The talent spotters

UNESCO Courier, Sept, 1998 by Jany Lesseur

In search of that precious raw material - intelligence - multinationals are skimming the cream of the student crop

Without by-passing their own departments of human resources, big companies are increasingly recruiting employees through international head-hunting agencies. Lafarge, a French multinational specializing in the manufacture of construction materials, spent months looking for an engineer to supervise quality control, the organization and management of laboratory staff and customer relations for its Cameroonian subsidiary. Eventually it contacted AfricSearch, which specializes in spotting talented Africans trained in the West and putting them in touch with firms established in Africa.

One of their recent recruits is a young Cameroonian, Gabriel Bekemen, was hired in Paris just after graduating. Today he is a quality-control engineer in a laboratory in the town where he was born. "I studied engineering in Paris at the Ecole Polytechnique," he says. "Then I did a master's degree in quality-control management at the Centre for Higher Industrial Studies, and later obtained a diploma in finance at the National Arts and Crafts Centre. I answered a press advertisement and shortly afterwards was contacted by AfricSearch, where I was selected from among twenty other candidates after a number of tests and interviews. I think that what most helped me to get the job was the fact that I had worked to pay my way while I was a student."

"When multinational companies operating in Africa want someone with technical qualifications that are unavailable locally, they look elsewhere," explains Jean-Pierre Kwedi, a consultant and partner at AfricSearch. "They are looking for sound training as provided by the universities and higher education institutes, but they also want candidates to originate from the country in question or at least be African, since they will adapt more easily to a social, economic and cultural context which they know well."

Diplomas aren't everything

For other companies, nationality or experience make little difference. Guido Tommei is responsible for staff recruitment for Africa at Schlumberger, a multinational company which offers services and knowhow to major oil companies. "We primarily recruit recent young graduates," he says, "regardless of nationality and or experience, who are prepared to work in tough conditions and adapt to different situations."

Pascal Devoulon of Alexandre Tic, a French employment agency which forms part of an international network, sets a high priority on personal initiative. "Unsolicited job applications receive more attention than many people think," he says. "In our company we place such applications on file and summon candidates when we receive a request that matches their qualifications."

Besides the usual methods like press advertisements, unsolicited applications and contact over the Internet, many firms find that traineeships for students or recent graduates are the best way of getting to know an individual's abilities. If trainees' profiles match the firm's requirements, they are hired more or less on the spot.

This explains why big firms are tending to make exchange agreements with universities and other higher education institutions. Philips, a Dutch multinational with 250,000 staff spread out over five continents, takes on 20,000 new employees every year. Of these, 20 per cent are young graduates who will work mainly in research, technical development, information technology or electronics and product marketing and sales. "Many of our staff come from the training forums and programmes we organize with leading universities in all world regions where we do business, for example IMD University in Switzerland, the London Business School in Britain, Supelec in France and the Rotterdam School of Advanced Studies in the Netherlands," explains Yan Lavenan, Philips' General Manager for Human Resources.

But diplomas aren't everything. Charles-Henri Dumond, president of Michel Page, a leading European employment agency, which recruits 2,000 employees every year, is convinced that initial experience is extremely important in recruiting a young person. "Academic knowledge is very important," he says, "but so is general background. Technical skills or diplomas from prestigious schools have their place but we also take into account the candidate's personality, adaptability, knowledge of languages and work as a trainee."