Hi Anouck, please tell us about your journey from being an expert in SEM and TEM microscopy at Motorola to becoming President and Founder at RHESO.TECH?
Hi. I studied to be an Engineer in Material Physics, then did my doctorate in Crystallography of Semi-conductors. This renowned diploma allowed me to work in the industry, within the Motorola chip manufacturing plant, for more than ten years. After this, I worked for ESNs as a Technical Director.
With the tenders that I won, I quickly realized that it was challenging to find Engineers with specific qualifications. Through my work, I identified that many companies faced this challenge, so I decided to create my own company to address this issue. That’s how RHESO.TECH was born.
More than a year after its creation, RHESO.TECH has six employees and will exceed one million euros in turnover in 2021.
We seek candidates with a good balance of hard and soft skills. That is, they have a valid specialization in their field of expertise, so they are technically sound. In addition, soft skills such as:
• communication & coordination skills both in French & in English;
• an ability to analyze and synthesize while keeping a critical mind;
We also want to discover a Candidate’s Mad skill – that is, a talent or mindset that adds that little bit extra. It’s what makes a Candidate unique and, by extension, perfect for the job. It can be a hobby or project outside of work that shows a passion. For example, dabbling with a 3D printer, Raspberry Pi, or an Arduino board shows a passion for technology & innovation and that you are a creator. It could be a competitive sport – for example, playing competitive chess shows determination as well as patience.
Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we lost about 80% of our client’s needs in recruitment in April 2020.
In return, this unexpected event allowed us to take the time to work on ourselves. We optimized our internal & external processes, automated repetitive tasks, and deployed tools to improve our productivity to work better and faster.
Our workplace technology suite is based around efficiency & practicality. By automating certain repetitive tasks and connecting tools together, we have created a system that allows us to be fast & practical while staying human in our interactions with Clients and Candidates during the recruiting process, as well as with each other at RHESO.TECH.
At the heart of our technology suite is the Bullhorn Tool, which delivers two tools that work in sync: An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. We decided to use the Bullhorn tool to serve these needs because it allows us to customize different fields & attributes and adapt them to our needs.
For making appointments, we use Calendly – a free online appointing software that integrates with our system. This tool saves us one hour a day by making scheduling more efficient and allowing us to avoid unnecessary emails.
We use Airtable to handle all of our Backoffice (i.e., invoicing, business potential, KPI’s and opportunities). It is a no-code tool that serves as a digital database and integrates perfectly with our Tiime tool (i.e., Virtual Accountant).
Finally, we use two tools for team members to collaborate and share content more effectively: Notion – as a wiki, a company handbook & a knowledge management tool. Microsoft 365 & Teams suite — for collaboration & Instant messaging.
We link all these tools together via the Zapier tool.
This system is a living system that we constantly adapt to our needs, the market, and to what works best in the current environment. We are currently testing new tools that will be directly integrated into the evaluation process of a Candidate, the end goal being to simplify the technical process while enabling us to continue to add a human touch in our interactions. It is thanks to this commitment to continuously improve and innovate that the end-to-end recruitment process at RHESO.TECH is now 100% paperless.
1. Approaching Candidates in a human way that allows us to attract real, specialized talents to RHESO.TECH
It’s about finding what the Candidates are really looking for, what they are capable of & who they are. To make sure we make the best match with the offers & with the information we have. It’s a challenge we cherish at RHESO.TECH because we’re not robots, the human aspect is one of our most important values.
2. Projecting Candidates into the technical environment of our clients.
This first comes from the fact that evaluating candidates in the technical field is not an easy task because Clients are looking for a very particular expertise. And two profiles in the field of expertise of the Client neither may be suitable because they do not address the very precise technical needs of the Client is seeking.
Second, it also comes from the fact that some recruiters rely too much on the technical interviews to determine if the profile is good for the job or not. But the results of these are not an absolute transcript of the capacities & skills of an Engineer. It may not be apparent purely via the results of this test. Some might have the ability and knowledge but do not perform well under the test conditions, and as such, the results can only play a part of the role in evaluating a Candidate.
Therefore, one of the most important roles of recruiting for a technical role is understanding the context. That is, interpreting what the Client is looking for, evaluating the candidate’s technical skills, and seeing if we can imagine the Engineer performing well in the technical environment described in the job offer.
Thanks to my years of practical experience in Engineering, coupled with my experience in recruiting, have enabled me to build a company that can address these challenges and find the right candidate for the job. It’s what makes us stand out compared to the other agencies. My technical expertise. Engineers in a recruitment agency. It’s a challenge, but we’re up for it.
I think our first professional experience is the one that shapes us the most. For me, it was at Motorola that I learned how the industry works, their methodologies with respect to quality, as well as Lean & Agile processes and methods. To this day, I continue to put everything I saw, learned & practiced at Motorola into practice.
I also think the closure of the previous recruitment agency I was leading prepared me for RHESO.TECH. I started this from scratch and wasn’t given enough time to prove that the agency in Toulouse could be a success. But I didn’t give up. I didn’t get stuck on the idea of failure and applied a growth mindset. In the end, this experience inspired me to start my own business.
My advice would be to confront your potential customers and users to see what they really need – what are their pain points? Create a trial balloon where you dare to try, test, and learn, using your customers and users as a guide. Embrace the VUCA world, and don’t be afraid to test and adopt start-up methodologies. Be and remain Agile.
As the saying goes, “failure is only a step towards success”. This is an attitude we embrace at RHESO. TECH where we constantly test new tools, new processes, and new ways of working.
Uzma Abdulla is an Editorial & Content Coordinator for The Media Bulletin. Experienced with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing space. Skilled in strong program and project management. Master of Arts (M.A.) in Archaeology and Pursuing Post Graduate Diploma in Counselling. She likes to be on her toes when it comes to facilitating events and collaborating with people.
