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If you're conducting job interviews, this question should resonate with you. Our guest today, Antoine Freysz, CEO of Kerala Ventures and author of the book: “The Method to Recruit the Best,” will address these questions.
During the summer break, the teams at impact.info invite you to (re)listen to one of our episodes published this year.Antoine Freysz .
Enjoy listening!
Juliette Boulegon
impact.info journalist
Published on 19 August 2024
Transcript Audio in Français — text automatically translated· AI-generated transcript
0:00 Hello, this is Juliette and welcome to the podcast for those who want 0:09 to shake things up within their company. Recruitment is an important, even 0:14 crucial step for the proper development of a business. So Antoine Freysz, our guest, 0:19 has decided to make it his profession by helping companies find their ideal employee. 0:26 Hello Juliette, I'm happy to be here today. I'm Antoine Freysz, 0:31 I'm 48 years old, I was born in the Paris region, and I have three daughters. My job today, and for the past 0:39 10 years, is a bit special. I support companies from their creation. 0:47 I'm a sort of mix between an investor and an entrepreneur, and I've done this in many 0:53 fields, particularly in healthcare. I've had the chance to be among the founding partners 0:58 of major companies like Malte or Octolib. It's now my daily routine to support them 1:06 year after year. Thank you, Antoine, for this explanation. The job you do, 1:12 I wasn't familiar with it. I would like you to explain to me precisely what 1:16 your job consists of. Specifically, let me give you an example. The company WeHelp was created about 1:22 ten years ago, and the founders were looking for a partner to help them succeed in their business at the 1:28 time of launch, to provide good advice and to have initial capital. I partnered with these founders at the launch of WeHelp, which is a 1:34 company that provides home assistance for elderly people. We experienced the growth of this 1:40 company from zero to several hundred employees today and thousands of elderly people who 1:47 are helped at home. It's an exceptional adventure that I have the chance to 1:52 contribute to by being active with entrepreneurs to help them on the most key issues, 1:58 particularly on recruitment topics for their own teams to try to build the 2:03 right teams that will enable the companies to succeed. Okay, so actually you 2:09 help companies choose the right person for the job required. Exactly, so that's not 2:15 the only way I assist them in their development since they have many 2:21 other issues, but it's true that over time, building teams and selecting the 2:25 best profiles has become my specialty because I've noticed, I've observed that 2:31 ultimately the most important thing for a company to succeed, and this is true for any 2:37 organization, it could be an association or something else, is ultimately the quality of the women and 2:41 men who simply make up the collective project. So how do we define the 2:47 best person who will be most capable of doing the required job? That's a very good 2:54 question. It's important to clarify one thing, which is that the term the best is a 3:00 relative term. When you're an entrepreneur or a leader, it's up to you to 3:07 decide who the best person is. It's not a characteristic that is labeled, let's say, on each of us. A person can be the best for one company, for a 3:12 given position, but not be the best for another company, for the same position. Why? 3:18 Because the best depends, for example, on the company's culture and then it depends on 3:25 how we prioritize the selection criteria for a given person. One might be very 3:30 sensitive, and if that's your case, that's great, to the way of working in a team, to 3:36 kindness. One might be a bit more sensitive to performance, one might decide to prioritize 3:43 differently. In short, the best is a type profile that first depends on the vision. 3:48 3:54 3:59 of a company and its leaders. Okay, but then to understand well, for example, if I 4:05 want to be hired by such and such media, how do you find me and how do 4:12 you define that I could potentially be the best journalist for this position? 4:17 In answering in any case in a synthetic way, there is a very important job when recruiting to try 4:23 to form the best teams, which is to draw up this ideal profile of who 4:30 we really need. And that requires listing in a systematic way the key qualities 4:36 that we will be looking for while trying to be precise and especially to prioritize them. If we think that the 4:41 ability to conduct the best interviews is the number one criterion, well it's important to 4:47 write it down. If we then think that it's important for the person to have at least five years 4:52 of experience, well it needs to be written down. So the idea is to be precise in this work of 4:56 preparation. Very often, bad recruitments are not related to the intrinsic quality of the 5:02 people hired, but rather to the fact that companies have not clearly defined who 5:08 they needed. A precise framework is necessary. But then, how does it work? It's networking, 5:13 it's word of mouth, it's LinkedIn searches. There are obviously many possible avenues. 5:17 In any case, one thing to remember is that when you want to successfully recruit for 5:23 somewhat critical, somewhat important positions, the fact of going out to hunt via a headhunter or 5:30 yourself through your company on networks, and particularly on LinkedIn, is rarely a piece of advice 5:38 that should be overlooked. The fact of directly approaching profiles that seem really 5:43 ideal according to the specifications we've just described is generally the best way 5:50 to find the best, to simply get in touch with them by explaining the vision of the company you represent and the position you are offering. 5:54 And isn't the difficulty in what you do precisely categorizing 5:59 certain social classes, certain people and making recruitment a bit elitist? Because 6:06 we know, I take the example of people with disabilities, it's harder for 6:12 these people to find a job, due to all the preconceived notions we know. How do you 6:17 manage not to fall into that elitism? 6:22 The book I'm writing on the subject called "The Method to Recruit the 6:25 Best" is aimed at leadership positions. The reality is that a company is not 6:28 just that. And the best companies are not simply the ones that hire the 6:33 elites, it's the companies that have the best culture, the best mindset, where the 6:39 notions of teamwork and kindness are widely present. So everyone has 6:44 their place in a company. There are positions where you have to accept being in a 6:49 form of elitism. And once again, everyone will have their own definition. It's not uniform 6:53 to answer your question either. And then, there are also positions where simply, people 6:58 who may be at a given moment a bit less high-performing, or if there is a person 7:04 with a disability, that can be the case, also have their place because a company, 7:08 remains primarily a collective project. In sports, if I draw a parallel, it's 7:12 to say that it's the best team that wins. It's not the sum of the best individual talents. Very well, 7:17 so thank you because I think I've understood well what you do. But I would like 7:22 you to illustrate your actions a bit with examples, particularly examples of 7:27 7:33 success. I'm going to take the example of the company WeHelp. Huge challenge, they are launching, 7:38 they don't have a single client, they want to help elderly people at home. They have two 7:43 talented co-founders, but they lack a profile to successfully launch. They need 7:48 someone, in particular, with more technical skills. Well, as a partner in 7:52 this company, I simply helped the founders recruit this third person. 7:57 And so, this trio was formed, which allowed the success of WeHelp later 8:05 over time. The example of Doctolib is a good one, it's a start-up that has developed 8:09 quickly. It currently has 2700 employees and indeed, it does a lot of recruiting every 8:13 year. It's about prioritizing methods and know-how for good recruitment. 8:20 And so, that means very concretely the presence of dozens of people at 8:24 Doctolib who do just that. It's an internalized know-how that is really considered an 8:29 essential asset of the company. Okay. And are there, in fact, always, 8:35 taking this example idea, limits to what you do? In the previous example, 8:40 the most obvious limit is that... I remain a company where a person is 8:45 associated with entrepreneurs, but I am associated with a number of companies. And so, 8:51 my daily life is not dedicated to a specific company. The limit of my work, 8:55 is that year after year, companies must succeed on their own. And so, 8:59 we can help them do well, we can help them recruit well, but over time, 9:05 this role must gradually fade since the entrepreneurs themselves must develop 9:11 the methodologies and mindset that will allow them to simply, 9:15 on their own, recruit the best teams. And then, have these limits led you 9:21 to experience some failures? We often have biases in recruitment, and in an unconscious way, 9:27 that is to say things we have in mind, which seem obvious to us, 9:31 and we don't even realize it. We often say this about prestigious schools, for example, 9:36 we tend to think that someone who has attended a prestigious school has a very good profile. It 9:41 also happens when someone was at a somewhat prestigious company, let's take, for example, Google or a somewhat impressive company like that. Recruitment errors 9:45 often come when, seeing such profiles, we think they must be very good, 9:52 they must be very strong in many things. And in fact, we let our guard down a bit and forget, 9:56 during interviews, or at least we do it less seriously, 10:01 to concretely check through specific questions the skills of the person. That, 10:04 is a type of recruitment error that is very common. 10:10 Impact.info, doing business differently. 10:12 Well, thank you for this series of examples. And Antoine, did you imagine 10:16 at 16 that you would do this type of job? Absolutely not. At 16, 10:22 I dreamed, it's not very original, but I dreamed of being a fighter pilot. I was 10:26 absolutely passionate about the subject. My room was covered with posters of Mirage 2000 or 10:31 things like that. But a significant myopia diverted me from this dream. And it's not 10:36 impossible, despite everything, that all this has a connection with time. I became passionate about 10:42 aeronautics. I believe it's related to travel, to escape. And I think that... I started to 10:48 10:56 to work in the Internet and new technologies very quickly after leaving school. 11:00 I started in the online tourism sector. So, the link was made between travel, 11:07 discovery, and the Internet. I arrived at my passion for the Internet, startups, and tech 11:12 like that. So, the link is very far. It was made through multiple rebounds. I think it 11:17 exists. And well, thanks to Antoine who is the co-founder of Kerala Ventures. And this 11:23 meeting, you can find it in our HR section which brings together all the episodes about 11:29 concrete solutions for more engaged teams. This was Impact.info. Doing business 11:36 differently. Embed this interview on your site
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