News

Moscow, Russia

On September 25th, 2019, the Pedersen & Partners Moscow team joined with the German Chamber of Commerce (AHK) to host the “Search for Talents” Business Breakfast, an event designed to discuss, debate, and highlight internal and external questions of Talent Management. The guests included Russian and international CEOs, decision-makers, HR executives and business executives responsible for talent recruitment, training and development, representing the IT, Professional Advisory, FMCG, Automotive, Insurance, Machinery, Healthcare, and High Tech industries.

The event took part at the new premises of the German Chamber of Commerce at Filigrad Center. Pedersen & Partners were introduced with presentations from Sergei Serdioukov, Country Manager Russia, and new hire Susanne Doenitz. Susanne talked about internal and external talent recruitment, and described the pitfalls and applicable technologies when identifying talents on all levels:

• Potential talent in terms of HR – Leaders with the ability to develop and grow, young people with high potential to develop their abilities and become leaders, specialists with specific or rare talents
• External Talent (Executive) Search requirements – An executive search project is mostly a search for a certain talent; Need to know internal structures and specifics very well; High level of emotional and rational intelligence demanded from the consultants; High level of structural analysis of abilities specific to the business case; Ability to build trust between candidate and consultant, between consultant and client and between client and candidate

The keynote speaker Mike Vereshagin, ex-VP Human Resources Eurasia Region at Renault, delivered the main presentation “Talent Accelerator at Renault Russia – A Practice Report”.

For Mike, talent management is one of the key success factors for any company. If HR cannot get the full support of the CEO and leadership team on talent development initiatives, the company will lose one of the most important sources of competitive advantage.

"Our program was not a quick fix, it was not one of the ‘fashionable programs’ that companies sometimes tend to launch (and forget soon after) – instead it was a thorough approach,” said Mike. “It has taken the HR and management team quite some time to work the program out, to shape the approach and get it implemented to accelerate the development of talent in the company."

Mike’s team has developed a behavioral model internally, and then shared it back throughout all management levels together with tools linked to a mindset based on the belief that managing ‘talent’ is much more than managing an elite group of top performers or a bench of  potential successors to senior leaders:

• Talent management is an integrated system of strategies, policies, and programs designed to identify, develop, deploy and retain talent to achieve strategic objectives and meet future business needs: to attract and select talents, assess competencies and skills, review talents and plan actions, develop and deploy talents, and finally to engage and retain talents.

• Managers need to consistently practice the 3D model of talent acceleration: Discover, Develop and Deploy.
• Discover: regularly review organization and bench, recruit strategically, and identify talent.
• Develop: evaluate talent, strengthen talent, follow up on talent development.
• Deploy: engage and retain talent, appoint talent (while taking risks), ensure the employer’s reputation and develop the employer as a brand.

The presentation was followed by an active discussion and frank exchange of views between HRDs and CEOs of different environments and consultants. We believe that the sharing of views and experience regarding talent development has brought many ideas and approaches into play, which may be implemented in one or more of the represented companies in the future.

The discussions and exchanges were moderated by Susanne Doenitz, Consultant at Pedersen & Partners.

If you would like to conduct an interview with a representative of Pedersen & Partners, or have other media-related requests, please contact: Diana Danu, Marketing and Communications Manager at: diana.danu@pedersenandpartners.com