Exclusive Trusted Magazine Q&A with Bénédicte Dabin, HR International Consultant & Career Coach & Clinical Psychologist
What are the most significant trends shaping talent acquisition today? How have these trends affected our traditional methods?
Among trends, I would like to highlight the following issues. Firstly, new jobs and new post titles may confuse all the players as needs change and the world evolves, people must understand, cope with, and integrate with what already exists. Secondly, diversity of professional career paths: people may have one or two jobs all at once, career breaks, change floor. It’s much more complicated to read between the lines what happened, how and why at that moment,
What is the most significant in terms of competencies?
Looking for soft skills is a high priority in our fast-paced world, especially the ability to adapt and learn quickly. However, many employers continue to focus on diplomas and past experience in the usual ways as they try to fill a “hole” in place of fueling the future.
Technology of course impacts our way of sourcing, hiring, and on-boarding. On the one hand, it eases talent detection; on the other hand, restricts searches while abusing keywords that confine instead of open.
About the Selection Process: Can you walk us through your selection process? What metrics do you use to evaluate a candidate's potential beyond just their resume?
The first step and perhaps the most crucial is to create sincere dialogue with what applicants would be comfortable enough to tell their professional story. As recruiter, I have the duty to first provide up-to-date information on the vacant position (mission, key activities, team, context, challenges, position’s development overtime, selection process, company’s culture).
And then I engage in dialogue by questioning about personal experience which potentially match with short-and mid-term needs, listening, giving spontaneous feedback about similarities and divergences, questioning again and again on motivating factor and how applicant addresses issues and explores ways to solve them.
At the end, we give mutual feedback about the interview (data, learnings, challenges coming down the lines, candidate experience). If requested by the Employer, I use psychometric tests related to the job Specifics.
About Challenges: What are the biggest challenges in talent acquisition today?
A series of crises over many years impacted the labour market: anxiety and mistrust towards others, closing in our ourselves while we are being asked to be more flexible and open to diversity in terms of generation, gender, and nationality. Jobs today are often new and sophisticated; they obviously require strong collaborative skills to be successful.
Intensive communication is imperative to ensure all stakeholders are on the same page not only during hiring process but also before (hiring is not always the best solution) and when onboarding. In a nutshell, talent acquisition is a two-way process. Listening, questioning, showing up consideration for all the stakeholders, inspiring respect and confidence, are the best ingredients for solving the “HR equation”.
