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ActiTalent SA

ActiTalent is a Geneva based independent Recruitment company, focused on finding top talent for specialist and management positions. They are organized into 3 practice groups catering for the areas of Sales & Marketing, Accounting & Finance and a domain on its own, the International Trade sector.

Good afternoon, Mr. Renlund. Please, tell us, how does a recruiting firm like yours work? What are you looking for in the candidates?

Let’s never forget that we primarily work for the client companies that eventually retribute us. They are Swiss and International enterprises and are looking for talents for their activities based mainly in Switzerland. We have to gain their trust. We will therefore often get tested by new clients on a so called “success” basis and eventually, hope to turn that trust into “exclusive” mandates allowing us to handle search assignments from A to Z.

When it comes to our Candidate approach, we “connect” with prospective candidates thanks to many sourcing channels. Roughly 25% of our candidates are being recommended to us from our existing contacts base. This word-of-mouth recommendation method is so important to us that we have set up an attractive Referral model and program aimed at connecting with the best and rewarding those who help us find the retained candidates. As we do recruit experts and managers we tend to like the candidates who are straight forward and direct in their approach. Those who know what they are looking for and have an idea of where they are heading career wise. These profiles most often know what they know and know what they have to offer to the employment market. One good way to look at it is the following, we treat each of our contacts according to 4 dimensions. Whether we connect with a candidate or a client, everyone can at some point in time represent a potential candidate, a potential client, a link to a new candidate or a link to a prospective client. Thereof the reason for us to treat any new connections with interest and care.

Gustav Renlund © GBNews

In your experience, which sector is currently “hot” for jobs? Which skills? Can you find the required talents in Geneva?

We work along our 3 practice groups but our “International Trade” Practice is definitely growing very rapidly. The domain is currently among the fastest growing in Geneva area. Unfortunately, we don’t find as many competent Swiss, or let’s say “local” talents, in this field of practice nowadays. 60-70% of the recruits, therefore, come from abroad. The reason for this being both, the lack of specific training but also, the wrong mentality or mind set proposed by locals. For their defense however, I would stress the lack of opportunities provided by local companies to recent graduates or other juniors willing to get a first experience. So, yes, there is a lack of such kind of profile and therefore, we have to source them internationally. In fact, we have to source over the borders, constantly, that’s today’s name of the game.

How about training then? Can someone start fresh and hope to gain the experience on the job?

Look, whatever we may say about the greater demand for labour force than the supply of skilled workers looking for jobs, we still remain in some kind of an employer’s market where Demand sets the standard. The latter are indeed not so much open for training juniors, they are short-sighted and need to get the job done. It is sad to say. Companies want the very best and they will seldom invest the time to train anyone. Some traders work around the clock, 7 days a week and have obviously no time to train new recruits. However, training is now getting organized. There are institutions that have or are going to start courses in specific subject matters related to International Trade in collaboration with the leaders in this field. The Economy and the Academic world in Geneva understand that this is important, perhaps as important as Private Banking.

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