The "Portrait" series strives to highlight the people and organizations within the Percumédia client community.
For this edition, Sandrine Théard introduces us to Les Sources Humaines, a key player in talent acquisition skills development.
Les Sources Humaines is a recruitment school founded by Sandrine Théard. Its mission is to professionalize the recruiter profession. Sandrine Théard has over 25 years of experience in talent acquisition and is a certified trainer in recruitment and sourcing, blogger, and speaker. She is also the founder and organizer of #trumontreal. The organization educates, informs, and gathers all recruitment stakeholders on best practices, innovations, and technology, offering concrete solutions to better source, recruit, and evaluate. Sandrine participates in prestigious events and maintains an active presence in Quebec’s HR ecosystem.
Before discussing specific issues related to Les Sources Humaines, could you tell us about your background?
I arrived here 30 years ago. I have always been in recruitment. I started in a placement agency because it was the easiest job to find when I arrived. Then, I went to work in-house, and eventually, I went independent, focusing extensively on operational recruitment. Then training started taking up more space, and today, I'm fully dedicated to training. But I really have the recruiter label.
What led you to reduce recruitment and move more towards training?
The demand. And, actually, when LinkedIn arrived. I was already doing some training at the beginning when I worked in an agency. I trained new recruits. And then when LinkedIn came, it was a big paradigm shift. We could search for people online, we stopped making cold calls. Because that's how headhunting was done before. It's still done today but differently. So, as I quickly got involved with LinkedIn, people started asking me for help using it. Therefore, training started like that, independently. And the more it went on, the more demand I had.
Did LinkedIn ultimately prove to be a useful tool for both job seekers and recruiters?
Yes, because we were on the first and biggest professional networking platform. That’s still the case today. So, yes, definitely, it was a significant change in our recruitment practices. We could now approach people directly online and no longer through intermediaries over the phone. It opened up a world of possibilities because, on LinkedIn, there is volume and accessibility. Therefore, it had a transformative effect on the recruitment dynamic, both for recruiters and those being recruited.
Then how did Les Sources Humaines come about?
Once again, it happened quite naturally about twenty years ago when training took much more space and the recruiting profession truly became a profession rather than being seen as the poor relative of human resources.
"I always claimed that we needed to professionalize the recruiter profession more."
My goal was to ensure that candidates could always benefit from a more comprehensive selection process. That's when I thought there should perhaps be a bit more expansion in the visibility of the recruiter profession. And indeed, although not due to me, the HR advisor who did recruitment has today become a specialist in talent acquisition. So, even the designation has changed. Moreover, salaries in this profession have increased significantly.
On the Les Sources Humaines website, you mention wanting to create a dynamic ecosystem where recruitment professionals can exchange ideas, learn, and grow together. How do you practically foster this collaborative community?
A lot of networking, for sure. Meeting people, asking questions, observing what's happening with recruitment news in Quebec. The best way, in my opinion, to keep an ecosystem alive is to offer people a way to meet, be it online or in person. My website firstly has a blog where I publish regularly. I also post job offers available on the site. I talk about people who are active in talent acquisition. There is a newsletter that is very important and eventually some publications on LinkedIn. So, it's about seeing how we can bring the latest updates to life in the recruitment world.
I also have co-development groups. I believe a lot in peer learning, much more than in a conference, I admit, especially today. Therefore, we have co-development groups for talent acquisition managers and also for talent acquisition specialists.
And TruMontréal, where did it come from, and how does it work?
I think I've been organizing TruMontréal for 14 years now. It came about very quickly from frustration. Many things I've done have stemmed from frustrations. I often attended extremely expensive events, particularly for smaller organizations. We were always in conference modes where the largest companies would present their use cases with a sleek PowerPoint. I would watch this and think that if I were in an SME, I wouldn't have the budgets, the resources to apply these examples. So, I didn't see myself at all in these kinds of events where it was always either the biggest banking institutions or the largest telecom or IT companies presenting their cases. I started looking for other types of events. Then co-development was much less developed at the time.
And I stumbled upon an event concept created in London. It was an Englishman who had started this concept, the TRU for The Recruitment Unconference, where we were in sharing groups with a moderator who initiated a discussion for an hour. And so, we share each other's best practices. We're not in a conference setting anymore.
"The motto is "no PowerPoint, no badge, no tie," it's very, very relaxed. "
There are three or four sessions at the same time, and people choose any they want to attend. The concept appealed to me. We're dealing with costs that are much lower than a traditional conference. So, I embarked on this concept.
The first year, I aimed for 100 participants, and we sold 99 places. So there was a need for that. And from the second year, we sold all the available places within a few days. So it took off very, very quickly. I think people are happy. The atmosphere is relaxed. We come to reassure ourselves. We come to validate what we're doing in comparison to our peers. So there you have it. It's a nice, fun day.
For recruitment and talent acquisition, to be effective and fruitful, there needs to be support from top management. Do you find that this support has evolved over time?
It has evolved significantly, I find, during the labor shortage. It's important to understand that HR and recruitment have always been seen as cost centers, not profit centers. However, during the labor shortage, if you don't have enough staff, you close production lines, reduce services due to a lack of workforce. Sales, for example, are crucial, but sales are driven by individuals. How can you generate more sales if you don't have enough individuals or if you choose them poorly? Recruitment should be seen as a profit center. And it's true that not all structures, at the top, see it like that.
Secondly, for some, we are still in outdated recruitment approaches. We consider that it's not complicated, that it's not difficult. You meet someone, you ask them questions, and if it works or you have a good feeling, you hire them. So in many cases, we still have this vision, and we think there's no point in spending money on it. But with the labor shortage, there was an evolution. The problem is that now there’s a backlash. Since the unemployment rate is rising and there are more candidates, employer branding is put aside, values are put aside. Anyway, people are looking for work, so budgets are cut.
Yet, I imagine it has been clearly demonstrated that well-constituted teams are kind of the key to success. Do you feel there is a real sensitivity to this, or is it really market-related, based on unemployment levels, workforce availability, etc.?
I find it's very market-related, honestly. There's the intention or the pious wish to say, yes, we'll do it. But numbers catch up with us, the market catches up with us. We're still very much focused on performance indicators in place. And obviously, the bigger the structure, the more you're asked to look at the numbers. And sometimes you end up taking actions that are completely senseless because they have to fit into the numbers, the balance sheet. Workforce planning isn't done anymore. When I started, we had workforce plans that still had a vision, you know, and that were still medium-term. Today, workforce planning is done very short-term, that's it. You can't plan long-term anymore.
Many of our readers are in small companies, I would even say micro-businesses, where the person in charge of recruitment is also the one in charge of everything else, in fact, it’s the administrative direction. So, for a very small business that really can't afford a recruitment specialist, how do you advise integrating this dimension into their daily life?
First of all, I think it’s really important to think about what you need, what you’re looking for, and write it down. What skills am I looking for? What is important? There is probably, at first, the dimension related to the business sector, but then there are what we call soft skills, so really the person’s skills. What am I looking for in terms of skills?
And then, how will I be able to evaluate that? After, there's plenty of online documentation, for example, to say what type of questions I should ask someone to evaluate whether they master a certain skill or not. Mainly behavioral questions are used. It's, "tell me an example where you showed a lot of organization," for instance. But it's also asking why I'm asking this question in an interview? I will take the famous question of strengths and weaknesses. Why ask this question in an interview? What am I looking to find out by asking this question? Will the person in front of me really be honest in their answer? And it's not even a question of lying or not. The person in front of you wants the job. You’re asking them questions.
"So, the person is obviously torn between telling the truth and knowing that they also need to sell themselves in the interview."
Often, in fact, the problem, I think, when we’re perhaps a little novice in interviews, is distinguishing between the interview performance and the real potential of the individual. And often, we can be fooled by the candidate’s performance. So are the questions I’m asking assessing the candidate’s performance or really their potential? It's a bit of that. It happened to me several times to be fooled by a candidate who presents well. The person is articulate. They answer what you want to hear. And you think, this is a great candidate, so they’ll be a good employee. But no.
And artificial intelligence in the recruitment process? Will it really be a useful and used tool?
Some people are afraid of it, some people embrace it, some people are excited. Some people are even ashamed to use it, who don’t dare to say it, because otherwise, others will think they work less and therefore they'll be given more work. Presently, the adoption of AI in organizations is very complex. Many companies want to highlight it, but, again, there are many obstacles to its use. For example, there’s the whole aspect of cybersecurity. I think it will come a lot through the tools we use. So, through applicant management systems, for example, for the larger structures, which will integrate AI.
But certainly, as a recruiter, when you see that artificial intelligence is capable of doing all the recruitment work without your intervention, you will wonder what your place will be in that. And many people say, no, the human element is necessary. Yes, but we assume the human is good in a recruitment process. However, I know plenty of people who have gone through selection processes where the recruiter was bad, where there was no follow-up, no news, or where the candidate was poorly evaluated, or sometimes asked even illegal questions. So, if AI can carry out a well-organized process with a candidate, provide feedback immediately after, and be fair in evaluation, then I might prefer to work with AI rather than with a human, obviously if the human doesn’t do their job well.
So, it calls a lot of things into question. And it’s certain that today there’s still an issue of social acceptability for a candidate who, in a process, wants to speak to a human. But the day we’re all more used to using and interacting with AIs, there’ll be more acceptability. Will the recruiter still be important? I don’t know.
Tell me a little about the turnover rate, the loyalty to an employer among young candidates.
The lifespan of an employee in a structure is getting shorter and shorter. You know, the career story we had when we started where you made a career, entered a company, and then climbed the ranks, it's over.
"Today, employment is a consumable good for people. You meet my need, I stay. If you no longer meet my need, I’m leaving. Because I’ll eventually find elsewhere."
Except obviously, if the unemployment rate increases drastically, we’re still in a society of consumption also in terms of employment. Structures have difficulty with this phenomenon. Some structures still think a bit like before and will, for example, ask the interview question, "where do you see yourself in five years"? Or "how do you see yourself evolving in the organization?" It's over, that. Especially since Covid. We don't even know what’s going to happen to us tomorrow.
Knowing that, it’s very difficult. And as mentioned earlier, long-term is over. AI also prevents us from seeing long-term. We are only in short-term strategies. But that’s also the career of an individual, it’s this. It’s not "I’ll finish as a manager or director of the company or department in 20 years". First, I want to be quickly. Then, in the meantime, I want to have fun in my job. All organizations, whatever they are, must stop thinking in long-term strategies regarding their talent. It's a challenge because it means there’s no return on investment with the talent. We can’t say anymore that with six months of training, you need at least two years in a position. No. We must arrange to train differently, to redefine the position differently. The social contract between an individual and their job is completely different. And that doesn’t mean people, young people especially, aren’t dedicated. Not at all. We can have someone who will be fully dedicated to their job, but for two years, for example. And someone who is bored in a job will leave. So, all this affects the recruiter profession too.
I see managers, sometimes, who tell me, no, but I’m fine, my team is stable. I always say: "you know it’s not going to last long". Team stability doesn’t exist anymore. You always have to prepare for your next recruitment because it will happen faster than we imagine. And it’s not because you're not a good manager or you have a bad company. It’s because the individual’s needs have changed. That's how it is. Yes.