“From a technical point of view, it seems to me to be an easy-to-use platform. We have been using it for about three months and have already noticed improvements. The number of applications received has increased, and, most importantly—an aspect that is very important for us—they are all collected in a single archive.”

Mamen Moya Prats CIRCE
Mamen Moya Prats

HRBP Talent and Development

Fundación CIRCE is a technology center that carries out studies and research on energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainability, etc., with the aim of transferring this knowledge to companies and helping them to be more efficient in these areas. It is based in Zaragoza and has two local offices, one in Madrid and the other in Brussels.

The foundation has more than 250 employees, mostly in technical roles. It has a very young average age—around 35—and a dynamic and multicultural environment, with staff coming from all corners of Spain and the world.

Mamen Moya Prats joined CIRCE in October 2019, in the Human Resources department, later renamed People and Talent. She was hired to work on selection, talent management, training and development, but in the beginning, given the strong growth of the foundation, she was mainly focused on the first two areas.

The Challenge

Rapid expansion is a great challenge for Fundación CIRCE’s People and Talent department, which continues to grow and restructure itself to cope with an ever-increasing workload.

The low level of digitization of recruiting processes, and above all the absence of a single database, further complicated the work. The CVs were mainly received at the company’s e-mail addresses and then copied into Excel files for filtering.

“As the volume of applications continued to increase dramatically, we needed much more automated control and management, and most importantly, a single database.”


The Solution

To solve these efficiency problems, the Foundation decided to acquire a recruiting software. Following a software selection involving several suppliers, they made the choice for Altamira.

“We chose Altamira because it suited our needs very well. We needed the system to be delivered in the cloud, to be easy to use, to be available in Spanish and English and to cover all our needs.”

The People and Talent department was in particular need of a single tool with which to manage the publication of job ads and their withdrawal, and to facilitate the receipt of spontaneous applications.

The back office needed to be able to freely “play” with candidate data, easily proceed with the selection process and create useful reports and statistics. Altamira met these requirements better than the other software they analyzed, offered good value for money and the implementation time was in line with their requirements. The support also lived up to expectations. During the implementation phase, Mamen and her colleagues had to meet strict deadlines and fill out various documents, a task that was made easier by the explanations and availability of Altamira’s staff. They were able to import the existing candidate database and customize fields on the platform, both on the career site and in the back office.

One change in particular has proved very useful. Using a dedicated field on the application form, applicants can now specify which area of CIRCE they are interested in working in, which helps the People and Talent team to quickly filter CVs in the first screening stage. Once the initial configuration was complete, the support service was fast and well-organized, including in fulfilling the small requests for changes and optimizations that came up with the use of the platform.

The introduction of Altamira Recruiting has already led to an increase in applications and time savings in the management of the recruiting process.


The numbers after 3 months of use

Number of published vacancies 34
Number of search projects created 33
Number of archived CVs 1459
Number of spontaneous applications filed 98
Number of hires 33
Average age of candidates 32.28

Line managers will soon be active on the platform, so that their evaluations and notes will also be included in a candidate’s file. In this way, if a particular profile is looked at again after some time, the People and Talent team will already have a complete picture of that candidate.

With an even more efficient search and selection department, Fundación CIRCE will be able to continue to attract the best talent from around the world and build a young and highly specialized workforce.

Other Case Studies

Find out how other Altamira’s clients have successfully updated their HR management processes.