Juho Toivola is an entrepreneur, he speaks, trains, and consults on: recruitment, work-life, future of work, psychometrics. In the past, he has been leading strategic resourcing at Finnair and Elisa, ensuring the availability of talent on both a short and long-term basis. He had also worked as a consultant in executive search, serving private equity and stock-listed companies in securing and assessing key talent.

As a trained psychologist, He is continuously curious about why and how humans think, feel, and act in different situations and contexts. He tries to translate this knowledge and expertise into inspiring insights and actionable frameworks. He had conducted over 2000 in-depth psychological assessments, recruited thousands of people to different organizations, and developed exceptionally broad expertise in psychometric instruments and measurement.

In an exclusive interaction with SCIKEY, Juho Toivola speaks about how has HR tech helped in unifying the recruitment operations learning, unlearning and relearning by an employee is an asset to any organization.

As a consultant to global companies in many areas, one of them being into the recruitment space, suggest us how has HR tech helped in unifying the recruitment operations?

Typically HR systems and platforms harmonize the process flow of different recruitment. By providing a clear direction to each phase of the recruitment process, the operational quality of recruitment becomes more standard.

Another clear benefit is that the amount of “human error” in the recruitment activities decreases. When operating with pen and paper – or the modern equivalent, “excel and email”, there is a big possibility that people are lost or misunderstood somewhere in the process.

The biggest source of error and bad quality recruitment is the human component, not the systems. Even if there always is something to improve on the tech side, the structure and “mechanistic” approach they provide will usually help in reducing making bad hires and also improve the predictive validity of the whole process.

HR Leaders says “Hire for attitude, train for skills”, How much do you believe in this statement why. How important is it to identify and understand the mindset and behaviour of the talent during hiring? What difference can it bring to the organization both in the short and long term?

I think this depends on greatly on the role being filled and hiring organization. Attitudes can change and therefore I wouldn’t bet on it either 100%. The intelligence and the behavioral patterns of the person are the most permanent characteristics of an individual.

But there is some truth to the saying as well. Learning ability has quickly become the most essential asset in working life. We need to learn, unlearn and relearn all the time. Therefore, someone who wants to learn and can learn new things quickly, is an asset to any organization. There are many components to quick learning ability: the motivation, the intelligence, the routines etc.

More and more organizations are talking about the importance of mind-mapping/ mind-match of not only the candidates but also the employees with the business objective organization goals. How do you see the reason for this trend becoming popular what kind of predictions should organization be seeking through this methodology?

I think it’s wise that organizations want to make the most of their “human capital”. Typically individuals are stuck in jobs and tasks that don’t fully meet their potential. Using different methods and tool to find out how an individual could be more productive and motivated, is probably always a good investment.

I think this trend is also particularly related to the growing emphasis on “employee experience”. Employer want to delight employees in order to make them more committed to the organization and more productive in their work roles. Individualized job roles through “job crafting” have become more commonplace. There the idea is to align individual strengths with organizational goals. Sounds good to me.

What are the internal external factors that need to be considered while building an employer brand strategy? What are the KPI’s to be measure to understand the effectiveness of the strategy.

You need to answer to questions: “Where do we play?” and “How do we win?”. The first one has a more external focus, while the other one is more internal. The main external factor to understand is the job market competition for the same target group of professional you want to attract and retain. You might also want to understand the various tactics that other employers are using in order to attract the same target group.

After you understand the competition, you need to investigate the current reality among your employees: what kind of things are they most satisfied with, related to their employment? What are things that annoy them or make them occasionally demotivated? Why have they originally decided to join your company?

The main KPI’s to use would probably be awareness (how many % of target groups knows your company exists), consideration (how many % of target group would consider your company if an interesting role was available), interest (how many of target group are actively considering working for you) and application (how many % of target group have actually been in your recruitment process.

What focus areas strategies you recommend to recruitment teams to become an extended marketing arm for the company.

I think especially today’s world the role of social media has become very important in all marketing and employer branding efforts. Therefore, recruitment teams can help a whole lot by helping to leverage the employee presence in social media in organizational marketing and communication efforts. Here “leading by example” is a good principle to follow: by showcasing organizational strengths through increased digital transparency, recruitment teams can make “everyday employer branding” a reality.

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