They witness
- Leila Mamet, Regional HR Director for Macif (mutual insurance company)
- jim ramosHRD of Agriconomie (a marketplace for agricultural products)
- Guillaume Saintagnedirector of recruitment at Mirakl (publisher of technological solutions for marketplaces)
Recruiters under pressure
Last year, the average time to hire an executive lengthened from 8 weeks in 2021 to 11 weeks in 2022. Yet the market has grown tight: as companies have (re)launched their recruitment campaigns, they faced more demanding candidates, sometimes even going so far as to dictate their conditions.
In this market context, logic dictates that companies demonstrate greater responsiveness to the candidates they receive, if only to avoid seeing them withdraw during the process (a difficulty encountered by 40% of recruiters in 2022, according to Apec). Especially since they know: time does not flow at the same speed for a candidate and a recruiter.
When a need for recruitment is proven, we do not afford the luxury of taking our time. We are now more dependent on the market than in the past.
Leila Mamet, HR director for Macif territories
The mutual insurer, which will recruit 1,500 people in 2023 (salespeople, actuaries, managers, etc.), does not, however, confuse speed with haste. ” Our challenge is not to multiply the stages of recruitment, in order to get straight to the point. At a minimum, a candidate will be interviewed by an HR and a manager and will take a personality test. These are these guardrails which allow us to reduce casting errors. They secure our recruitments and we will not abandon them, despite the context. »
Despite the shortage of candidates, essential steps
Within Agriconomie, which has around sixty positions open for recruitment, the length of the hiring process varies according to the strategic dimension of the recruited profile. ” It is shorter when looking for a salesperson than a financial director “, illustrates Jim Ramos, its HRD. However, it happens maximum two weeks between the time the company intercepts an application and the time it makes a job offer. During this time, neither the HR team nor the candidate is unemployed.
After contacting him during a 15 to 30 minute videoconference, we invite him to our premises. In the space of 2h to 2h30, he visits our offices, conducts an interview with an HR manager, then a second with his future manager and an employee and he solves a practical case. The day after his arrival, we are able to give him an answer.
Jim Ramos, Agriconomy HRD
Despite the shortage of candidates, the Mirakl company maintains, for its part, its 5-step recruitment process. ” It consists of a 360° assessment by telephone, a technical test or a meeting with the future manager to gauge the candidate’s expertise, then three interviews devoted to behavioral values, conducted by future colleagues more or less distant, so as not to be biased by the urgency of recruitment “, explains Guillaume Saintagne, Director of Recruitment. Stages between which the company attaches itself ” not to ghost candidates “. In the end, the duration is extremely variable from one situation to another. If, in 2022, 81 days were observed between the publication of a job offer and the positive response to the candidate (compared to a hundred in 2021), “the whole process can also be done by videoconference, in less than two weeks “, he reassures.
Managers asked to be responsive!
To ensure that their recruitment deadlines remain concise, despite the minister’s agendas of each other, companies are developing strategies.
” When we open a position, we block availability slots in the diaries of our managers. As the need is there, they play the game and show themselves to be cooperative “, illustrates Leila Mamet, of Macif.
At Agriconomie, the method is essentially the same. ” I take the liberty of putting recruitment interview slots in their shared agenda. Since we are opening essential positions, meeting candidates is their priority anyway “says Jim Ramos.
At Mirakl, some employees belonging to the HR team devote themselves entirely to organizing interviews. ” We call them the coordinators: not only do they manage all the logistical part of the interview (for example soliciting the interviewees), but they are also responsible for coaching the candidates, explaining the STAR method to them… », Explains Guillaume Saintagne. Within the software publisher, there is approximately 1 coordinator for 5 recruiters.
Before, our recruiters wasted between 3 and 4 hours a week organizing interviews with candidates. This new approach allows us to better follow the pace of our recruitments
Guillaume Saintagne, Director of Recruitment at Mirakl
The need to invest in your employer brand
To improve the quality of their recruitments but also to reduce their delays, companies activate other levers. In addition to soliciting recruitment firms to source the most scarce profiles, Macif, for example, relies on its employees. ” In 2022, we developed cooptation. Nearly 70 employees have already been recruited in this way. This is an additional lever that allows us to circumvent market constraints while securing our recruitment. “explains Leila Mamet.
More than the recruitment process, it is the employer branding phase that Agriconomie pays the most attention to since candidates have become a scarce resource. ” Our way of approaching candidates has changed in recent months. They are more in the expectation of being seduced by a position or a team, including when they apply for internships. We are therefore pulling out the heavy guns and investing more in our employer brand, through our new recruitment software “says Jim Ramos. While the market is clearly in favor of the candidates, Agriconomie nevertheless admits to letting go of the profiles it recruits. “We do not rush our recruitments and we are careful about the profiles we retain. However, we challenge their skills less “, concedes the HRD. Personality tests, for example, have been abandoned in favor of reference checks, to improve responsiveness.