Recruiting is not just a question of feeling or intuition: it is a profession in its own right that requires rigor, methodology and vision. In Permit to recruitElise Moron explores the codes and issues of a process that is often underestimated. She explains to us the choice of this bold title and returns to the main ideas of her book, at a time when attracting and retaining the best talents is becoming a strategic challenge.
Your book is called “Permit to recruit”. Why did you choose this title and what is the philosophy behind this work?
Elise Moron: We got the idea for this title while debating during a recruitment event. We really liked the idea that everyone should have a recruiting permit. She implies that you need to train before practicing this profession. Unfortunately many managers and leaders recruit without expertise or skills on this subject thinking they are dealing with an easy discipline since “ it’s human “. However, recruitment responds to very specific codes, techniques and methodologies. Recruitment is not an art but a science. It is not exact but it nevertheless remains a science.
The term “License to hire” is also widely used in the United States. This is often the famous key that certain companies provide to their managers after compulsory training. In many companies, even in France, managers cannot recruit a single employee without having undergone this training. I am thinking in particular of companies like Doctolib or Engie.
What are the points of disruption or innovation in terms of recruitment methods?
Elise Moron: The real breaking point is mental. The goal is to realize that client and candidate are the same fight. They both have the same brain, so they have the same mechanisms, tools, techniques to adopt to seduce them, attract them, convince them, pamper them, bring them closer, onboard them, retain them. Except that a candidate, in addition to all that, must also be evaluated.
We must therefore give ourselves the means to achieve our ambitions. To make recruitment efficient, we must not hesitate to apply techniques borrowed from sales, marketing, product, data and psychology.
What qualities do you look for in a candidate?
Elise Moron: I am not looking for absolute intrinsic qualities in a candidate. A person can be a good candidate for company A and a bad candidate for company B. The context, the environment, the sector, the profession have a huge influence on the qualities that we will look for.
These qualities will also directly result from the kick-off meeting or brief that we do with operational staff. This allows us to have a list of hard skills, soft skills, accepted and non-accepted behaviors to look for among the candidates we will evaluate.
That said, we can always try to look for the 6 qualities which – according to a Linkedin study – indicate the presence of potential in a talent. We will thus look at adaptability, collaboration, prioritization, growth potential, leadership, culture add.
Companies must work on their employer brand even more than before to attract talent. What are your tips?
Elise Moron: Employer branding is a vast subject that we cover in several chapters of our book. We must understand that today the crux of the matter is no longer finding the right people. It’s about seducing them and convincing them to join us. To do this, we must not hesitate to speak out on social networks, particularly via ambassador programs, to promote the employer brand through employees but also to take care of the candidate experience. Indeed, the latter can either boost your attractiveness or undermine it. If the candidate experience is poor, candidates tend to talk about it on the networks, the employer brand is impacted, and candidate attractiveness is also impacted, which impacts the company’s ability to deliver to clients and therefore ultimately, the figure business.
You write in a context where the issue of diversity and gender equality is essential in companies. How can recruitment contribute to better representation of these issues?
Elise Moron: Recruiters have the means to restore social inequality by bringing into the recruitment process profiles from a diversity of gender, origin, cognitive, cultural and socio-economic background. Unfortunately, they are sometimes tied hand and foot by operational staff/managers who have preconceived ideas, clichés particularly about diplomas and schools. If the role of the manager must be to open his chakras and accept difference, the role of recruiters must be to ensure that on the starting line, at the start of the process, everyone is given a chance. . And everyone must also act for inclusive announcements, a stronger representation of “role models”. This is all we cover in our chapter 4.
Many sectors, particularly tech, are still struggling to attract women to their ranks. How can companies adjust their recruiting practices to meet this challenge?
Elise Moron: There are more and more initiatives from companies which have understood that this attractiveness begins with the education of young people. This is why they organize events for students to explain their profession and break the clichés. The company VO2, an international consulting player in tech, has notably taken action via a press and digital campaign to have more women in tech with slogans like “Women in tech, it’s not not just the voice in your GPS.”
What are the most common mistakes you have observed in recruiting during your respective experiences?
Elise Moron: One of the big mistakes is the lack of preparation for recruitment. Defining effectively and precisely who we are looking for or rather what skills we are looking for to do the job is essential. Often the brief is done in a hurry, is truncated or shaky and it always ends in a recruitment error. The alignment of expectations on the desired profile between the different stakeholders in the recruitment process is sine qua non for its success.
Another fairly common mistake is to believe that you can attract candidates naturally without doing anything. Today in a competitive market with a shortage of profiles, we are obliged to make efforts, to invest in seduction actions or to invest in our employer brand to attract and ensure that candidates apply. This is what we call inbound recruitment. There are a multitude of techniques to activate it effectively which we deal with in part 2 of our book which addresses in particular the employer brand, the career site, job advertisements, employee advocacy, the personal brand or personal branding.
In your opinion, what are the key skills of a modern recruiter, facing the current challenges of the job market?
Elise Moron: Today’s recruiter must be curious, agile and proactive.
Curious about all the techniques that are ancillary and related to recruitment and which allow you to be even more efficient on a daily basis. It must also be agile to be able to put itself in the shoes of the candidates to create a differentiating and impactful experience but also to understand the obstacles of managers to free them and create virtuous collaboration on a daily basis.
Today’s recruiter must also be proactive so as not to adapt but to truly initiate change and take the lead on recruitment issues. This necessarily involves a change in posture towards managers. The recruiter’s goal is also to evangelize good practices to managers to achieve harmonization of recruitment processes and practices, a guarantee of efficiency. Ultimately, and this is the opening of our book, for the recruiter to succeed in involving all stakeholders in this increase in skills, he must acquire skills in change management.
What roles can recruiters play to accelerate the progression of women into management and leadership positions?
Elise Moron: The role of recruitment teams is plural here. Firstly, when preparing for recruitment, we must ensure that the job is not discriminatory. We will replace an ad title from “Sales Director” to “Sales Director” for example. Furthermore, it is the duty of those recruiting to have a diverse panel on the starting line. This is true in an external recruitment process but also internally. A study cited in the book shows that a single woman in a short list with 3 men has almost no chance of being recruited. Parity must be an obligation of means at the end of the process but an obligation of results at the beginning.
Furthermore, we must promote women who have had exemplary careers and who have obtained positions of responsibility to inspire employees and make them want to go there!
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