Talent-Ed | Season 3 Episode 2: Oana lordachescu Head of Tech TA in the EU at Wayfair

Speaker A: Awana, I just want to thank you so much for joining the Talented podcast today. As you know, uh, Talented is all about sharing experiences from the talent Acquisition space, allowing our listeners, uh, the ability to lean in and learn, uh, from. From, uh, highly capable, experienced people like yourself, sharing in tips and tricks of how you've got to, where you've got to today and how you overcame some of the talent challenges that you will have delivered. So that what I'd love to do is just spend the next sort of 30 to 45 minutes just getting to know you, getting to understand your career, getting to understand, uh, how you tackle some of your talent challenges in your career so some of our listeners can learn from that. Does that sound good to you?

Speaker B: Hi, Liam. Um, and thank you for inviting me. Hi everyone. That sounds like a big list. I hope we can get through it. Otherwise we're going to need to do episode two.

Speaker A: Yeah, we'll do episode two. Exactly. That sounds great. That sounds great. You're currently the head of Technology TA for EU at Wayfair, is that right?

Speaker B: I am Neil, yes. I am based in Berlin. I moved here mid Pandemic, uh, two years ago. Um, I cannot believe time has passed so fast. But, um, yeah, I moved, um, and spent, uh, a short while, unfortunately, only with Zalando, um, and then moved to Wayfair, where I took the role of, head of, uh, Talent Acquisition for Technology and analytics eu. Um, and it's been a great ride so far. So very, very happy to be here and very happy to, um, work with the team and we'll dive a bit more into that as well.

Speaker A: But, yeah, that's amazing. And what an amazing brand as well, and what a journey. So, yeah, I'd love to go on that journey with you. So we're going to finish at Wayfair, where you are today, and learn some more there. But take me right back to how you got into Talent Acquisition.

Speaker B: You know, a lot of the times when I ask that question to especially people when I interview them just for curiosity, it's not part of the interview process. Right. But I, um, think I'm one of those people who didn't fully fell into it. Right. Like, a lot of people in recruitment, they're like, well, I had a friend and it's like, let's do this over the summer, um, I actually studied the history, uh, for bachelor degree, um, and I knew I don't want to be a teacher or research in that domain. I moved, um, from a very small village in Romania to Bucharest in the capital, and I said to myself, I'm just going to study this because I'm passionate about it and I know I'm going to enjoy it, but I'm going to have to deal with the big city. Finding your destiny, uh, piece, uh, by myself separately. And um, I really had the opportunity to work in a tech, um, telecom company at that point, an isp, an Internet service provider, um, and they didn't have an HR department per se, or a talent acquisition department per se. I was in university, was doing a bit of everything and they needed to recruit some network engineers and they're like, we have no idea how to do this. Just give it to me, I'll try. So I was 19 and I started learning about NOC engineers, about data centers, about all these things which are fascinating. And Romania had uh, quite a good resource on that. So it was a very good school. Um, from there I started working into an international agency again. I was super, super lucky to work with some amazing managers at that point who taught me things not just about the candidate experience, but also business development, stakeholder management, speed and reliability in what you're doing. I loved it, um, to be honest. So from there I did around five years or more agency work. Um, one of the best agencies still on that market in Bucharest is brainspotting. I had the honor to also lead some teams there, um, while still very young I might say. But I got a vote of confidence. So that was, I would say a good boost for me at some point to say I'm good, I just need to expand my wings outside of Romania

Speaker A: on that point. Was it the traditional contingency agency type environments, that sort of stuff?

Speaker B: I did a bit of both actually. So I think half of the time was more contingency agency based. Uh, I would say half of it for recruiting for IBM, Accenture, all these things in Slovakia, Czech Republic, very crazy for that time in Romania. But the other side was m a lot more, I would say assessment centers as embedded. We were working on retainer a lot with partners like Vodafone, um, or other telecom organizations in Romania. So I to see a bit of everything very early in my career, which was really good for me.

Speaker A: I think one of the things that I've noticed just in building teams internationally for clients and for us is that um, in the traditional agency world, while we do try to be very different than the traditional agency, the people that have come from traditional agency are ah, some of the highest performers we have in this business because they just get stakeholder management. The pace of work, the Candidate experience. And some of the people that we brought to the business, uh, have decided to take a leap from external through to internal. And that was, was that the conscious decision that you wanted to. The journey, you wanted to take internal side, uh, of things?

Speaker B: Interesting question. And no, I was one of those people who, I think when I was in Dublin with my first work there with Stelfox High. Stelfox people, um, I was saying I never want to be internal. That sounds so boring, honestly. Like, I, I was so driven by the fact that I can work with any client more or less that I want and I can diversify my portfolio and I can learn from so many different people and so many different business, business models and so on. Right. Um, and at some point with Stealth Fox, actually they were the ones who had a project with Activision Blizzard, those who play Call of Duty, they would know. And they have this infrastructure group in Ireland, in Dublin, Demonware, and they needed somebody embedded for like three months or so. Um, I was working with them already in agency mode, so they just needed some boost. Um, at that point I was like, okay, I'll join you full time for a period of time. Um, and, uh, then I'll be back to agency days. But I got the taste, to be honest, after that little experience and I met some amazing people there. Even to this day, we keep in touch. And I love the company. I love it. It's very geeky, very technical.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And I loved all that. And that kind of caught the eye of some folks in Facebook at that point.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And again, I was like, I don't want to, I don't want to be in a big organization that's going to be, you know, just a small person in a big system of things. And I did interview, I remember back then, and a lot of our audience would have this, the same challenge, right? Like you interview with Google, then you interview startups. How do you choose? There's no recipe. But I, I think what I really enjoyed about moving in the first, like, proper internal role with Facebook was that the people were really, really passionate, especially did the same, like in an agency, right. They were really hungry for knowledge and that made me go there. And they were also doing a lot of the work that I really enjoyed working on infrastructure, sre type of role. Again, very, very technical stuff. Um, so from that point onwards I was like, okay, internal is not that boring.

Speaker A: And what year were you at Facebook? Sorry, what year, years were you, uh, based at Facebook in Dublin or in the uk?

Speaker B: Eight years ago? Uh, seven years ago. In Dublin. Yeah.

Speaker A: And uh, so you're at Facebook. One of the things I've always been curious, Facebook's obviously an amazing brand that would have quite a natural pool for talent. Is that a good assumption? Um, and if you do, that's a good. Right, so we'll come on that. But also. And we'll come on to diversity piece later. But when you do have, if you do have such a full of uh, talent, how do you make sure that you create that diverse workforce when you have an influx of candidates?

Speaker B: My experience on that note, I would say it surprises people. So while we did have a lot of applicants indeed, the bar was so high and the roles were so specific that we would still need to source 90% of the time.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: So we would go through hundreds of profiles on a weekly basis and select the 5, 10%, um, that would cut, um, was not especially back then. Again, maybe in other types of roles it would be different but for these very niche technical roles, the bar was so high. The uh, specificity I was hiring them network engineers for laying down the entire plans to put cables under the sea between the continents for us to have Internet. So it was called Project Agvila. It was super interesting. And then of course all the data center work uh, for Facebook is quite fascinating. They opened data centers in Ireland after I left, but they had a massive one in Sweden already. Um, so the answer is not really like, even if you are a very high, like attractive brand, you need to make that balance with quality and with exactly what you're searching. And even if people would come in, even the ones we source. Right. Like again, 80% would not pass the interview. So your funnel would get very small, very fast.

Speaker A: That's okay. So that's really interesting. I want to stay on that for a moment if I may because um, um, I believe the role of talent acquisition when you have a good candidate is sometimes convincing the hiring manager that they are right. Because they do have that uh, 30 minute window. And depending on how good that 30 minute window is, like a yes or a no. Uh, right. But you probably have this sort of lobbying period, communication period. So you've probably got more of a picture of this individual coming in than you would have uh, than the hiring manager. They have a very, very specific. A lot of our listeners and uh, some of our clients are ah, recently invested scale up businesses. Right. And they have a talent acquisition function very small usually. And um, they would have to convince usually the entrepreneur or the founder, the owner that this person's right. Who holds a Very high standard. How did you go about positioning candidates to these individuals that held the bar so high? And how did you have any examples whereby you sometimes had to really convince someone because you knew they were right, but. But the hiring manager doesn't buy them.

Speaker B: M. It's always tricky, right, because it depends where you are in the process. How much did you learn from some failures? Um, so there's always the calibration piece, right? I hope people have the chance to do that with their hiring managers. But I think the thing that always saved both of us, right, like, it's the hiring manager who needs to hire, not me. So first of all, they need to realize that, uh, whatever decision they decide to make, it impacts everything. Time, the quality, the engagement of candidates and so on. But what I would say I would advise everybody to do is to try to build with their hiring manager a grid of what good looks like, uh, with as much variety as possible, right? Because again, roles also evolve. So if you do your structured interview and you say, I need A, B, C, how does that look? Depending on the level, the background of the people, what would be option A, option B, option C? So that you also kind of give yourself a bit of a chance and a bit of a buffer. Um, and this combination of structured interview, because I know where you're hinting at, hiring managers change their mind all the time as well, right? So we need to lock them in as early as possible and say, no, we agreed on this thing. I've got you exactly what you need, right? So I think that that combination of a core, what good looks like, and trying to find some. Some buffers, what would be some alternatives? What would be some replacement? What are those transferable skills that if you don't find that precise match, which you would probably never find, um, you can work with and you have a team or you have a certain plan to make it work for yourself. So core buffer, fantastic advice.

Speaker A: Thank you for that. So you did a good stint at Facebook and then you went on to booking.com where you literally took a business from, um, 20 to 250. Tell us a bit about that booking,

Speaker B: I think, is my darling experience. And probably all the colleagues I had during that time would say the same. Um, uh, it was a fascinating time of scaling for booking.com in Amsterdam, um, for the TA team. So when I joined, um, I loved it at Facebook, to be honest. But after a couple of years in Ireland, it was a bit small, and taking a plane everywhere was not very easy. It's still an island, you know. This. No, you can actually take the train actually to France. Right. So, uh, you have a little pathway. But as an expat it was getting a bit difficult. So there were a few options to move, uh, with Facebook to London or us. Again, it was a bit counterproductive for my thought process at that point. So, um, interesting point. Just to make sure that the audience takes advantage of this. During one of the SRE conferences, the biggest SRE conferences in Dublin, I met the engineers from booking.com because they were also at the conference pitching their roles for similar. So I met the engineers there and I kind of kept in touch and when I was ready to leave, I reached out to somebody at booking one of these engineers and like, I'm looking for my next step. Is there anything there? So this person made a good referral bonus just by that, you know, 10 minute connection in a conference. Um, all these things matter. But, um, with booking.com I joined and I picked up, um, as a lead infrastructure and security teams. Um, we were 20 in TA when I joined. I think in about a year and a half we were around 80.

Speaker A: Um, it was a boom, talent acquisitions, 250 people. How, I mean, and that's just a talent acquisition team.

Speaker B: Now, I don't know exactly how big it is because they fragmented that back then we were basically supposed to hire about 1,000 plus engineers per year. So we had to scale the T18 first. Um, and I was, uh, partnering with mainly four other peers. Of course it evolved in time. Um, our leader at that point, Selena Ritter, who is now in Amazon, an amazing lead who also challenged that all the time and really pushed us to think at scale but also collaborate really closely. I think it made us, um, enjoy a lot what we were doing, but also tackle important problems when it comes to the team building itself, but also working with our business leaders to figure out what makes sense. Right. Like in terms of scaling, timing, pacing, profile, interview, assessment practices, diversity, equity and inclusion. Um, there were many layers for us to get to a certain point of we are now stable and we can hire these 1,000 engineers per year, no problem at all. I mean, there's always problem.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So I think. So what's curious, obviously that challenge of scaling a talent acquisition team up in today's world is a different, uh, case. It's very, very difficult at the moment. What, uh, advice would you give to people who are trying to build out their talent acquisition teams today? And what do you look for when you're looking to build your teams in this sort of caliber of Individuals, what sort of things you look out for in you're building today.

Speaker B: M. So let's start maybe with what I would look for. Each organization has its quirks, maybe, but also its opportunities. And I think at least at that point, booking and we can go with some others later. But we had to be very data driven because we had to make some very quick decisions and be very agile. And data was the only piece that would help us make those decisions. Like, where do we want to source, which countries, how do we want to put the strategy into place, how do we advise the business? Like, what's the funnel looking like, where are some good opportunities? So that was a, um, team throughout each interview, for example. So we would have again, a bit of a grid on what will make somebody successful here. Right. If you don't have these core things, you're going to struggle or you're going to fail or you're going to have a long, painful time to learn. I mean everything is learnable. But ultimately there was a, uh, certain passion or inclination or potential. Right. So I think that that was definitely something that we were looking for. But the second part, I would say was really the diversity of backgrounds. Um, we were, we were really conscious about doing panel interviews for all our recruiters even today. Right. I think it's fairly normal, um, just to understand what the value add of this person, whether your agency, you're not, whatever you were from, um, how do you contribute longer term, right? Like, how are you going to develop in this organization and how are you going to put a bit of a footprint on the whole, uh, team? And there was a very interesting piece and I stole it and I'm using it a lot now. Um, especially as you grow in your career and as you become a bit more tenured in a certain team, how do you multiply yourself? We called it the force multiplier. So, so you are an enabler of others at some point. Through your knowledge, through your network, through even the plans and initiatives, you can pull people with you, you can push people and they become better. So therefore the whole team becomes better just by these small actions. Right. This force multiplier, um, I really like that concept and I think it works really well when you're thoughtful about that, definitely.

Speaker A: So that's something that resonates a lot with me. Uh, one of the things that, uh, I tried to do in my last role in this business today is, uh, build team of people that are around you that when they're, when they're in the room, you don't need to be in the room, you know. So they are obviously replicating the values, beliefs, uh, work rate and quality of the business. It means in a fast growing scaling company you can not only multiply. Well if you multiply yourself, you multiply the work rate and the performance and the delivery, uh, again and again. So uh, that's fascinating. And then you went on to Zalando?

Speaker B: No, actually no. After booking dot com, um, I had a very interesting opportunity in Paris with Criteau is a less known organization, I think about 3,000, 3,500 people at the moment. They have offices in Paris, Grenoble and Michigan. Back then when I was there they also had the Palo Alto um, team and I got the opportunity to build one of the few AI labs that are in Europe. So you would see some with Facebook, with Google, Amazon criteria and at that size around 100 people, 100 plus machine learning, data science, data engineers. Um, uh, very, very interesting. So yeah, I've been through Paris as well for a bit.

Speaker A: Well traveled.

Speaker B: I'm a nomad for sure. In the previous life I was a nomad.

Speaker A: And you settled in Berlin now, right?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And that's when you land into Zalando, is that right when you first landed?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, the same I think a bit of network. Right. The advice, keep, keep, keep your bridges um, tight. Um, a former colleague from booking, um, the same. There was an opening in Zalando and I interviewed with them. It was really amazing to meet the leaders there. Um, when I joined unfortunately the role was not exactly what I was looking for for that particular time. Plus the person that I was supposed to work um, with or for no matter how you want to put it. Store and Winter is now my current manager in Wayfair. So there was a bit of a transition I would say more towards uh, following a leader that I really respect and I really um, feel uh, that I can learn from. Um, and here we are actually um, still still together with a very good leadership team I feel. So.

Speaker A: Yeah. And well that goes towards our conversation earlier about how you build people around you that can replicate. When you leave the business you want to take the people with you because you've invested so much in them and you well oiled team and it's operating between you.

Speaker B: Eventually I think once you grow in your role and again you've been in a couple of areas and hopefully you've done well. People know you and um, uh, they want to be more with you to see how it goes. Right. The industry at some point gets really small to be Honest. Uh, which is a good thing. I love this part that we can still find our own paths and build new things all the time, but in the same time you have a network of people that you can rely on. Um, and um, to be honest, I think I realized that fairly late in life. I wish I would have realized that earlier than the community is really important and things initiative like Hung's or yours now I think they're so important and we don't value them enough. Um, everything I learned was from other people. Like there's no, I mean there are now a few books on recruitment, the hiring success. And I think there's more and more, especially at the beginning. I learned from the others and without them, yeah, nothing would have happened.

Speaker A: You're right. I think, I think, you know, um, one of the things I've noticed about this industry while, um, I mean in my view, especially in the uk, let's face it, recruitment as in the traditional sense hasn't probably got the greatest name in the world, uh, because it's kind of got this old sort of spray praise, CV type, uh, connotations to it. But actually in house, Talent Acquisition is actually, I feel a different area and I feel there are lots and lots of communities, uh, that we're part of and we contribute to events we go to. Talking to what you've been saying earlier about uh, how you've used your networks to move around your career, move around the world. I've found personally, uh, that the networks within Talent Acquisition have been very open to new people coming and very open to learning, very open to progression and supporting. It's a good network. Hence why we do. And you've agreed to come on this sort of thing, right, so that other people can learn from it. I'm interested to learn if there are any that you use personally, um, what sort of. Are there any kind of groups that you uh, follow, any uh, uh, I guess, uh, networks that you're part of that have helped you through this sort of networking phase into different uh, roles you take.

Speaker B: So in the recent years, I would say of course recruiting, um, toolbox from uh, the US that's a bit separate, more on assessment and dei. They do a lot of classes, but they also have a lot of community built around that. So definitely recruiting toolbox, but recruiting brain food here with Hung Lee. One of the biggest communities we have, and I think we can hopefully keep on counting on it, is diversifying. So that's pretty, pretty amazing. Um, and I think what was interesting for me, I was always pulled in Some other type of initiative. Like for example now I'm doing a co hosting podcast with uh, BAS Talent series, it's called. You find it on Spotify. There's small trials, more things that connect you with even more people. Uh, I think in the uk what I see really strong is this um, um, recruitment leaders 100 recruiters. That's a strong community that I don't see in other countries to be honest. And it's really good to stay close with. And um, back in the day when we could do events, those were really interesting. So I try to attend a couple of events. Even if I'm now I'm speaking out of you, but in general I would try two, three, just to attend. I think you will find your group, you will find your gang.

Speaker A: I think uh, there are some great communities you mentioned. We know the recruiters 100, the R100. Uh, well they've got a uh, rep fest coming up this year. I think maybe the first one, the second one since COVID that's happening in person. We're going to be there, we're going to be sponsoring. I think if you haven't already. I'm sure

Speaker B: I have my team all like when are we all going to breakfast? I'm like maybe so now I'm going to count on you Leo.

Speaker A: And one of the things that uh, talk about communities though the recruitment leaders do is the 100 I find are all quite proudly promoting that they are part of that. Plus putting themselves out there to support an industry of talent leaders and a community built for supporting people in talent acquisition. And they do a number of initiatives from uh, campfires and events and uh, big exhibition festivals, uh, that just draw people in and I think Bobby Leonard and his uh, partner, uh, promote that really, really well. It's definitely one of the best I've seen. Uh, you've also got the In House Recruitment Expo as well. In House Recruitment, we sponsored that as well. They're fantastic as well. They've got a pretty, they got like 20,000 strong engaged community.

Speaker B: Uh, Natasha, right, Natasha, has been a big driver there

Speaker A: for people coming up in this world. What we're trying to say is there are so many avenues and portals to learn, lean into and gather knowledge. You just got to look for it and be open to it because I think it's all there. The support's definitely there for sure and

Speaker B: it's evolving and you find something for your taste I think ultimately. Um, and never neglect your alumni networks. Wherever you've been, wherever you're, you know, you Kind of see people going, they become what I call weak ties. Um, for people geeking out about social uh, networks. Check this out. Weak ties apparently sometimes are stronger than your immediate uh, connection. So do nurture those and do understand the impact of that through your life and through other people's life. Again, it's not all about you, but maybe you can help others, um, connecting faster when they need.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So now you're at Wayfair, um, and you're scaling up the European, uh, technology, uh, area of um, Wayfair, predominantly Berlin, um, Berlin based. That's uh, the European head office. Uh, am I right?

Speaker B: Yes, that is correct.

Speaker A: Tell me a bit about your role responsibilities there and uh, how it works, how it looks.

Speaker B: Sure. Um, and uh, thank you for your partnership. Uh, I think without chapter two we would have struggled a bit. So that was very nice. But yeah, I'll also maybe give a. For people who are interested in adding buffer to their teams. Um, when I joined the uh, mandate was hopefully we're out of COVID and we can pick up back with our lives. And we had to scale really fast. We were four people in the team. Now we're 25 across TA. We are almost 90 and 80 so percent are here for less than 12 months. So both my area in technology and analytics, but commercial operational, we had to invest um, our year to be honest in getting the right people in at the right time. And I would say we have a good, strong, stable team at the moment. Um, for Wayfair specifically We are around 3,400 engineers. It's a company of 20,000 people. We are an E commerce, uh, platform for everything home. It's driven by technology. We, I would say we're quite unique in the market but we are at the moment in Europe only in Germany and uk we're expanding these areas so there's a massive market opportunity for us. But in the us Wayfair is ah, a staple name. Right. Like it's like Tesco for years. Everybody knows it from the small villages to the big cities. Um, but it's a very interesting business model. I was at a conference in Lisbon, I think somewhere in autumn. Um, and it was one of the first conferences in person and there was a, of around 200 people. And I asked like, who here has bought furniture online? One person only. Um, so this is massive opportunity for us. Right. Like that's going to completely shift if you ask this in Amsterdam, half of the population, especially our age probably would have bought stuff online for home. So um, somehow for US Waker is mainly making sure that we hire the right engineers for these expansion projects. We call a lot storefront, everything about supplier, um, uh, platform. So that brings us into tapping very quickly in everything. European, uh, talent, but we also hire globally. So I think this is what I notice a little bit when we talk about building teams, getting people in who can work with that level of complexity. Because it's not just I open the role, I find somebody, they come in, they sign the contract, bye, bye. It's a lot of can you move? How's your family looking like? What's the global mobility? What's the global situation at the moment? Before we would ask do you want to move? Now we ask can you move? Is your country open? Are you on lockdown? Right. Totally. Totally. So I think this is a very steep learning curve for most people. And I would say the second, uh, big learning curve is um, the tooling piece. Um, we have very large uh, atss, very large solutions for everything tech that sometimes can be a bit difficult to change, especially once you want to automate things. So I would say it's very interesting to consider will I be agile enough? Will I want to learn all these things? Because it's not just let's hire some people. It's really much more than that. Um, but it's been a very, very interesting journey. I think when we decided to scale this we were very serious. We need to um, hire some senior people in the organization first because we knew we're going to grow so much so fast that all our stakeholders would need the right level of support. Um, so we invested there first. Second layer was more around um, partnership like with chapter two, really understanding who could be our partners in the market to be agile and move if we want to scale, if we want to target uh, certain areas and we don't have the people in seat already, how do we uh, engage with top uh, partners in the market who are on the same page with us? Right. And now I think we're growing more into a stable all levels being covered. Managerial senior people who are more junior and can learn and we can build the next generation as well.

Speaker A: Okay, fantastic. And uh, when it comes to uh, delivering the talent acquisition solution for the hiring managers and building out those tech teams, take a market like Berlin. Not the easiest market to uh, hire in. Are you finding uh, that you're needing to be quite creative with your teams in how you hire. That is, we can't just look at this one geographic area. We have to look beyond that, look at your locations. Uh, uh, how are you doing? How are you scaling the teams up? Or is it quite Simple? Is it LinkedIn, recruiter and, and force?

Speaker B: I would say everything is an option. I think this is what people need to understand. There's no one way. You have many options and you just need to be very smart about what you prioritize in that. Um, I'll give you an example. At the moment we do have a type of role or a type of team that we need to build that needs to speak German. So that already limits your options, but it doesn't limit it to just Germany. You need to know who else speaks German around here and maybe there are many Germans in the UK as well. Right. Um, really being creative around, like what is the core piece that I could look at? And expand continuously expand wherever it's geographical or profile or. Um, yeah, really thinking very creatively there. Um, so there's no one way. Um, and I think this is a big challenge for people not to apply the same solution to different issues. Right. Um, but then I would say it's also around narrowing it down. So once you are trying to expand, you also need to, you need to figure out what's your list of options, but what do you start with? So you don't go a bit crazy around, around the field figuring it out. Um, but trying to create some, some reliability in your thinking process at least and validating that constantly with your hiring manager and with your teams for sure. Yeah.

Speaker A: So I quite like where you're coming from there. So you start off with a very clear view of exactly what you want. Precisely. And then upon you know, realizing that we're not probably going to get that within the time scales we want, we understand where we can move and where we can be flexible, which might broaden the search, uh, into different areas geographically or capabilities. Uh, and then you fix on that and you see if that works. Uh, and then you mold it accordingly. So it's kind of like a constant evolving process. But when you start to find the talent, that's when you lock it down and then you, you double down.

Speaker B: Imagine a decision tree.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It's like if this, then that. Right. Like always there is this conversation in your head. If this happens, if this is needed, then this needs to follow. Right. So then all this, each answer builds on another answer. Right. So, um, it sounds very philosophical. It's not right, but it's a, it's a process of a daily check in with oneself. Am I on the right path? Uh, um, do I need support? Right. I think A lot of the times we need to acknowledge the fact that, yeah, maybe I need to engage a person, partner, an external partner, or I need to, uh, advocate harder for changes in what I'm looking for to be successful. So even those should be or can be options to consider.

Speaker A: Yeah, perfectly put. Uh, okay, so we've talked a lot about the talent acquisition activity. Uh, and thank you for sharing your background with us. Um, what I want to talk about is some of the other stuff that surrounds talent acquisition. At the moment. I would like to talk a little bit about, um, data and analytics and the tool that you use or you might be aware of. And also, um, another pillar that we're quite passionate about, which is, uh, employee value proposition and employee branding and what role that plays in the awareness. Because you have said it yourself through your experience, you scale businesses globally, predominantly around Europe, but you've opened in these markets. And one of the things that, uh, I would guess is that when you open these, uh, in these markets where the company's possibly not so well known, uh, and the brand's not so well known, the employer brand is just unheard of. Who's that? No one cares. So you've got to land in and you've got to hire these people to promote this brand. So let's start with employer branding. What's your experience of how employee brand, uh, can impact, uh, our ability to acquire talent for a company? And how have you used it in the past and have you got any strength stories on that?

Speaker B: The short answer is hits massively into how successful or how fast you can get to success. Um, my opinion is that we don't invest enough in employer brand. Like organizations in general, they think last about it. Like, even talent acquisition sometimes comes last, right? Like, oh, I'm going to build all this business and then I need some people to actually build a business. You should have started there. But employee brand comes. Even for me, it's always shocking. To be honest, I have not seen an organization until now, except Facebook. Again, I think Facebook does this really well. It's their job, right? Like they, they build brands. Um, but really having a team of experts, uh, or tapping into expertise, there's so many good agencies out there and treating it as a product because you want to sell the identity. So if you're not doing, maybe that's the mistake. The mistake is that we're calling it employer brand and we're not calling it marketing, cash making stuff, right?

Speaker A: I've always said this, right? So I had a little bit of controversy when I First stepped into talent acquisition world, I'm going to be honest, right. I sat in a meeting with quite a senior chief technology officer, uh, and they said to me, what are you doing in the talent space? You're an advertising guy. And my response is quite clearly, because the Rolodex is dead and recruitment is a marketing job. You know, it's a sales and marketing gig. You know, the recruiters, the talent acquisition people are the sales people that actually have authority, one to one interaction with the people going to buy into that business. I buy the product and I also believe that it's a lifetime purchase. You know, it's like you buy a house, you buy a car, you don't want to change it in three years for as long as you want to be there. So we are absolutely, uh, aligned on that. Um, uh, employer branding is huge. Maybe, uh, did you see a lot of this at Facebook when you were there or was it a bit too early?

Speaker B: Um, I mean I've seen very good developments of EVP roadmaps and rollout of them. Booking has really, um, done a marvelous job. I would say once they figure out, okay, we actually do need to put a team in place, yay. Uh, same for all the others. To be honest. I think at some point there is a click, uh, when you realize your recruiters cannot handle all the weight. Because first of all, your recruiters and your hiring managers are part of your employer brand, um, pillars. Right. They are the advocates, they are the, um, how do you call that? Like when you have a voice, they're

Speaker A: your ambassadors, they're your fans, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Um, and they carry a lot of this story to your customer, the AKA candidates. But there's a certain, um, problem when you, your funnel doesn't consider this top, top side as a marketing, like consideration and awareness. So once your candidate has interacted with a TA person or hiring manager or somebody for a referral, they're already in the intent piece. Like they already want to buy a little bit into it. How do we get to all the others? We have no idea who you are. Right. So I think this part of reach is so important in this visibility. Um, and I would say, of course everybody talks about evp, right? Like, what's your value proposition? What can you go with as a single voice in any market? And that is so difficult for people to agree on because again, it's your identity.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It's not that you're making, I don't know, a presentation that the next month is not valid anymore. You need to keep that for five, three, five years hopefully. Right. Um, so I would say the biggest challenge I see in the organization is actually agreeing on this EVP first. The rollout sometimes is not the most difficult piece. People know what they need to do, how to activate, which channel is it Social media. Do you do some more? Some prints, some communications and you do all those things. But agreeing on the message and having that one single voice that you're proud of. Anybody in the organization can say your tagline without thinking twice. It's a long road to be honest.

Speaker A: It is, it is. And you know, uh, the interesting thing I find about um, uh, employer branding marketing uh, in this space is that if you are not doing the top of funnel, uh, content creation just to show people what it's like working at your business, you're only ever going to be working in that intense area. And what we believe is that we've got to open a window, right? We're going to create this window that absolutely passive people can look into. Go, I really like this place. This looks cool. Oh, see that person that's just like me. I want to be like that. That leader is super inspiring. Okay. And then they want to come inbound. Because I had this tagline when I first um, set up chapter two. I was 15 years working for an amazing agency. The operational end, I was at the scaling up end of it. So I wasn't the true creative marketer. But I was there for 15 years and I wasn't looking. And my tagline was the best talent is not looking. They're happy, they're looked after, they're taken care of by the in house talent teams and the career side, that's great. But you want those people as well, the ones that aren't looking. And you're only really going to get them, I think if they're aware of you. Because the talent lead or your in house talent team are not going to pick up that phone or write that message at the perfect time and that perfect hour where they feel a bit disgruntled and decide to start looking. But if you are consistently publishing content about your business, about your benefits, about your culture, about um, your growth, about how exciting it is, then they're going to go. I remember seeing that and they're going to apply. So

Speaker B: you just said something like, I know people know this. In recruitment it's all about timing. But the timing is nothing without those connecting dots, even unconsciously. Or coming back to my example earlier, the reason why I ended up booking at some point is because I met Somebody for five minutes in this organization three years before. Right. So you cannot ignore the connectedness of things. Um, and here we have such a big opportunity with everything with the Internet let's say. So before it was such more, much more difficult to have reach. Uh, but in the same time of course we talk about diluting messages and um, so much noise that you also need to distinguish oneself. Um, you need to bombard, you need to be present. Working in like crypto in Paris is an advertising technology. So they compete with Google on ad space online and they just have that model that works really well. Um, but talking to the leaders there they were like it's 90% repetition and 10% distinction. That's all. That's how it should be. And I really see that, to be honest.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, so content creation, hugely important. But one of the other things, equally important is making sure you're not only pushing out content to the right locations. Again for me M marketing is about making stuff uh, and distributing it to the right location. You can make the most beautiful campaign but if you don't know where to put it, that other people are going to see it and engage with it, you may as well not have bothered because that money is wasted. So marketing is about uh, making stuff and distributing stuff. And one of the things that in talent acquisition that we have around us all the time is loads and loads of tools and technologies that give us insights to tell us where the talent is, who's hiring it, what the average salaries are, uh, uh, what the gender diversity, splits, et cetera, et cetera. At chapter two we have effectively a tech stack. It's not our own priority at all. We pride ourselves going out to market, getting best in breed, buying the licenses and then using it to support our in house teams. Uh, but there are so many um, um products out there. Some of the listeners might really benefit to hear about some of the tools and um, technology platforms you might have used in the past that have added value to you. What have you used in the past that you highly recommend?

Speaker B: Um, something that everybody can tap into and it's not too expensive LinkedIn insights. So if you can convince your leader just to, you will have a LinkedIn recruiter license anyway. So get that. Um, it's going to give you a lot of um, actual like, how could I say, real time data which is very important from the biggest database in the world at the moment. Um, but I must say I think um, a lot of people would find a very interesting data in their own ats, uh, which um, I'm very happy that we can tap at least here at Wafer we have this uh, amazing uh, data capturing and data visualization tool called Bezier. Um, and it captures things from three perspectives. So it brings in data from ats, but also from um, workday, so your area where you store data about your current population so you can compare attrition with what you're hiring, which sometimes you don't have that luxury in real time. Right. Um, and uh, the same with everything, headcount planning and requisitions. What actually do I need to do? So gathering more sources of information I think is really helpful. Again, I think a very interesting product. I haven't used it in organization, but I love it. I know of it and I love it. And I think it's a very interesting solution, especially for smaller and medium organizations. Candidate ID it. Again, it brings you so much information from funnel external information, but then helps you tailor your approach really well. Um, for the big organizations that I work with in general we go for like larger CRM solutions, uh, Phenom or gem we are implementing at the moment. So I think these are very interesting ones to help you pull that. And as you say, you can always buy data, right? Whether you go to the large consultancy companies like the McKinsey, the Bain and so on, or you work with even your agency. Like honestly, I think the more senior, more mature agencies that we work with, they do their analysis and their insights on a yearly basis. And then for tech, of course you have stack overflow, you have a lot of other alternatives where you get this maybe twice a year or once a year in a very uh, crystallized form that you can use for your strategies, but also for convincing or discussing with your managers. For sure.

Speaker A: I really love the point you made about Visio, uh, and picturizing the data analytics because it really pictures just land a message a lot clearer than sometimes a page full of copy. And um, one of the tools we obviously use Vizier and we work with you on Vizier and it helps tell a story. As I said, we pull all sorts of tech platforms. So Horsefly as an example, we work with sourcebreaker, we work with Chord, uh, to help us find uh, the talent. Uh, but one of the things I think is uh, really key is using the visualization piece to map demand versus capacity. Because when you're looking at a, ah, strategic workforce plan, um, everybody uh, will think just send it to the talent acquisition team. But sometimes if you can visualize, okay, we've got these roles. This is the demand Curve. This is capacity. How do you address this problem? Here's a solution. It lands the message to allow you to scale up your team a lot quicker. So again, for potential people who are listening to this that are part of a one person, two person talent acquisition team that's just received a C series funding round or something, using visualization to help uh, land a message saying we need to scale up our team and they don't want to. Well, what that could mean is we can't land these roles, which means you can't deliver that project by that date.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think in general there are, I don't know, I see two types of people. People who are like uh, they just want to guess the future all the time but not look in the past. And those who just look in the past and they don't understand how they can make a forecast. Right. So we need to marry those two because the story is important. Right? Like what's happened, what am I learning from it, uh, what's next, whatever. Again, we don't know the future. You might do your forecast to, to try to predict as best as possible. How fast can you hire your recruiters, how fast they can be productive, how fast you can grow the actual teams, how fast do people will land in seat, kind of how fast those engineers or those people will actually be productive. Right. So there's such a long journey from when you open a role to where your impact is being, your, your product is being impacted. It could be a year and a half. Right. So these things need to be really working even for you as a result. Recruiter, if you know this, the way you talk to a, uh, hiring manager and the way you influence that conversation changes overnight. To be honest. Like when you understand that, okay, I'm going to hire you a person in 30 days, but then the actual impact on the product can take months because there are so many other constraints and just processing. This is super interesting usually.

Speaker A: That's fantastic. Thank you. I want to move on to diversity and inclusion. Uh, it's a massively hot topic and something you're very passionate about for a lot of our listeners. Uh, building uh, teams, uh, is one thing, but building diverse teams is incredibly important as we scale up our clients, businesses but also as talent teams, uh, scale their businesses, uh, give me your uh, interpretation of how best to approach diversity, inclusion, uh, within a uh, talent acquisition role and making sure that while we are the gatekeepers, ideally for the talent coming, how we can create those filters to make sure that we are building uh, diverse teams for our clients or your building for your teams.

Speaker B: So here. Leon, I just want to leave a tagline before we finish. We are the gate openers. If we start thinking how do we hire for potential, we start investing into gathering that knowledge to become gatekeepers for the people who need it. Right. Um, this meritocracy philosophy is very damaging. People don't have the chance, um, distributed equally, uh, in their life. Um, and the faster we realize this, the faster we find systems to put in place in our hiring processes. To not be biased around, um, schooling, uh, background, even, uh, the unconscious bias, whether it's ageism, whether it's sexism, whether it's, uh. Like there are a lot of things that, uh, influence our decision making about any. Right. Um, and I think for me what was very, uh, important was to realize how much power we have as recruiters. Insane. Um, when I started 10 years ago, um, I had this job description for a network engineer. They must person needs to lift 80 kilos. And I'm like, if I put this on the job ad, it will push away half of the people, those with disability, those with back pain, and especially women. Right. Like, if you are a little bit, uh, like me, I'm like, I don't want to lift 80 kilos a day. Right. Um, but in the same time, really questioning, like, there are machines. Like, I don't. Because it was just take a server and move into another side. I'm like, I just need the forklift. I don't, I need to drive. I don't need to lift stuff. Uh, so just challenging, challenging this requirement, the stereotypes is such a big power that we as recruiters and recruitment specialists have that it's a shame not to use it. So even if you don't know what you're doing, just question it. Um, and I would say, uh, when it comes to working in an organization and trying to approach the topic, definitely acquiring knowledge and positioning yourself as an expert as much as possible helps, um, because then people come to you. So there is a lot of push that you need to make when it comes to dei. But once, once people realize that you are helpful, that you are knowledgeable, that you are curious, that you are empathic, that you kind of understand that there needs to be a different approach, they come to you and they help you build those systems. This was my experience. Um, when I more seriously got into the topic, it was back in Facebook. We were hiring this infrastructure engineers, network engineers. There were not a lot of women in these fields, but they were right. So this realization of I Just need to attract them again, the consideration, the awareness. Am I on their radar? Right. So, um, they were, but they were more, maybe in more traditional, more stable environments, more whatever that, that time was. Um, but working with people and telling them, let's, let's just think outside the box here. Do we have the right benefits in place to attract uh, a diverse, um, group of people? Um, are we flexible on our locations? Can we be flexible? Maybe the answer is yes, if you ask. Right, so there are so many things that ultimately come from questions, um, and then building, just fine tuning your systems. You cannot change fundamentally how we do things. I think there are many solutions today that they're trying to maybe even push us in the direction. No CV for like blind CVs. They're very interesting solutions. Uh, Harvard, for example. It's a marvelous solution to um, uh, engage a large group of people without necessarily putting them in front of a person and judging them very quickly based just on a cv. Right. So there are many things that you could do. But the most important part was for me at least is understanding what might be goal. I just need to change the approach and then taking it apart, like, what can I change of these things? Sorry, it was a bit of a longer, longer and weirder answer. But it's really down to can I be the gate opener? Because this is the power I have.

Speaker A: Yeah, honestly, that was a really powerful answer, uh, and uh, clearly one you're passionate about. And I really, really resonates with me that, you know, we are the gate openers, uh, for these sort of diverse workforces and we need to educate, uh, the businesses, um, upwards, uh, in order to build them. How, I mean you've been in this career, in this game for quite some time. Uh, how have you convinced organizations to start to build this naturally into their process, uh, and been successful in doing that? Because, uh, one thing is that I believe in. We have, as I say, our three political. One of the things we believe in is creating content to show a window into the world so people from any background can look in and see themselves working in that environment. And one of the things you can't fake is uh, uh, what your world looks like from the inside. When we talk about pushing out content, I'm not talking about just getting your CEO on to do a nice polished presentation. I want to talk to software engineers and I want to interview the software engineers who are doing the work day to uh, day so that people similar to them can be drawn to go work there. But this is a massive behavioral shift. How if you're someone in an organization wants to address this. I know this is a matter of question. We could probably do a podcast on its own on this, but at a high level, like top tips.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, uh, do have a conference piece just on that. Um, but a bit the same like with employment. Know your audience. So I have. Personally, I've adopted very different approaches depending on who am I talking to. If I'm talking to a cfo, uh, or a business person in my organization, I am making the business case, which is telling me that if I have diverse teams, uh, gender and race, I have higher margins of profit. Like, I speak money when I speak to these people. Okay. Because the research is there. Go to McKinsey, go to a bunch of other stuff like from. From the development un, uh, sustainability, development goals. There's so much research about organizations. When they add even 1% of diversity in their teams, their profit margins change. Their profit in general, their revenue in general changes. Right. By. By not a little bit like 20%, 25%. So I make the business case with a certain group of people. Then if I speak totally, because, you know, they're like, oh, my roadmap is to get this business to 100 billion. I'm like, okay, I'm going to help you get there. But just, uh, hear me out. If I speak to hiring managers, I make more of a case about the other proof that we have around diverse teams, which is collaboration and creativity. So for them, it's important that their teams work well together and they bring the best product to the market. Therefore, again, this is your goal. I'm going to help you get there by making sure your teams are diverse. Right? So those are two different areas. And then if I speak more to, let's say, even our teams, right. I think what I see a lot in talent acquisition, they don't have. Uh, while, let's say I can adhere to the fact that I want good products for my organization, I don't necessarily own that roadmap. But what I own is the employee happiness. So I think for TA groups in general, and if I would speak to my TA director, I speak about engagement, and I speak about even social good in a way. Right. We have a responsibility for our community because when you hire somebody, you don't influence just them. You influence their families, you influence their friends, you influence their purchasing power. If you're doing equal pay, it was equal pay day yesterday. So, uh, there is, There is so much that you can pick based on your audience. And I would just advise people to consider that first, then coming with the laundry list of things and losing people in the conversation because it's a lot and it's sensitive sometimes.

Speaker A: That's fantastic advice. Thank you so much. Uh, we are out of time. Um, I just want to thank you so much for coming on this. It's genuinely been a privilege to hear your story, hear some of your approaches and your experiences. I know our listeners are going to take a great deal from, uh, this podcast. So thank you so much, uh, for everything you contributed today. I'm sure you'd be open to it, but we generally ask if anybody's got any further questions or, like, any further insights, they can reach out to you on LinkedIn and get in touch. Thank you so much.

Speaker B: Yeah, thank you very much for having me. Um, I know I get a little bit too deep in something, so if something needs some clarification, for sure, reach out on LinkedIn. Happy to chat anytime. And thank you very much for the invite. I hope it's helpful and entertaining.

Speaker A: Brilliant. Thank you so much.