These past days, I talked with some friends at my workplace and we had some nice conversations about our career and life. I found it very inspiring to talk to people I meet every day and learn new things about them. We work in a family-like environment and share most of the tasks, but curiously, everyone has a different perspective and philosophy of their work.

I first decided to talk with Johan and José . Both of them have been working as Talent Acquisition Consultants for more than three years. They have worked on many different in-house assignments for companies like Blocket, NordCloud, Cabonline Technologies, Qapital, DigitalRoute, Snow Software and helped them grow.

Johan Hjalmarsson

First, Johan, Senior Consultant and Team Coach at Agile Search.

Johan has his roots from Säter, Dalarna and has been working in the tech industry for over four years. For him, the most interesting part of recruitment is helping companies improve their way of working and educate customers about the industry, tools and processes within this area. Johan also appreciates getting to know people and understand their personal and professional story.

How does it feel when you work as an in-house consultant?

I think it’s very interesting and challenging. Working on-site closely with the engineers and stakeholders makes you feel part of their team which improves your effectiveness in many ways. For a Talent Acquisition Specialist, it’s crucial to understand the employer’s culture and their ways of working. This is especially important when you’re introducing the company to candidates.

In order to help teams grow you need to guide their members out of their comfort zone, even though a lot of them might be quite experienced in the field, for example, I usually suggest managers who’re a bit insecure during the interview stage to focus on talking about their own professional story and challenges they faced. In many cases, this improves the dialogue and the candidates can eventually relate to it.

Could you tell me about an interesting assignment that you have worked on?

I had some interesting ones, but the one at Blocket is probably the most interesting so far. I built the IT recruitment process from scratch, choosing the right tools and implementing necessary strategies for working efficiently with the hiring managers.

At Blocket, I was involved in every single stage of the recruitment process and together with the hiring managers, I helped them to implement a fluid recruitment process by finding their different strengths and use them in the best manner possible.

What are the most important skills for a Talent Acquisition Consultant?

It’s important to be curious, social and outgoing. Things like coaching, building best processes and ways of working are also important but you’ll develop those skills with experiences from different assignments.

José Reis

This is José, my first mentor at Agile Search. He is also our Team Coach and senior consultant.

José is a great team coach, always friendly and supportive. He has a diverse background in HR, marketing and business development. He comes from Portugal and has work experience in different countries.

What do you think are the challenges that tech companies are facing today?

Hiring the right person is always a challenge for every company, especially in the tech industry where the war for the most talented people is even fiercer. I believe that a creative approach to candidates along with a smooth recruitment process is essential to be successful in this type of recruitment but there are other things that can impact your success. I found on my previous experiences that a good employer branding strategy plays a big difference when you’re trying to attract top talent to your team and are at the same time competing with big players in the market.

On the other hand, an employer branding might not be the easiest and fastest thing to implement especially when your client has urgent hiring needs and the company doesn’t have the structure to implement this strategy. In these cases, I try to coach hiring managers on the benefits of employer branding/efficient recruitment processes and do some groundwork so they can continue to develop them further on their own.

What is your favourite part of working as an in-house consultant?

I’m a highly curious person and like to learn new things all the time. I like to be out of my comfort zone, identify bottlenecks and solve them in a collaborative environment. I constantly get confronted with different problems when I’m working as an in-house consultant. That is essentially my favourite thing.

What are the most important skills for a Talent Acquisition Consultant?

I think the capacity to empathize with others, understand people’s needs and try to help them while being agile and positive at the same time. I also believe that communication skills are very important as quite often you’re the face of your client’s brand.

We will have another coming interview with Johan and José on their journey at Agile Search. So, STAY TUNED!

Find more of our blog post on agilesearch.io. You can always reach me on LinkedIn.  : ]