competitors on the international market, and eRecruiter is our biggest Polish one.

It is not our goal to stay in the game. We aim at being one of the most innovative, efficient, and user-friendly recruitment software on the market. To pursue this goal, we work hard, listen closely to our clients, stay creative, and try new things that no one else dares to try. Again, we are very committed, have a long recruitment experience, and a reliable software development team.

Your final thoughts?

Maciej Michalewski: Pandemic, like any other crises impacting the economy, forces businesses to change. This time it seems the most significant focus is on making organizations resistant to uncertainty, and remote work enabled. Element quickly adapted to the new reality to grow faster and to help more companies make better hires with our ATS.

Your website?

https://elementapp.ai