Sebastien Monnet: ‘The future of recruitment is marketing’

New technologies and ways of life are having a deep impact on HR management and especially on recruitment processes.

Sebastien Monnet, Digital Recruitment Marketing Consultant and member of the Riverflex community, has a clear vision on how companies should find, attract and select the appropriate candidates. In this new publication of Riverflex Expert Talks, he shares his impressions on the main current trends related to HR as well as some pieces of advice to make the most of the recruitment processes. For him, marketing is at the centre of everything.

Hi Sebastien, thank you so much for talking with us! Firstly, can you tell us a bit more about yourself and your professional background?

Thanks for having me! I am a digital recruitment marketing consultant. So I help organisations with building and optimising their recruitment strategy and talent acquisition strategy. This includes building employer brands, optimising websites, building online campaigns, looking at data and reporting… I’ve been doing this for the last three years. Prior to that, I spent 10 years as a digital marketeer working for media agencies. 

What are the main upcoming trends we should be aware of when it comes to recruitment?

If I had to mention three trends going on right now in the recruitment industry, firstly I would say that the job market is changing. So, with the current low unemployment rate, we are living in a candidate driven market where talent basically can choose and pick the projects they prefer to work on. So recruiters really need to understand how to better convince talents to apply. So this means that recruitment needs to attract, engage and convert the candidates as they would with marketing. Offering high salaries and big cars are no longer enough to attract the right candidates. I mean companies should be aware of the importance of employer branding. Organisations really need to invest in their vision, in their values and in corporate social responsibilities, as well as offer work-life balance to candidates.

Secondly, I can also mention that digital habits and candidate behaviour are rapidly evolving. We are using more and more social media, where we are watching videos and mobile is our number one device. So, recruiters and companies need to find different ways to engage and interact with candidates.

Thirdly, I should mention the rise of technology, of course. There are so many new technologies in the HR space, from machine learning to artificial intelligence, that will help organisations to better identify the right candidates or screen the right profiles more efficiently. Technology is playing a bigger part in helping recruitment to evolve and grow.

If you could give a few pieces of advice to organisations looking to implement a recruitment strategy, what would those be?

Yeah, as some simple advice, I would start by saying: stop working based on good feelings, but based on data! It’s really important to start optimising recruitment strategies based on data. By data, I mean looking at things like the time spent on the website, the bounce rate or the conversion rate, so recruiters would better understand their candidates’ behaviour and therefore optimise their strategy.

Another tip that I would give away is to embrace new technology. I mean that by starting to use prediction algorithms in order to better target the right candidates, or machine learning software that would help to screen CVs and resumes faster and better. So, technology is at the heart of recruitment and is here to help organisations to optimise their recruitment strategy.

Also, companies should personalise their candidate journey. It’s really important to really understand who the candidates are in order to target them on the best channels at the right time. Placing jobs on a generic job board is not enough anymore to attract the right professionals. 

Last but not least, I believe that recruitment should be the whole company’s priority. Organisations need to look at their internal communication process and recruitment processes. Marketing should be involved in recruitment strategy by helping HR to build the right content. Management should also be involved early on in the process by defining the employee brand, the company vision, and the employee’s values. And employees are playing a big part in the recruitment strategy because they are the face of the company, they are the ones posting on social media and writing reviews on websites.

Talking more about you, what inspired you to join Riverflex? And what has been your experience with being part of the network so far? 

I joined Riverflex five months ago. I was looking for a group where I could meet with my peers, share information and learn new skills. And that’s what I found at Riverflex!

It’s helping me to meet new people, grow my network, and also learn new skills. I’m not a natural-born consultant, I’m a marketeer! So, I’m actually learning a lot from other people and hopefully, they will also learn from me with my digital marketing and media experience.

What kind of new projects are you excited to do in the future? How do you see your career as independent going forward?

Well, as an independent consultant, you always want to do so much at the same time! So what I wish to do in the future is to continue consulting companies with their recruitment strategy and maybe also setting up my own company dedicated to building recruitment software, why not?

In your LinkedIn profile, you quote Lincoln: “The Best way to predict the future is to create it”. What is your vision for the future of HR?

I believe the role of HR, more specifically recruitment, will drastically change in the future. It’s no longer enough to just post on LinkedIn. You have to be present on multiple channels on the right device at the right time with the right message. So recruiters will really have to learn new skills, optimise processes, look at data and use more technology. To sum up? The future of recruitment is marketing.