Tag Archives: recruitment

Building employer’s image

Companies can spend a lot on their human resources without major results or improvement as they do not always align their recruitment strategy and corporate culture to the type of employees they wish to recruit and keep.

Two sets of benefits are usually considered:
Financial benefits and incentives
– Pay
– Bonus
– Health insurance
– Stocks or shares
– Pension funds
Non financial benefits
– Working culture : flexible hours and or work space, horizontal, collaboration, rewards
– Employee development plan: training development program, etc.
– Offices, infrastructures and working material
– Diversity of missions and tasks
– Perks : gym membership, transportation cards or credits

Companies believed in the right combination of financial and perks to build the right market traction to the desired talents. Developing an employment branding requires to establish the HR strategy that will define the pillars of the communications.

This HR strategy includes to work on the following aspect before being able to move forward on establishing this communication strategy.

  1. Understanding the Company current working culture and habits, image to candidates and employees.
  2. Assess their needs and opportunities to improve -> can something be changed, improved or stopped within the current process.
  3. Defining the type of profile the company wishes to attract and retain on the short and long term
  4. Understanding the type of benefits and perks these ideal talents are attracted by.
  5. Assessing the market and competition to define the right packages.

Historically, employees used to focus on long term objectives appreciating good pension fund or health, clear career steps and loyalty from employers, accepting lower revenues or other benefits in exchange of security and visibility.

Now Millennials are constantly on the look up for better opportunities, the most talented are not risk averse. Their loyalty is not only based on the money making potential of a job, but also the pride and attractiveness of the company name in the eyes of their community.

With the emergence of crowdsourced content management on social media and web platforms, any candidates can check the credentials of companies as potential employers – how their business behave on the market, with its employees and clients and what is their general footprint on the market.

Ambitious companies – whatever their size – cannot afford anymore to overlook their HR strategy if they wish to ease and save money on their recruitment processes.

That is to say, companies now have to « walk the talk » to convince their young talent to engage with them and participate into the process, as well as present a leverage to increase loyalty hence reducing turnover.

Then the strategy team can move forward on work the communication brief to address HR related topics starting with :

  • Get adoption from the management for the needs and reasons to implement a company employment branding
  • Define the relevant environments and subjects that resonate with your desired recruits and market.
  • Build an internal messaging and benefit for current employees which includes their participation into the strategy – internal engagement is the most powerful recruitment tool.
  • Set up the company external communications channels
  • Develop a dashboard presenting the relevant KPIs of the business for HR communication to pilot the strategy.

We are happy to provide you more guidance on the preparation and the implementation of your employment branding. Contact me anytime.

Finding the right team members

“We need to hire someone more senior for this role” is a phrase I have heard my whole agency life. But what means “being senior” in a business,

“We need to hire someone more senior for this role” is a phrase I have heard my whole agency life. Often, the choice is right and the person fulfil her role with professionalism. Still, we sometimes end up with a deceptive and ill-adapted solution where the person is not equipped to fill it mission, however senior s.he is.

This can have a devastating on the level of service on the short term and quality of the business relationship on the long run, I have experienced it first hand lately and it took me to reflect on the roots of the problem we faced.

Why recruitment does not always work and how to address it?

Analysing the internal issues we faced, I realised that this seniority definition is divided into the following pillars:

  • Expertise/ Skillset: based on the pure technical know how and specificities of an industry or a solution. Someone who is certified or accredited in a particular area of work. The more senior one’s get the deeper one’s knowledge is.
  • Experience: based on the length of someone’s acquaintance with a sector, a role or a situational environment which makes one’s knowledge about the potential outcome and necessities of the future role.
  • Values: based on the capacity to take ownership of a role and resolve to address any issues coming with it, including potentially managing team members.

I gather that each role does not require to reach the same level in each of these pillars. But the company needs have to be clear what the job requires.

How do you get the assessment right ? I read a lot of HR and Coaching blog to address this and the actual best advice I found is the following: Use your team members to confirm and clarify the role needs and values as the doers are the best persons to understand the role needed and the mistakes not to be made (again).

That includes :

  • Build a precise role description
  • Advertise it properly: internally and externally
  • Assess the applicant on those necessary pillars:
    • Expertise : check it skills with a test – does he have to master excel ? web based and/or collaborative tools ?
    • Experience: check with its old employer and work history
    • Persona : how does he cope with stress ? with other team members ? with stakeholders at all levels of the hierarchy ?
  • Do not underestimate practicalities : other job offers ? does he have to move in town ? where is his.her family?

As a manager, it is essential to clarify if your HR process is covering these 4 elements or needs to be cover by you. at the end of the day, the manager can sometimes « inherit » a team member he has not selected and end up not being able to keep its standard of service and productivity because of an ill prepared recruitment process.

When recruiting for your company is difficult, it can also emerge from the external outlook of your company as a good place to work.

Large businesses address this as part of their corporate communications strategy to support recruitment effort of qualified personnel.

If you are facing recruitment issues, and need support in building a recruitment strategy, do not hesitate to share your questions with us. we are always happy to help.