In the last ten years, this online underdog has grown from a catch-all note-bin for scatterbrained journalists to a serious collaborative business tool. Evernote’s General Manager for Europe and the Middle East expounds.

Beat Buhlmann teaches at Harvard, holds the timely degree-designation of an E-Mba, and spends his days at Evernote thinking about digital transformation and online marketing. A far cry from a four-year apprenticeship as a small-town car mechanic. For more than 15 years, Beat has been dealing with virtual teams, in theory and practice, and has published two books along the way: “Need to Manage a Virtual Team? Theory and Practice in a Nutshell”, and “Become the CEO of Your Own Life”. Ahead of his speaking engagement at Hiring Success 18 Europe, we managed to catch this fast-moving polymath and get a pulse of what he’ll be discussing in Berlin this September

With your extensive IT background, what attracted you to Evernote?

For more than two decades, I have been fascinated by productivity, by how can I achieve my goals faster, more easily, spending less money, using less resources, or a combination of these things. Evernote was the ideal place to make my passion my job.

What have been the biggest challenges?

There was a time where Evernote did too many things, like selling office supplies, bags, and even Evernote socks (no joke). Since the new CEO, Chris O’Neill, took over, we refocused on our core business: making people more productive and helping them achieve their goals. Ten years of Evernote took not only talent, but persistence and grit – and these are the values we will keep with us as we move forward. Introducing Evernote Business in 2012 has been by far our biggest change – it was a great way for us to affirm that not only are we passionate about personal productivity, but our commitment to teams and the workplace.

Given the nature of the product, are people still hesitant to go fully digital, or have you stopped having to convince potential users Evernote is safe and reliable?

There will always be skeptics saying that going digital is risky, and actually, there is no such thing as 100 percent safety. We face risk every day in our lives, whether we’re on a plane or sitting at home. A lot of people don’t fully understand what cloud means, and therefore say no to cloud technology in a business context. That’s why we wrote a cloud whitepaper to help people understand that cloud is still the safest place for their data.

You’ve also written two books. What was the impetus for that? How was that process for you?

Passion. Pure passion about two key topics: managing remote teams (book 1: link), and how to combine business and private life in a meaningful way (book 2: link).

How much of a competitor to Evernote is something like Slack?

They are two very different tools in one ecosystem. You can clip Slack conversations into Evernote or share previews of notes within Slack. Many of our users love these integrations, because their favorite tools compliment each other, and this makes them more productive.  

How much has machine learning and AI become integrated into Evernote? Where do you see that technology talking this product in the coming years?

Research and development contribute hugely to Evernote’s popularity and usefulness. Many Evernote users had their first “Wow!” moment when they realized they could upload handwritten notes and search for them later. We’ve got many exciting plans for the future that will incorporate new technology to augment productivity power.

The second installment of our Feature Spotlights from our Fall Product Release is here. Today we unpack our Slack App integration which allows Hiring Managers and Recruiters to engage all departments in the hiring process by bringing important information to them on the platform where they already work – in this case, Slack.

One complaint that is common among Recruiters and Hiring Managers is that it’s hard to get departments outside HR to engage in the hiring process. One reason for the poor adoption rate of hiring practices in other departments is because other departments aren’t using the same platforms as the Recruiters and Hiring Managers.

It makes sense that a Hiring Manager or a Recruiter would be on the SmartRecruiters Talent Acquisition Suite all day fielding Candidates but a Software Developer probably isn’t doing most of their work or communication within the SmartRecruiters platform. But, if they’re on Slack they’re already in the SmartRecruiters Ecosystem.

Now team members don’t have to be on our platform specifically, to be part of our Ecosystem. That means the full power of SmartRecruiters can be delivered to the platform where you already work and communicate – and for most work teams that platform is Slack.

We believe hiring is a team sport and our Slack App helps get the right people on your team.

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Now you can go to the SmartRecruiters platform and enable Slack (slide 1). Once Slack is enabled, it’s easy to export candidate information to coworkers. Just create a channel by clicking ‘open hiring team channel in Slack’ (slide2). And you’ll see the channel appear in your Slack (slide 3). Then simply export the Candidate’s information (slide 4). Once the channel is set up you can invite your colleagues to contribute (slide 5).   

Once the information is in Slack, it will be easy to locate. SmartRecruiters’ links will automatically ‘unfurl’ so no one is scrolling up and down trying to guess which link is which. Unfurling is a Slack term which essentially means a link will appear with a basic preview instead of a long string of letters and numbers which clutter a conversation and make it hard to locate information.

Think of the difference as if you were going to post a photo of yourself winning a 5k  online but instead of your photo showing up on your feed there was only an HTML script. Would anyone click on that script to see the photo? Probably not. So when you showed up to work the next day, you would wonder why no one congratulated you on your victory. The reason, of course, would be is that no one would have made sense of the random link you posted.

If you want to communicate important information you need to make it accessible.

You don’t want to show up to an interview and realize that your Hiring Team didn’t receive the relevant information about the Candidates because either they aren’t monitoring the platforms to which your posting or the links you shared have ended up in a jumble.

Let’s say I’m a Hiring Manager who is deciding on 6 candidates to interview for a Junior PR position from 20 Applicants. I know that whomever I hire will end working closely with my VP of Marketing and also with the Product Manager so I want to make sure I get them involved in the process at an early stage. I’m looking at their schedules for the coming week and both are jam packed so instead of delaying the hiring process by trying to meet in person, I can create a Slack channel with all the relevant information. My super busy marketing VP and Product Manager can review updates on their phone between tasks and I can fill the position sooner.

A week passes I have an initial phone interview with 6 applicants and then my VP of Marketing and my Product manager have video interviews with 3 that I’ve narrowed down. From Those 3 we bring in 2 for a final face to face interview. Before the meeting, I’m able to quickly review again all the notes from our Slack channel and find the final 2 resumes quickly through the unfurled links that are already on the channel so I come to the meeting with their individual profiles fresh in my mind.

We as a hiring team are torn because both candidates are so great! So we add the VP of Global Operations to our channel to weigh in. They are able to locate the links to the candidate’s profile and Resume without a problem and even though they’re en route to a conference they’re able to give us their input right away because Slack sent them notifications and we send an offer!

With everyone involved, we know we’ve made a good hire and me, as the Hiring Manager, can rest easy knowing that I’m not onboarding someone unsure of whether they’ll be a good fit with their team.

When we look at it from the Candidate side it’s better as well. They are joining a team with which they’re already familiar. Imagine walking to a new job not knowing anyone – that’s scary and stressful! Now imagine starting a new job where you’ve met with the team and gotten to know the work culture – that’s exciting!

SmartRecruiters believes that hiring success can be a matter of form when you engage all the resources at your disposal, namely the colleagues who have a stake in the new Hire. Bring the information to them and make it easy for everyone to engage. They’re already in the ecosystem with Slack – they just don’t know it yet.

Fall means beautiful heaps of russet leaves – ripe for the jumping-in but even more exciting, Fall means more features in the SmartRecruiters Ecosystem. It’s here! The latest Product Release! Integrations that will save time, encourage collaboration, and boost candidate experience.

When we say integration we mean partnership with the platforms you already use like Facebook, Google Job Search, and Slack so you can work where you work best with the full power of SmartRecruiters’ Talent Acquisition Suite behind you.

Open up a channel in Slack with other interviewers, use Facebook to create a job marketing campaign, or narrow down your job hunt by commute time with Google Job Search – all these things are now possible within the SmartRecruiters ecosystem

Our OS ecosystem will now include these major players to enhance each step of the recruiting process from attracting to selecting to hiring. It’s all about saving you time so that you can invest in relationships with the right candidates. Because we think technology should help us be better more personal humans.

And that’s why these small tweaks and add-ons are actually a big deal!

Maybe you’re waiting for a promising candidate to graduate you can use the Defer Candidate feature to resurface them at the right time and on the other side if you know a candidate is a poor fit immediately (heartbreaking but it happens) you can utilize the Delayed Rejection option to observe an appropriate period of consideration. Recruiters can also expedite the vetting process with Screening Automation that uses enhanced screening questions to sort through applicants more efficiently.

We give you the reigns with the right amount of flexibility and control to tailor the experience to the needs of your business. In the end we want you to feel in command of the hiring process. It should be a good for everyone.

One key component of how we fit with your business is the language we use. Now pretty much wherever you are you can find the front and back end languages you need from our system. We are adding more languages to the platform’s back office functionality, including traditional Chinese, Hungarian, Japanese, Portuguese and Slovak, on top of the 12 other languages it currently supports, and is adding new candidate languages, including Greek, Indonesian and Ukrainian, to the 30 other candidate languages currently supported.
Feature Close-ups

Facebook – As our collaboration with Facebook develops we continue to support customers with the out-of-the-box Facebook app, full Share to functionalities and most recently the ability to create targeted advertising campaigns with the power of facebook and the support of SmartRecruiters marketing team.

Google Jobs Search –  Take your jobs to the top of the search list! Our Alpha partnership with Google makes it easier for our custom jobs to be discovered by candidates. Part of this partnership includes improved access to detailed information like job location and commute time via Google Maps, with all our job ads. With the new Google Job Search functionality, candidates won’t have to navigate cumbersome job boards to find relevant opportunities which means more completed applications.

Slack –Reduce clicks and encourage collaboration. You can now automatically create job channels in Slack from the SmartRecruiters platform based on hiring team. Participants are also able to unfurl links via the Slack app, providing direct access to candidate and job profiles for recruiters, hiring managers and interviewers. No switching in and out of apps!

Defer Candidate – Keep your company’s candidate pipeline relevant. Resurface candidates at the appropriate time within the SmartRecruiters platform. No externally-triggered reminder needed!

Delayed Rejection – This upgrade to the Rejections feature enables recruiters to delay a rejection email to a candidate, so that they still have the feeling of being considered instead of simply “screened by a robot”. This is a way for recruiters to respect the time investment of the candidate and ensure a positive experience even when delivering bad news.

Amazon Alexa – SmartRecruiters is excited to integrate Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant into our candidate platform to make it easier for candidates who use Echo to check their application status and send messages to recruiters using Alexa voice commands. This feature will be accessible to everyone at the start of next year is currently on available to select users.

Wherever communication is happening is where we want to be and we look forward to integrating with more and more platforms in the future. You choose where you do the work and we help with the how. Our OS is built to expand as the needs of our customers change and grow with a dynamic ecosystem that’s built for innovation and a team that’s always looking ahead. Winter is coming but unlike the gorgeous autumn leaves, these features are here to stay and will only get better.

Link to full press release!