Member in the Spotlight: Ekrem Jusufi of Innovade

Attracting top talent is a major challenge for most businesses, particularly in a post-covid market that is still adapting to a new normal. We sat down with Ekrem, founder of Innovade and member of our Nents-inspired Tribes Dusseldorf location, to find out how he and his team are using innovative solutions to help businesses find the right talent, and fast.

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your company, Innovade?

We are a marketing and recruitment agency, and the main service that we offer is a specialized recruiting system which is a mix of psychology, digital marketing and automations.

I fell in love with marketing early on and knew I wanted to do something with it. Before Innovade, I was offering every different kind of service – I really deep dived into all kinds of marketing and spent a lot of time and money to learn all aspects properly. A few years ago I decided to cancel my studies because I was so busy, then last year we became Innovade Gmbh and are now currently a team of 5 people. We cut it down to one service that we now fully focus on, which is our recruiting system.

That sounds super interesting! Can you tell us more about how the recruitment system works specifically?

As I mentioned, it’s a mix of psychology, digital marketing and automations. First of all, we have a consultation with the client to discuss their product, ie. their job offering. If you have a bad product, then you can spend millions on marketing and nobody will buy it, because the market has changed over the years. 10 or 20 years ago, you would have a line of applications in front of your office for any job vacancy, and now it’s turned around completely because of the information available on the internet. Now people can check reviews on Glassdoor or Kununu to see if it’s a company they want to work for, so you need to make sure that what you have to offer is attractive!

So, we begin with a consultation and find specific and quickly adaptive ways to create a more attractive working space. We do a tonne of research for specific industries and implement this. On most occasions we send our videographer and photographer to shoot content like videos and pictures. These guys are really top notch, so we have really strong photos and videos, which helps us a lot with building a base.

A base is basically a specific page for a specific job, which is on a multipage level. I won’t get into the psychological reasons behind why it’s better to have multipage as I could talk for over an hour, but it’s simply better for the conversion rate. There’s a free tip for everyone reading this!

Once we have a base, we push with paid advertising using the photo and video material we have, and using the steps that we established in the consulting for creating new benefits within the business, which directs people to the base.

For people to do an application for our system it usually takes them around 60 seconds - it’s super quick, you don’t need a CV or anything, and we get a qualified application. We then have a team member who will call the person 5 minutes after their application and ask some questions based on our psychological script. We press a little bit on pain points and show them a possible solution with our current client. We then schedule interviews for our client with those applicants who meet all the qualifications.

Using this system we get super quick applications for our partners and clients and we have 2 strong case studies of this that can be seen on our website. We worked with a tax accountant company, and with us they hired 2 people in 2 weeks. Another client we work with (who we actually met at Tribes) are in IT solutions, and they often need employees and freelancers. For them we had over 300 applicants in 90 days, and we’re still working with them now. That's just 2 examples, but as have many more.

What type of businesses do you work with?

We have proven success in different niches already, but we prefer to focus on specific industries so we can give them our full attention and expertise. Currently clients are mainly in IT, tax accounting and it’s even going in the direction of hospitality, like hotels etc. Due to COVID a lot of hotels had to let go of staff, and so there is currently a big demand for what we do because it’s a different approach than usual.

What makes Innovade unique, why do clients choose you?

We have a guarantee of success, which I don’t think many companies do. We don’t work with companies if we’re not 100% sure that we can help them quickly. In these cases, we will give them some concrete steps for free that they can take to fix their base, for example working on increasing their Glassdoor score. If they fix the things we’ve suggested and come back to us then we can get on a call together. This hasn’t happened much to be honest!

Another thing that makes us unique is the value that we offer. For example, when I get on a sales call I try to provide them with so much value that it becomes impossible for them not to choose us! I think every business should operate like that, giving so much value that they couldn’t possibly choose anyone else to work with.

What is your favourite aspect of your job?

My favourite part is sales, because I love the reactions we get from people who might initially be sceptical. Usually when someone in sales calls you or sends an email, the first thing they might think is ‘Oh no, not another sales guy.’ I really love changing someone's attitude from ‘We’re not interested, leave us alone’ to ‘Wow, you guys are amazing, we love you!’ The transition is super exciting for me.

So the sales and the consulting are my favourite I would say, because even when consulting you give tips and concrete steps of what they can do, which is super enjoyable. One of the best things ever that I can do with my business is helping other people a lot and providing value, and making them smile.

Tell us why you chose Tribes!

I remember checking different shared workplaces around Düsseldorf and there are a lot of options! One thing I really liked about Tribes is the location in Düsseldorf, it’s one of the best I’ve seen. But also the small details of the location – if you go to the bathroom, there are motivational quotes on the mirrors, for example.

With other providers, I was shown their spaces and then sent home with a bunch of papers in my head, and that was it. With Tribes I was shown around the spaces, had a nice chat over a coffee, was offered the option to start working that day to test out how I liked the place, see what I think, and if there was anything I thought was missing they wanted to know. It was super helpful, and within the first hour I just felt it – it’s a cool vibe, I’ve gotta be here!

I started off with a coworking desk, then moved to a dedicated desk, then finally to an office!

We love to hear it! What are the benefits you’ve found being a Tribes member?

One of the benefits is definitely the networking aspect; it’s cool that there’s always the opportunity to connect over a coffee. Most of the people at Tribes are like-minded and have the same sort of vibe. We met one of our clients at Tribes, who went through a similar story to us of beginning with coworking and expanding to an office. We started saying hello and drinking coffees together, one thing led to another and we began working with them. We’re still working together now, and we have met 3 or 4 other clients at Tribes over the years.

Another benefit is that everything is taken care of for you. I really love that even though I have a private office, when I come in in the morning everything has been cleaned. If I forget my coffee cup on the table when I leave, it’s no problem! You don’t have to worry about organising a cleaner yourself, dealing with private companies etc, it’s all taken care of for you. I also love that all of our mail is looked after, iif I’ve been away for a couple of days I come back to my mail on the desk. It’s great and makes life so easy!