Breakfast Meetings with Undutchables

Every spring Undutchables organizes a number of breakfast meetings for our HR contacts. This year we had breakfast meetings in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and Eindhoven. During these sessions a guest speaker will present a trending topic within HR and there is always room for a discussion amongst the audience afterwards.

This years’ breakfast meeting was led by management consultant Gyuri Vergouw and  the topic was agile talent and how to find it. Paul Allsopp (The Agile Organisation) describes  agile working as the  bringing of people, processes, connectivity and technology, time and place together to find the most appropriate and effective way of working to carry out a particular task. It is working without guidelines and without boundaries.

Gyuri explained that the key to identifying agile talent within your company or during a job interview can be broken down into a number of steps. These steps include being selective in choosing talent; there is no universal talent for every scenario. Another important point is learning about the capacities of a candidate; experience is overrated. Has the candidate travelled? Have they done certain volunteer work that fits within the company culture? These can all be of added value to an organization. A point Gyuri also discusses is getting a candidate out of their comfort zone. Either by placing them in a scenario which is unexpected or asking them unexpected answers. It can be very telling how a candidate responds to these and will give HR insight how they deal with unexpected situations. Furthermore, Gyuri discusses that the higher up the position there are less checks to the candidate’s trustworthiness. It is always important to do at least one reference check of a candidate even if it is for a managerial role. Colleagues  can give clear and helpful insight into someone’s work ethic and personality.

As an international recruitment agency we find it important to stay up to date with new developments within the HR branch and we enjoy sharing our expertise with our clients. If you joined us at this years’ breakfast session we hope you enjoyed it and if you could not make it this year we hope you can join us next year as we will have a brand new topic to discuss!