This week, Olivier had the opportunity to talk recruitment with Louise JacquesHead of People at Scalezia, the most holistic of growth marketing agencies!
We discussed corporate culture, systems thinking, soft skills and much more.
Enjoy!
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Nice to meet you, Louise! Can you introduce yourself for our readers?
Hello Olivier! Thank you for having me. I've joined Scalezia last October, a relatively young structure, just over two years old now.
I spent my first three professional years at Equans, a company of considerable size, where I was able to gain my first experience as an HR generalist. I had a wide range of responsibilities, which didn't necessarily allow me to concentrate on HR development missions such as those I'm experiencing today. I was evolving in an already well-established and processed environment.
After these three years rich in learning, I decided to turn to a very different environment: the start-up ecosystem. This is where I met Christian and Benoît from Scalezia. They were looking for their first "People element" to develop and internalize their system.
Today, my role is to network and harmonize all the functions that make up our structure. I'm currently working on developing the People function within Scalezia. Why talk about development? Because, when this position was created, there was an enormous amount to build and structure. We're certainly not short of ideas and ambition at Scalezia, and for the past few months I've been working hard to coordinate and set all this to music!
Scalezia, kézako?
Scalezia's approach is to propose and deploy a highly holistic, 360° vision of business growth. We therefore work with our customers on several dimensions: product, marketing, revenue, growth and system, the latter enabling the synergy of the first four axes of development. Today, we work mainly with SMEs, start-ups and scale-ups, in a wide variety of sectors and at different levels of business development.
That's why we rely on a solid, multi-skilled pool: our collective of experts.
Could you tell me a little more about your corporate culture?
Our corporate culture is based on a few fundamental principles.
The first is over-delivery, which we symbolize by the phrase "Just Give It", in other words, give before you receive. Performance and reciprocity are at the heart of our development.
In this quest for performance, we value efficiency over productivity. A form ofautotelic experience , to borrow Benoît's words. This idea translates into devoting all our energy to what is truly essential. It's this energy given to what's essential that enables us to move forward. It's a value we emphasize when recruiting new team members, and a good way of making work a source of energy.
I would also add that we aim to be disruptive, both in our mission and in our vision.
Our mission is to be the most prolific player in the field of entrepreneurial growth , with a particular vision of success based on a holistic, proactive approach to growth. We bring together all our knowledge, rationalize it and disseminate it, like a living, practical encyclopedia of entrepreneurship.
We're also keen to set an example for a new way of doing business that's healthier, more sustainable and more respectful of people. At Scalezia, we are striving to design a work organization detached from the variables of space and time, a company in which these constraints no longer condition work efficiency, but rather play a part in our company's business model and culture.
What do you do differently from other agencies?
The fundamental difference between Scalezia and other agencies is twofold.
Firstly, our approach is based on the principle of "doing with" the customer, not "doing for" the customer. Our aim is to work in tandem with the customer - that's Advisory. We position ourselves as co-pilots of our customer's growth, not as mere pilots whose sole mission is to execute for the customer, without empowering them to understand, assimilate and act on their own.
In practice, this means that we fully involve the customer in thinking about and activating their growth during the various sprints that make up our programs. It's a much more interactive and collaborative process than that of receiving a customer brief from which campaigns are outsourced to the agency, and concluding by sharing the results.
Secondly, our approach is very holistic. We believe that growth does not come from the confinement of activities, but from their synergy. We seek to connect all aspects of a company's growth into one system, combining product, marketing, revenue and growth. Our aim is to make all these components communicate in a quasi-algorithmic way, to promote healthier, more sustainable business development.
Olivier: I trained as an organizational coach myself, and I recognize a lot of that culture in your wording!
This is indeed the case. Our founders, nurtured by the systems approach, gave impetus to this vision and philosophy, which guides our actions and iterations for ourselves and our customers.
Internally, we've really developed our ability to create links and networks. We don't follow a compartmentalized approach, but rather a systemic approach to our shared expertise and contributions.
For example, I was recently looking to improve my screening call technique, and I drew a lot of inspiration from one of our articles on the sales discovery call. The conclusion here is that the techniques of the sales discovery call and the recruitment screening call benefit from being enriched by each other, and that the cross-fertilization between sales and people expertise is worth investing in.
Olivier: For me, human resources and recruitment are two distinct professions. I see recruitment as a very business-oriented profession, at the intersection of three fields: sales, marketing and coaching.
In fact, very few organizations recruit a Head of People with less than 10 employees, as you did.
I think this is precisely one of the things that attracted me to Scalezia. In this vision, all functions, including the People function, participate in the company's overall system. We don't see the HR function as limited or narrow-minded. On the contrary, that's why Benoît, Christian & Jules were planning to recruit a people manager quite early on.
Our approach is to practice what we preach, working on this system implementation and anticipating the company's development. We don't want to accumulate a large "debt " in this area, which could become problematic as the company grows. Today there are 23 of us, and soon we'll be 30, with even more plans for the coming year.
I'm delighted to have reached this stage of development because it gives me a versatility I've never had before, far beyond what could be attributed to the traditional HR role. It really allows me to apply this systemic approach.
I'm learning to live a new HR function at Scalezia, plural and agile: we're constantly iterating. We observe, we build, we establish, then we destroy and start again.
Arriving early in this role enabled me to take this iterative approach and learn not to be afraid of the process. In just a few months, I've worked a lot on my velocity, and I think that the HR function and HR processes can only feed off this method. That's why I'm convinced that it was probably one of the best decisions to integrate the HR function at the very start of our growth.
What profiles are you recruiting today?
Our main objective at the moment is to recruit for the collective. At present, our Community Builder, Charlotte, is managing recruitment in conjunction with the Advisory team. We've got a pretty solid recruitment flow, having recently reached the 80 experts mark, and we're still recruiting for the five pillars that make up our support.
Indeed, there are many needs, particularly in terms of the availability of our experts. Fully aware that we can't expect them to be available all the time, we are recruiting in sufficient numbers to allow rotation and contribution from all.
And in terms of soft skills?
We're looking for entrepreneurs who can transfer and transform their skills in a pedagogical way, and who can pass on and, where necessary, popularize these techniques to customers.
The challenge is really to deliver the keys to our customers, to work with them in this "do it with" philosophy.
We have a wide range of customers, from early-stage startups to more mature scale-ups. Naturally, the approach and objectives will differ according to the type of company we're working with, which implies equally comprehensive recruitment.
We also expect these experts to provide a service that lives up to our customers' expectations, which includes more practical aspects such as efficiency, availability and responsiveness.
In conclusion, this ability to teach, this willingness and enthusiasm to pass on are really what we're looking for, in addition to method and expertise.
Last question: why should we NOT join you?
If someone fears change, constant evolution, continuous learning and doesn't want to be pushed out of their comfort zone, then our environment might not be the best for that person.
What's more, given our highly systemic approach, individuals who prefer to work on their own can run into difficulties. We highly value collaboration and cooperation, often involving mixed teams on various projects. If someone has a very compartmentalized view of their role and isn't curious or open to the idea of learning and getting involved in other areas, then our working environment may not be right for them. We give intensity and solidarity.
Many thanks for this rich exchange, Louise!
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