Meet Hakim, one of our new employees at TQ Nordic! Hakim will talk about his journey from being a sommelier in a luxury restaurant to working with psychometric tests with us.
Hi Hakim, welcome to TQ Nordic! Tell us more about what you will do with us.
You have worked as a sommelier at a luxury restaurant and now with psychometric tests, how did you take that step?
I asked myself and people around me what I think I have the potential to do? It became clear that people in focus and above all my interest in seeing people grow and develop have been what drove me. It has been the common thread throughout my career, alongside developing myself by trying different roles and environments.
"Psychometric tests are a very valuable tool that nicely complements both recruitment processes and development efforts. Being able to work with a support that helps recruiting managers, leaders or employees to understand themselves and their colleagues better feels very fitting to me. "
You have a solid background with experience from both Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, coaching and leadership. You were almost 10 years at Netlight Consulting, tell us more about that.
It was at Netlight that I first came into contact with the craft behind Talent Acquisition when I left the hotel and restaurant world. When I stepped on board, we were three people who made up a TA function focused on outreach recruitment with all that that entails, approx. 150 employees in Stockholm. After a few years, I became responsible for the recruitment function and was involved in building the capacity of our offices in Helsinki, Oslo and in various locations in Germany.
When I then left Netlight, TA consisted of close to 50 people distributed over 8 different offices in Europe and close to 1300 employees. At Netlight, Talent Management is something that clearly starts in the recruitment function and the obvious further development is to work on developing the people who are recruited. I had the opportunity to work with different perspectives and initiatives that dealt with, among other things, mentoring, leadership, communication and group development. Recently, I worked as the person responsible for the further development of the internal training program, which then consisted of 6 modules that ran continuously throughout the year.
What do you think is a common mistake that many people make in recruitment processes?
What is the most important thing to consider if you are a start-up versus a larger and more established company when recruiting, are there any common pitfalls?
Why do you want to work with a company that does assessments?
What is your future forecast for 2023?
It will get worse before it gets better!” We have a recession ahead of us, it creates opportunities of course - but it requires change, adjustment and development. And as most of us know, evolving is often uncomfortable.
Learning something new, improving one's technique or fitness requires training, discipline and ambition – it's extra tough when the surroundings are messy. But maybe also something positive to focus on when things are messy in the world? Here leadership will be a decisive factor, where I believe that in many cases we need confident, empathetic leaders who are responsive and are not afraid to make mistakes or ask for help.
