Details of the search

A business analyst is a role that usually appears in a company when there are already products and customers. At this stage, the company is expected to have a certain level of traction, which could be a functioning product, consistent revenue figures, or a user base that is growing at a steady pace. 

This stage requires the team to work more efficiently on developing new products or improving existing ones. 

The need for a business analyst appeared because there were plans to develop new products. It was decided to open a vacancy that will report to the Product Lead.

Target profiles 

Important requirements from the client were following: 

• Experience in a small SaaS product companies (startups is a priority) in order to understand specificity of working at startups 
• Domain expertise. Ideal candidate should have experience with SaaS solutions related to sales, marketing or AI
• In addition, it is possible to consider candidates who have worked through outsourcing but specifically for the same product company (dedicated team) for a few years

The main responsibilities of this position focused on writing specifications according to stakeholder requirements. It is important that this nuance also suits expectations of the potential candidate, taking into account his/her career development plans for the next few years.

Our client preferred to hire candidates for this position on a b2b contract, so we had to find people who are ready for this type of work. 

In the previous edition of this newsletter we discussed that in Poland (and other countries) you can hire people on b2b contracts or as employees using HR platforms like this even if you don’t have an office in the particular country. So if you are interested please check the edition we published last week.  

Search locations 

Since the company’s office and part of the team are located in the UK, the company's management decided to search for candidates in the UK. 

After several weeks of searching in the UK, it was decided to add Poland to the list of target countries as well, because many candidates from the UK with whom we talked had salary expectations above the budget. 

During the search we identified that many companies in the UK and Poland are service (outsourcing / outstaffing) companies and there are not many product companies that build products in the sales & marketing space. We discussed this with the client and decided to extend the search among companies with a similar profile and products (regardless of location) even wider. 

The search revealed a large number of similar companies, but their business analyst teams were located in India that don’t meet our requirements due to another timezone. 

Recruitment process & candidates’ pipeline

In the search process, in the first place we considered small companies that develop products in the field of sales and marketing. 

The peculiarity of small companies was that the PM often played the role of a business analyst.

Therefore, our task was not only to find candidates with experience in a startup, but also to ensure that this startup was already at such a level of development that the team already has a business analyst.

We also looked at service companies and looked for dedicated teams there (ideally, the product is also in the sales and marketing category).

As a result we contacted 1,372 candidates, conducted video/audio screenings with 52 candidates, 25 candidates were presented to the client, 5 of them were interviewed by the client, and 1 candidate received and accepted a job offer. 

The offer was extended to a candidate from Poland who worked for the same outsourcing company over 5 years and had a previous background as a Technical Writer (this experience was very important for our client).

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This is a screenshot from the recruitment software that we use. You can see a little bit different numbers, because when we worked with candidates we moved them among different stages, including ‘not qualified’ so they disappeared from the funnel.

Conclusion  

British candidates with the required set of skills had higher salary expectations than candidates with similar qualifications from Poland.

The Polish market is also a service market and it is rather difficult to find representatives of international product SaaS companies with the required level of English and experience working with relevant products (sales, marketing, AI).

Quite a small number of startups on the Polish market

In many early-stage companies, a distinct business analyst role is often absent, as these responsibilities are typically assumed by the project manager.