# Evgeniia Volkova

Evgeniia Volkova is building Referrio, a hiring-tech startup focused on helping companies find candidates through referrals. Volkova's posts discuss referral programs, recruiting tools, and making hiring more humane for candidates.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/evgeniia-volkova/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evgeniiavolkova
- LinkedIn followers: 3,324
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, startup, recruiting, hr, talent-acquisition, candidate-experience, ai-in-recruiting
- Based on 11 dated posts, latest 2026-10-07

## Summary

Useful for practitioner-led discussion of candidate experience in ATS platforms and referral hiring, based on early Referrio building.

- Best for: An HR tech brand improving ATS candidate experience and application status transparency.
- Not for: Paid endorsement campaigns needing rate cards, guaranteed lead volume, or technical ATS integration demos.
- Check first: Confirm available formats, terms, and recent reach or engagement data before contacting them.

### Takeaways

- Most ATS platforms are built for recruiters, leaving candidates guessing after they apply.
- Referral hiring should be open to anyone, not just employees.
- AI should speed up recruiting without erasing the human layer.

## Main ideas

- **Applicant tracking systems are built for recruiters, while candidates are left guessing**: Volkova argues that most ATS platforms are designed around the recruiter’s workflow — sorting, filtering, moving candidates through a pipeline — and that this leaves candidates in silence. Job searching already puts people in a vulnerable position, so an unanswered application can feel like a quiet rejection even when it isn’t one. They point to Upwork as an alternative: applicants can see how many people applied, how many were shortlisted, and how many received a message, easing some of the self-doubt. The proposed fix is simple and human: tell candidates where they stand and treat transparency as basic respect, not a feature.
- **Referral hiring should be open to anyone, not just employees**: Volkova frames Referrio around a specific design choice: referrals should not be limited to a company’s own staff. They argue that the way referrals currently work is one of hiring’s biggest inefficiencies, and that opening the loop to outsiders who can vouch for talent — and rewarding them — widens the pool beyond a company’s employees. The posts target Talent Acquisition managers and directors at larger companies, whom Volkova asks directly about what works and what fails in referral programs. That makes product research part of the public conversation, with customer discovery happening in the open.
- **AI should speed up recruiting without erasing the human layer**: Volkova’s position on recruiting technology is not anti-automation. Sharing an article on AI in recruiting, they accept that smarter tools help teams move faster but argue the harder question is what should stay interpersonal. Hiring depends on discovering and vetting people through relationships, a nuance automation alone does not capture. Volkova asks how to preserve the human layer, decide which parts of hiring remain deeply interpersonal, and prioritize equity and trust alongside efficiency. They invite practitioners to compare notes.
- **Talk to practitioners before making product claims**: Across the posts, a consistent method emerges: Volkova uses LinkedIn to interview the people the product is for. They ask named audiences — enterprise TA managers and directors, recruiting and people-ops peers — about their experience, invite comments or direct messages, and share development milestones in small updates rather than launch announcements. The result is a public trail of requests for input, early-access invitations, and open questions.

## Work to read

- [Most ATS platforms are built for recruiters, not candidates](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/evgeniiavolkova_talent-acquisition-friends-i-need-to-say-activity-7498791980764643328-doxJ)
- [Ask enterprise TA leaders what works in referral programs](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/evgeniiavolkova_hey-linkedin-friends-im-working-on-referrio-activity-7377086111359184896-Zdx6)
- [Referrio soft launch and email list building](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/evgeniiavolkova_connect-talent-transform-careers-and-earn-activity-7302376619300515840-VdaU)
- [Hiring a Head of Growth for Referrio](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/evgeniiavolkova_head-of-growth-equity-commission-based-activity-7335379938906161154-tLA4)
- [AI recruiting needs a human layer](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/evgeniiavolkova_hiring-recruiting-talentacquisition-activity-7317598533686104065-S1Z0)

## Brand relationships

- **Referrio** (disclosed_partnership)

## Partnerships

The five posts by Evgeniia Volkova contain no sponsorship offer, media kit, rate card, or disclosed paid partnership. Their published activity centers on building Referrio, a referral-based hiring platform; candidate experience in applicant tracking systems; and how AI is changing recruiting. One post advertises a Head of Growth role at Referrio, paid in equity plus commission—an internal startup role, not a format a brand can book. Two others ask talent-acquisition contacts for input on referral programs and invite people to join a Referrio email list ahead of an April soft launch. The posts do not say how a brand could sponsor, collaborate with, or be featured by Volkova, and publish no partnership inquiry route. Buyers would need to contact them directly and ask about availability, pricing, deliverables, and turnaround.

## Alternatives

- Lindzi Cox: Choose Lindzi Cox when the goal is to get a talent-acquisition team to rethink a process before any feature is built. Cox's posts closest to this task work as synthesis and provocation: one distills Mads Faurholt-Jorgensen's talk into the argument that hiring managers misread role needs, hire people like themselves, and screen out "whispering talents," and endorses structure, tools, and even algorithms as the fix. Another uses "don't pave the cowpath" to ask whether the linear hiring funnel should exist at all rather than be automated. For an HR tech company whose problem is a candidate experience built around inherited recruiter-first steps, Cox is a stronger opening voice than a status-transparency poster if the goal is to get TA leaders questioning the funnel itself.
- Danny Rojas: Choose Danny Rojas when the goal is to widen the top of the funnel and make recruiters strategic partners, backed by a measured outcome. Rojas describes sourcing skilled-trades and diesel-technician talent through unconventional channels such as Craigslist and building training around people who lack the stated experience, and a second post walks through Signature HealthCARE's fragmented recruiting process where simplifying the experience and improving visibility with iCIMS produced a reported 52% rise in nursing applications, 47% in completed applications, and 17% in total hires. That post also carries the "we weren't partners, we were processors" framing — technology should give recruiters room to become better partners rather than just process more work. If the HR tech company wants a practitioner who can speak to ATS-enabled gains in application completion and a recruiter-partnership narrative, Rojas has the more concrete operational story.
- Gabrielle Carlson, M.Ed., PHR: Choose Gabrielle Carlson when the audience is TA leadership and the goal is a business-case conversation. Carlson writes about building talent-acquisition functions from scratch, listing structure that enables speed, workforce planning over requisition management, metrics that drive decisions, hiring managers as the biggest variable and employer brand starting inside the business. Another post argues that recruiting drives revenue, while most organizations still measure it as an administrative function through req count, time-to-fill and cost-per-hire. For an ATS vendor seeking CHRO and TA-leader buyers and positioning candidate experience as a growth lever, Carlson offers the more executive framing.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/