Interview with one of Nokia’s main headhunters

    At the 2012 HR Branding Summit in Moscow last week, we managed to persuade Rebecca Gloyin , one of Nokia’s main talent headhunters, to give us a short interview after the press conference. We asked Rebecca, where Nokia is looking for talented employees, does it use social networks, do they need developers and engineers now and is Nokia picking them in Russia.



    - Rebecca, what is your job at Nokia?
    Now I work in a new role for myself. For a long time I was a headhunter of talents at Nokia, but just a month ago I switched to the position of head of the global HR brand management (Employer brand management), including in social media, and I work together with the entire Nokia recruitment team.

    - Tell us briefly exactly how Nokia is now looking for talent?
    We use several channels in talent recruitment. Social media is one of them. For example, LinkedIn , where we advertise a lot on our jobs, we have a recruiting channel on Twitter and Pinterest . However, Nokia’s different business lines use different recruitment strategies. In the UK, we use not only social media, but also our own career sites ( http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/careers , http://nokia.taleo.net/careersection/10120/jobsearch. ftl? lang = en - some of them), job fairs, various career conferences and events, where many experts gather in one of the areas of interest to us. Our recruiters are very fond of looking for people at events, because there is nothing better than personal contact with a candidate. We also use traditional sites for finding employees and in many countries we use the services of recruitment agencies. And honestly I’ll tell you, I don’t think that any of these channels will die out in the near future, we use all of them.

    - From a famous Russian IT journalist, I heard the phrase last week: “Nokia is not the most attractive employer now.” How would you rate Nokia's current attractiveness as an employer?
    Any global brand is faced with both positive and negative comments, this is normal. You can do something really amazing, but there will always be those who will scold you. When they tell me that Nokia is now a bad employer, I reply: if it were that way, then I would not be there. For me personally, working at Nokia is the best I've ever had.

    - How can Nokia be interesting as an employer for developers, engineers, designers?
    We naturally understand that changes in the company and its products also affect people's desire to work for Nokia. For all the talents we want to hire, we try to convey a simple idea: yes, the company had difficult times, yes, the company is still in a difficult situation, but it is you who can become one of the creators of the Nokia comeback to your positions. It is both a challenge and a new opportunity for you. Such a chance is only now, do not miss it. Those people whom you named are precisely those who will return Nokia to the market leaders.

    - Nokia is paying a lot of attention to developing the photo capabilities of phones - PureView technology. How many bright heads of engineers and programmers did you need to find for this technology to work?
    This technology was announced last year at the Mobile World Congress, it made a lot of noise and in order to launch it, we needed to hire a lot of people fundamentally new to the company (engineers, software developers) who could create PureView. Unfortunately, I can’t say specific numbers, because I don’t have such information, but this is one of the principal directions in the company.

    - In general, which areas of Nokia are the most capacious in terms of the greatest talents?
    If you look at the company as a whole, across all countries, then a lot of talented engineers in fundamentally new areas for us recently we are hiring in Beijing. Also now we are hiring many designers around the world, because design at Nokia is one of the key areas. In addition, a lot of people are recruited into marketing and sales. If you make a rating, then engineers will be in first place in terms of talent recruitment, designers in second and marketing in third.

    - Which specialists are the most difficult to hire?
    Of course, engineers, because among them there is the greatest competition among recruiters. But we have two tasks in recruitment. The first is to find the most suitable person for the position, but this is half the battle. The second is that this person really believes in where the company is moving, so that he is motivated by the changes that we are currently experiencing.

    - Can you say that you are currently engaged in crisis HR-branding?
    I would not say so, because during all the changes in the company, internal communications were at a very high level. The company not only constantly collected the opinion of employees about the new course, but also the actions of top management for employees were absolutely transparent. Company employees understand the decisions and actions of management. Now it’s important for us that Nokia’s actions are transparent and understandable not only to employees, but also to the outside world.

    - Not so long ago, Nokia announced that it was cutting several thousand employees and closing the production of phones in Finland. How did this affect your work? How did this affect people's desire to work for you?
    Any business decision affects the company, positively or negatively. We, as employees of the company, understood why offices are being reduced and the plant is closing. Stephen Elop as clearly and transparently conveyed to us the motives of his decision. He perfectly understands and tried to convey this to people that the news that they read in newspapers and the Internet will not be inspiring for a very long time, but this is a necessary measure and without it the company will not be able to move on.

    - How did these decisions affect Nokia employees?
    You know, honestly, in many ways. Someone made this decision and continued to work, someone quit, someone had to move to stay in the company. One way or another, employees are our main value, therefore, we place priority on honest communication with them on any, even on difficult issues.
    Those who didn’t leave the company of their own free will, we included in our Bridge Program program and help them understand their place in the current labor market, correctly assess themselves as a professional, conduct self-presentation training, resume writing for them, and select vacancies for them. This program really helps people quickly rebuild and find a new job.

    - Surely, these events affected people who would like to work for you?
    You know, we don’t tell candidates - go to work with us because we are the best place to work in the world. We are telling the truth about Nokia, we are telling as much as possible everything that is happening to us, so that people themselves decide whether we are on the road or not. And you know, people want to be part of a company change.

    - There is an opinion that companies with a strong HR brand can pay less, because people still want to work for them. Do you have to pay more than the market average?
    No, we do not pay more than the market, we pay competitive salaries, we do not have a strategy to pay more than the market. We devote a lot of effort to understanding what the average cost of certain specialists in the market is, to be sure that we pay adequate money.

    - How does the company now retain the most valuable specialists?
    We have a special team that develops and retains the most valuable employees, this is called Talent Management. But all this works only for people who themselves want to be part of the company. That such a desire was, and this team exists.

    - What is the personnel activity of Nokia in Russia now? Are you looking for talent for yourself here?
    We hire people from all over the world, including in Russia. We do not have any special activities in Russia, but there is a common global site for everyone who wants to work for Nokia ( http://nokia.taleo.net/careersection/10120/jobsearch.ftl?lang=en) I know that in Russia Nokia is now more actively hiring people in sales and retail than in development. But if you are a talented engineer, designer or developer from Russia and want to work for Nokia, then we want to know about you.

    The interview was prepared by Ivan Tyutyunji.

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