Denis Frolov: Employer branding as a long-term game

Pauline Bertry 0:13

Hi, Deniz, how are you?

Denis Frolov 0:14

Police, I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. How are you doing?

Pauline Bertry 0:18

I'm Val, thank you so much and welcome to the den!

Denis Frolov 0:22

Woo! I find it like especially great that you have like the same name for me and for your podcast, actually. Appreciate it all.

Pauline Bertry 0:29

I agree. Yes, so true, so true. Look, I mean, of course we worked together in the past and we did a lot of great, we created a lot of great stories together. But when I was preparing for our conversation, I realized that I actually don't know much about your journey. So I thought that would be the right way to start the conversation. and to ask you to tell me and everyone who is listening to us about your journey, your story, the past, the present and the aspirations for the future, of course.

Denis Frolov 1:03

Yeah, sure. So well I am an employer branding and people communications leader with more than nine years of experience in like people communications and employer branding and all the like things in between of them and more than 15 years of communications like overall. well I started as a PR person and like media management person, but then like I was fascinated by this like incredible world of people communications and all the things like a company needs to engage and interact with its employees and candidates like across the full talent life cycle. And well right now I'm enjoying like hugely enjoying to discover more opportunities where it like would be of more help for companies around the world.

Pauline Bertry 1:48

Very nice. And I mean, I think it would be a kind of a fair starting point to ask you to tell a little bit more about what you've done in the past, what type of situations you've worked with, with the clients or in your past experiences. Because I think it kind of For someone from the outside, it might feel a little bit like an HR role, but I know it's not. So I'm very curious to kind of hear your perspective on that.

Denis Frolov 2:23

One of like one of my friends, he's marketing director, he recently told me that he's like, Well, I didn't know that it's a real job that like

Pauline Bertry 2:33

Hahaha

Denis Frolov 2:34

our marketing thing. So but well in general, yes, it's like different angles. I started with what we call like talent marketing things. It's like when you try to position and to promote company as an employer. So you do basically the things that you Would do for you just doing it like for another type of type of work and you're looking for talent for this company. And I believe that it's like more interesting and more fruitful because well it's to me it's like a Tinder, you know? because well you help like one great people to find another great people to do something like increasing incredible together. And well yes, well it's actually more or less the same toolkit like for a marketer as well. So you're working social media and events for example to deal with Candidate and employee journey is you like try to design them and to understand whether it goes well or where you need to like to work on more and more to make the most out of your conversion rates, your work with

Pauline Bertry 3:48

Mm.

Denis Frolov 3:49

hiring outcomes and help them with onboarding and so on so forth. So yeah, it's usually this type of work.

Pauline Bertry 3:56

Can you tell me a little bit about how this looks like in practice? So maybe one of the stories from your experience. I would love to learn more.

Denis Frolov 4:04

Yeah, sure. For example, you are really you are a really big management consulting firm and you would like to you have like enormous amount of different talent programs and you need to make sure that you have like the appropriate kind of talent like coming to them and applying at your programs. And so you are for example thinking about what to do. With this and you deciding to launch a few social media pages of your company to tell about your internships or to tell about your programs, career programs. But at the same time you need to be interesting to these people because at the same time you have a lot of other companies asking these same very talented people to apply to their weagon system. You are looking for different angles, you are trying to find like people stories inside of your business. You try to build like I don't know personal branding for your talented consultants for example and to launch targeted advert targeted advertising to find like the most appropriate audience for your programs and then you watch how it all works and you see like the conversion rates try to iterate and to optimize something, something like this. Or for example, we may have another angle. You are a Fintia company, for example, and you have you are operating like across different countries and all your kind of HR department people they speak English but well they have different English like Asian one or European one like you know Cyprus one and because well the majority of your people are not just like English natives And at the same time, you have like your career website with like more than 80 job descriptions, and you need to consistently for talent because at the same time you see that a lot of other companies are trying to like fight for the same brilliant people. And you are kind checking all your job descriptions to make it like the most appealing. Then you're working on the whole I don't know, greenhouse notifications layer. It's an ATF system when you apply. At a job, you receive like notifications that well somebody is gonna like meet you soon and you're gonna have this interview or that interview and well that you have this result about the interview and you need to be sure to make sure that it's all like done in a consistent way and that all this experience kinda helps you to have the most brilliant people on your team after all and not to lose them.

Pauline Bertry 6:46

I love it. have one question that I think will resonate with a lot of people on the market right now and a lot of companies. So I like how you're talking about the fact that as a company you fight for the best people and you want them to kind of come to you and work with you and for you. And I think it works really, really well in the kind of high market, let's say it in the way where you have kind of, if I simplify, more people hiring for specific roles or specific situations than people on the market. I also have a feeling that in the last like two to three years, we kind of experience a little bit of a different market because of like a lot of layoffs. AI and we will go into that topic later, but it does feel like the dynamics are shifting and we are getting to the situation where there are more people looking for a job sometimes than companies hiring. And I would love to kind of get your thoughts on how this role transformed in this kind of situation. So what is the difference between employer branding in high market and employer branding in low market.

Denis Frolov 8:07

Well, I still believe that like companies still looking for brilliant people and really good talented people are always on demand and well speaking of layoffs and other things of course have the really I don't know dangerous situations when really good workers, really talented and fruitful people are like getting laid off and they are really struggling to find their next gig. But at the same time we still need to make sure that we have the best possible talent in our team no matter what, because well if we do it like on a high market, in a high market situation, for example, we kinda battling with other high voluming. It's like I don't know, for me it's a battle of budgets, for example. when you try to like to acquire and to well to do something with the ratio, for example, ratio of market. But when you do the same thing with like low demand markets, actually I can see a lot of difference because well, as long as I'm speaking with companies, all of them kind of repeat one one and the same story. right now everybody are looking for high productive, high agency, high agent people. But every company wants these people. Nobody wants like a boring once, I don't know, lazy people, who are not able to do anything like in terms of technology. So what are you gonna offer to them? and that's when it's like becoming really even more important, like details, of look and feel, cases of your company so whether these people that you are trying to acquire whether they're gonna be happy with you or not and well all this kind of makes difference and it doesn't usually you know you you you can turn it just turn it on like you know right now we need like this kind of people and let's do something in two weeks and like they're gonna love us. No, it's this thing that you are building over time and especially right now when you have all this like digital footprint of your company reputation like that is reflected now both in search engines and in AI chatbots well it's getting a little tricky right.

Pauline Bertry 10:23

Yeah, that's true. I like it. And then I have like a bit of a follow-up question to the same direction where we were going. So I kind of, understand that for, if my understanding is correct, generally this for like a bigger company, like you said, a huge consulting firm or like very fast growing fintech where most likely they have some external capital, et cetera. This would be a separate role because they would also be able to afford this type of professional and expertise. What I would love to go into a little bit is what are the key elements or what are the best practices. an agency, for example, or like a consulting boutique around like 30, 50 people size. They have two to three to five generally very good stable client. They are growing at a decent rate, but it's not necessarily like plus 400 % every year. Right? So what are the elements that you believe they should kind of incorporate in order to be able to kind of build this brand where people become interested in joining this company and that they kind of hire the best talent that is available on the market, assuming that their starting point is a little bit different, right? Because most of the agencies, are like rarely hyper-growth. They rarely experience in the hyper growth stage. So they also have less budget or less investment, cetera. So what are the, I don't know, three, five key things you think they should really implement in their work in order to be able to start building this employer branding?

Denis Frolov 12:23

Yeah, sure. well one of my last work experiences for example involved having zero budget at all. well with the exception for my salary actually. But well I mean usually I believe that of course you need money for advertising or for any kind of promotion but it depends only when you need to work with like you know high volume of jobs and it's kinda you know streams it's like constant streams for a company that you need to fulfill but at the same time I believe that you can build a lot of things with zero budget and it usually depends. Another thing usually this type of communications as well as other types of work the same as the the work that you do right now for example it's usually perceived as a function as functions and it's good because well we still I I'm not saying that we don't need like functions and organizations but I'd like to you know to challenge this approach a little bit and to think about all the things as products.

Pauline Bertry 13:27

Mm-hmm.

Denis Frolov 13:27

Because for me it kinda changes the question at all because well the question is no more like how should I build an employee branding anything for my company? The question turns into how to build, for example, a warm pipeline of candidates.

Pauline Bertry 13:44

Mm-hmm.

Denis Frolov 13:46

And now you're thinking about the product

Pauline Bertry 13:47

I love it!

Denis Frolov 13:49

because well it's no longer about audience, it's about its users. It's not no longer about I don't know set of activities for but it's about I don't know a creational system behind it or strategy or like I don't know, it's not about measurement just for the sake of measurement, but well your kind of talks shifts into the field of like the most simplest but well at the same time the most I don't know useful metric system I like I don't know traffic plus your applications plus the hiring outcomes, something like this. So I will start with asking these kind of questions at first. of course if you have me or another person like me who like can spend their time like exploring the fields more and more for company I would do like a simplest research The simplest kind of re research you can like do in order to understand your employer value proposition, like why are you so interesting? Why are you could be that interesting for like your talent? It just well, just go for your last five hires and ask them why they kind of chose you.

Pauline Bertry 14:57

Hmm.

Denis Frolov 14:58

And it gives you like a lot of perspective into that. And then you can go and ask five other people who rejected your offer but you wanted it so badly and you can ask them the same question. So why did you reject so? And you can get into another set of things to understand how the things is going on. It can give you like another perspective to understand what's like doesn't work right now for you, what you can fix before kind of going and launching another amazing advertising or editorial. paying this somewhere else, I don't know, launching an social media asset or something like this. So I would do this thing and I would start

Pauline Bertry 15:39

Hmm.

Denis Frolov 15:39

talking to the people and looking for real life stories because They can fit you know something really working around campaigns with like you know real branding but well

Pauline Bertry 15:53

Mm-hmm.

Denis Frolov 15:53

we need to show it in the first place well I believe that one project breakdown a month from someone who on the team who really love what they do works much more useful than a constant I don't know flow of just job postings on your social media.

Pauline Bertry 16:13

Mm-hmm.

Denis Frolov 16:13

something like this because well at the end people choose people to work with.

Pauline Bertry 16:19

I like it. I mean, I have a lot of follow up questions to that, but I

Denis Frolov 16:23

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 16:24

think I'll ask that too. So let's try to brainstorm a bit.

Denis Frolov 16:28

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 16:29

I when I think about people we are working with, so generally, as I said, they are like 30, 50 people. They've been around for like three, four, five, seven years. Sometimes they've done hiring. They most likely have their company LinkedIn page. They have candidates coming in and out sometimes. Generally it's handled either by the founder or by one of their leaders. So like founder minus one. if, like what are the three things you think they should start kind of implementing. So let's assume they talk to people, they kind of understand a little bit who they are, why people come, why people reject them, etc. Like what are the tangible things they should start thinking about? Is it like a LinkedIn, another page for candidates or they create, I don't know, an Instagram account where they post social gatherings and parties and coffee in the office? Or you also talked about like the warm pipeline of candidates who would be like, do they have like, do they need a special tool for it? Is it something that lives in Excel? someone who is curious about this topic and they want to start, where do they start? Like practically hands on.

Denis Frolov 17:51

Yeah, yeah, I got it. Well, yes, but again it depends on what kind of problem you have. For example, for example, you want candidate just in case because well you you can see like a few talks like going on right now and maybe you're gonna have like more projects and we need more people for this maybe but you don't know yet. we're just thinking about well it would be nice to have like a really great network of people somewhere around me. You can start with collecting the people who are already applying at your jobs. to any CRM tool, even if it's Excel or something like this. And you can think of a small, I don't know, MVP minimum viable product for them to keep them engaged with you. It can be like, I don't know, an interesting talk once per three months. It can be a discussion, it can be a hackathon, it can be anything, just well, just maybe to for example in Barcelona we have like an employer employee. Community. We just meet once per three months and we just discuss I don't know cases. And at the same time, for us it's a good professional network, but well, of course, we have sponsorship for these meetings, of course,

Pauline Bertry 19:08

Yeah.

Denis Frolov 19:09

companies who are interested, like in having us all just well, you know, in the reach of their hands. and the same works with design agencies, with like you know, how productive. Agency people, AI enthusiasts, and so on and so forth. you can well speaking about cases breakdowns. Well, right now I think you have a lot of tools. So you can record your I don't know, town halls and meetings, or like any demo things, and you can ask AI just to bring it down into social media posts or into an article and to work with this if you don't have like I don't know, especially trained people to help you with this. if you are not that really interested in doing this, I highly recommend to reach out to someone, even if it's gonna be like a freelancer or like part-time person to a team because it's gonna be like a great asset to help you with this if you can't afford

Pauline Bertry 20:05

Hmm.

Denis Frolov 20:05

this and s and that's how you start in building these things. that's how you start important business but well there is no for me there is no like a unique recipe

Pauline Bertry 20:16

Of course.

Denis Frolov 20:17

because well the problem the problems like kind of arrive from company to company but at the same time the framework for me is the same start thinking about it as a product what pain would you like to solve what do you need in the first place and how much money time and I don't know effort you can like kinda Yeah, it's investing it.

Pauline Bertry 20:44

And then I have in the same kind of spirit, have another follow-up question. So

Denis Frolov 20:49

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 20:49

what are the elements that you see people getting constantly wrong when they start, when

Denis Frolov 20:57

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 20:58

they get, let's say generally like they will hear employer branding from somewhere. They will be like, my God, it's amazing. And then they start doing something. And what are the like three things you see? people

Denis Frolov 21:09

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 21:09

getting constantly wrong and doing constantly in a wrong way that could actually lead to hurt the company rather than kind of give them the results that they are aspiring for.

Denis Frolov 21:22

Well actually I have my personal kinda collection of dead listings of publications and for granted, yes. there are six of them for me. But well let's let's have

Pauline Bertry 21:36

No, can tell all the Sikhs, please.

Denis Frolov 21:40

Well let's try. I think one of the most critical critical ones are hire harder, but ignore people you already have. that's kind of creates it happens when companies trying to reach out to like new talent and to show them to pretend that they are kind of

Pauline Bertry 21:59

Mmm.

Denis Frolov 22:00

I don't know, modern. balanced and they're another company that they are kinda they are in real life. and I believe that's that's the huge problem because well you need to address the ones who you are to be authentic, to be kinda genuine with this, if you respect hard working, if you respect I don't know overworking and like burning out your people, you should be like genuine about this if you want to keep doing this. If you want to change things you need to first work with the the problems that you already have internally before going out like to

Pauline Bertry 22:39

Bye.

Denis Frolov 22:40

external audience because now you have not not not one but two problems because well you're kind of wasting a lot of money and time and effort to to find the other people like but at the same time you are as soon as they end up you being your employees they're leaving because well they can't work here it's not what you want

Pauline Bertry 23:01

Yeah.

Denis Frolov 23:02

to them second I think let's build everything in scratch in two months something like this it's like well we haven't done anything before at all but we need a warm pipeline into month. And

Pauline Bertry 23:16

Mm-hmm.

Denis Frolov 23:17

usually it doesn't work like this as any promotional campaign, but for because well to start with, you need to understand your current problems, set of problems that you already have, or kind of even your I don't know, goal or objective in doing this, because usually companies Getting back to the first stage, they kinda don't do this homework really properly. They pretend not to see the things that can happen already in real life. And it's okay, but it can burn your money and effort. And it's not about like efficiency or productivity at all, you know, well in my world. so and I believe that we should be like really kinda careful about our resources and our time, especially if you are a CEO or COO or a CHRO or any kind of really high profile leader, because well your time costs a lot of money for the company. and I think the third one maybe among one of the most critical. it's a more common thing right now right now. let's AI do it all. Yeah, let's

Pauline Bertry 24:21

Okay.

Denis Frolov 24:22

work on it with AI. And it's good because AI I believe I really kinda I adore technology, I adore artificial intelligence. It's like really incredible to have these kind of assistance and helpers around us today. Because well even well being sometimes a single person working on this set of problems, it helps me a lot to have all this technology like

Pauline Bertry 24:43

Yeah.

Denis Frolov 24:44

on the tips of my fingers and not costing that much for a company for me. But at the same time, especially right now in this era of AI-generated texts, emails, notifications, and so on so forth, when people already can see like you know, the most dumb mistakes, kind of that companies keep repeating and repeating, for example, and a job description, and at the end you can see if you want me to make it like more friendly, please let me know. It's like well recruiters kinda forgetting to delete this part that they copied from

Pauline Bertry 25:18

him.

Denis Frolov 25:19

NEI assistant. It still needs a human touch, especially right now,

Pauline Bertry 25:23

Of course.

Denis Frolov 25:23

because that's how you're gonna I don't know, distinguish yourself because every company unique and we need to show this. find like really our people that fits us the best.

Pauline Bertry 25:38

Yeah, definitely. mean, I agree so much on the AI. That's, think, a whole problem, like a huge problem. But I have one more kind of one more question here. So you said you have like roughly 15 years of experience in the industry, right? If I'm not mistaken.

Denis Frolov 25:59

Yeah, communications to the world, yeah.

Pauline Bertry 26:01

Yeah, so my kind of, what I'm curious about is, I kind of observe in the industry where like we are working, there is a lot of generational differences in terms of what like a Gen X would expect out of an employer, what a Gen Y would expect out of an employer, what Gen Z would expect. And I mean, I think we have a Generation Alpha kind of growing and coming. some of them are all, I mean, very rare cases, but some of them are already doing some stuff, So, and I think it's, I mean, if my understanding is correct, globally kind of what is happening in the world is that, like people start working maybe a bit earlier than before, or sometimes, I mean, please feel free to challenge me. They also work longer. So with the retirement age growing, etc so they stay active much longer versus what it was like, I don't know, 10 years ago, etc And we are kind of living in the time where we have almost like three generations for sure, maybe four sometimes working in the same company on the same project, like facing the same business context. The company as an entity, and again, we are talking about the companies that are not like two, three, four, five, 7,000 people, right? We are generally talking about like 30, 50, maybe 100 people. So how can they deal with that? How can they create an employer value proposition that would be attractive to all the different segments? Because you like to call them users. to all the different segments of those employers, of this talent they want to attract.

Denis Frolov 27:53

Well I think the answer is already isn't is in the question because well s segmenting and understanding the profiles of people that you try to work with. Because well of course Gen Alpha, Gen Z, Gen X, Gen Y, a any kind of these groups I believe they have something in common like within themselves. But at the same time we can have like Three people from Gen Y, for example, and all of them can be like pretty different at the same time. And they can like have different values. They can have different upbringing, different like professional styles, working styles, and so forth. And it's I believe that's the same talk as we have last Several years about diversity, inclusion, and so on so forth. So for me, it's the same kind of problem. And another thing is that if you already have people from different generations working for you in your like 30, 40, 50 people company, and they are getting along well with each other, and each of these group kind of finds something really beautiful and really incredible about being like part of a team, we can again start with talking to them and asking them what

Pauline Bertry 29:15

Mm.

Denis Frolov 29:16

they kinda have in common because well we can find out that we we have like either the same set of values or same propositions actually very propositions for people

Pauline Bertry 29:28

Alright.

Denis Frolov 29:29

either or like the different ones for each group and to work with them further. Because well for me, usually I wouldn't say that I haven't seen actually the recent research researches about like so I don't know anything about like whether people start but I I I

Pauline Bertry 29:54

That was just a feeling, I don't have data.

Denis Frolov 29:56

I I can see another problem that companies tend to avoid hiring juniors. If you are a junior right now, it's like harder for you to get your first job than it was for us, for example.

Pauline Bertry 30:10

I want to go into this topic separately because that's a topic

Denis Frolov 30:12

Yes, yes, perfect.

Pauline Bertry 30:13

like I'm super passionate about. There is one element in what you

Denis Frolov 30:15

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 30:17

said that I found extremely interesting and I want to kind of get a bit deeper. So what I kind of, what I was framing is that basically like you have different segments, meaning like different generations and you should address them differently. But I hear from you and what I like about it is that You're saying like stop treating people as generations, start treating them based on the values and the kind of core beliefs they have, regardless of how many, like what is the number of their birth year in their passport. So I want to kind of ask you about what are the like very typical type of segments that you have observed working in different companies based on those values that people can have regardless of which generation they are from.

Denis Frolov 31:09

that's really tricky one because I think everything was so different because for example, working with a huge management consulting firm than with FinTech across like different nationalities and then with a small DMTF company, for example, you have really different profiles of people. and well their values really Brights that much that it was even hard for me. I needed to reinvent some approach for approaches, for example, to go and work with them because it wasn't like this. I I would like to say something about stability right now, because

Pauline Bertry 31:47

Mm-hmm.

Denis Frolov 31:47

well I've seen a few research about Like the things that people value right now in this era of laid offs and so on so forth. And it's more about like that this general tiredness of people

Pauline Bertry 32:02

Anyway.

Denis Frolov 32:03

after all this like geopolitical crisis, all this like laid offs, technological shifts, all this like VI revolution and all these changes because well change right now is not that's what happens overnight anymore, it's what we have every day, like going

Pauline Bertry 32:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Denis Frolov 32:19

Yeah and there is like a hypothesis that people are really tired generally because of what's going on and because of that they might value more kind of stability or kinda I don't know things

Pauline Bertry 32:35

predictability, think.

Denis Frolov 32:37

Yes, yes, yes, something about this and support and enablement. because a lot of people are really you know into changing, but companies fail at enabling them to kind of erase all the possibilities. Maybe they're the things that could be like more general or more common for companies and audiences right now, but well. It wasn't like this for me like during my last projects because well it wasn't too different.

Pauline Bertry 33:06

Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, I think this element, also depends a lot on the country you live in, because I mean, for example, like the government enabled stability in France is not the same than the government enabled stability. I don't know, somewhere else. Yes.

Denis Frolov 33:23

In Spain. Yes.

Pauline Bertry 33:26

For example, but, Yeah, I mean, I think that that's also what I observe. think there is one kind of element around, around versus change. like predictability versus a bit of flexibility, let's say. There is another one that I think is generally like very common is around like the lifestyle versus like the productivity. So this I think is an interesting axis also to look at. And then I think the third one that I also observe is like flatness versus kind of structure a bit, the hierarchy.

Denis Frolov 34:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think yeah.

Pauline Bertry 34:08

And I mean, kind of going back to the element that you were saying, like you need to hire people who will accept you for who you are. And I think that's such an important angle because like when I was in Azerbaijan and we were hiring the team from scratch, like the company was just created and we were building the team. A lot of times we would have the conversations and we would have people who would like expect to have a certain like job description, to have a certain kind of clarity on the role, et cetera. And in most cases we were like, look, we are a three people team now or like a five people team now. So of course we understand you have like certain strengths, but at the same time, we just cannot yet have a situation where. it will be like flexible and predictable. So we needed to find people who were okay with the fact that things are changing and today they're doing design and tomorrow they are doing marketing. So yeah, fully agree with you on that.

Denis Frolov 35:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too. what do you think about enablements, for example? Because I kept thinking about the common things. it was in my last two projects. because

Pauline Bertry 35:23

Mm.

Denis Frolov 35:24

I've noticed that as soon as you offer kinda help or support to your employees, you're getting like more from them. For example, we needed to increase our employees voice externally but typically when you come to different people and ask them to like to to to go and have a public talk for example or like write something to social media like an article something like this, people usually kinda they're scared and that's fine because that's what they tick typically kind kind do every day. and as soon as you're offering them kinda a supporting product, enabling them to go through this experience, holding your hand and like being really ready and feeling that they are really kind of progressing with this, you can see like how things growing and the same thing I saw in FinTech company where we did like a talent development stream of communications

Pauline Bertry 36:26

Hmm?

Denis Frolov 36:27

company had a lot of opportunities for learning because it was like the rise of the eye already at that moment and they had a lot of internal course courses like for about the topic but we needed to encourage people to take them and to work with them and after that we noticed like kind of a productivity shift and I'm wondering whether it was like only a thing that I've seen or whether maybe you had the same perspective on that.

Pauline Bertry 36:56

Yeah, I mean, I think mostly very, very similar. I think it also depends a little bit on the company, right? And what type of people that were hired to start with, because if we are talking about like public talk, for example, there are certain people who are great at what they do, but they never wanted or like learned. how to go and do a conference speech or how to write on LinkedIn and they might not want it. So I think that for me, it's all about kind of transparently communicating the expectations. So for me, like the good starting point is to say, like, look, in our, like, this is our organizational strategy. That's one of the elements that we want to push in order to do this. we expect people at like level X or role X, ta da dee, ta da da to do Y. And in order to help you do this, if you need support, these are the tools that we will create for you or the tools, the environment and so on and so on. But I think for me, and I see this in like AI upskilling, for example. I think like putting the tool in front and the tool doesn't necessarily need to be like a technical tool. It can also be like a space or someone to help them with. think having a resource is not enough for people to be able to use it. I think you need to have like an expectation, communicate it transparently first and then say that's the process you can follow. And these are the resources that are here to help.

Denis Frolov 38:40

Yeah, totally agree. Well, it's so great. Thank you for sharing.

Pauline Bertry 38:44

But I wanted to go a little bit into the direction of the junior hiring as well as a last topic for our chat. That's also what I observe a lot everywhere, like big companies, small companies, fintech consulting agency, like a lot of companies, they have just stopped hiring juniors because I mean, of course, a senior with three AI tools can deliver well. But then the problem is that in three years, those seniors, they will leave somewhere because all the people want to have like all the companies, want to have talented people and this resource will become rare. So they will pay more, but the companies will find themselves in the situation where they haven't like they haven't created this pipeline of, of new generation. I understand like as part of the employer branding, you kind of work with people a lot who are not yet. part of the company who are going to be part of the company in the future often? Like how does this integrate? how does this element of junior hiring, upskilling, kind of preparing them to be hired in three years can be solved? What's your view on that?

Denis Frolov 39:58

Actually, there are so many different things depending again on the problem that we'd like to like to solve. Because if we kind of thinking about having again this pool of young talented people, but like kind of knowing about your Organization and having any kind of an emotional connection to you, we should think about it as a product because maybe we can have kind of crowdsourcing things for them to offer. Maybe we can kind of launch a small course for them to help them become more senior, then like an average

Pauline Bertry 40:38

Hmm.

Denis Frolov 40:39

junior. maybe we can invite them. for our demos or like to see how we work or to see how we kinda address these of these problems and issues because at one point we should well we all what we will do here and right right here and right now

Pauline Bertry 40:59

Yeah.

Denis Frolov 40:59

we are helping business our business to grow i mean our business the companies and the clients that they're working for at a particular moment of time and that's fine because we should think about efficiency Productivity, return on investment, and other things. And if right now it's not kind of operationally cost efficient to have a team of juniors, for example,

Pauline Bertry 41:23

course.

Denis Frolov 41:23

that's not what we should kind of I don't know, breach for. But at the same time, well you can leave management consulting, but well, management consulting never leaves you. you should think about it like in long perspective, long term. because what's gonna happen in five years? What can happen in ten years? And it's really that's the thing that's really interesting because if you understand that we need to have plan B, plan C, plan D for this, maybe we can thank you so much. maybe we can kinda invest our effort into thinking about this Design problem if you

Pauline Bertry 42:03

No, but I like it. So what you are saying basically is like if you cannot hire like great junior people now, kind of grow them externally so that when you can, you kind of hire people who are already of increasingly have lived with

Denis Frolov 42:21

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 42:22

your tools, with your culture. And then their integration is going to be much smoother and they can kind of start right away.

Denis Frolov 42:30

And you can have them as your actually fan because yeah,

Pauline Bertry 42:34

ambassadors.

Denis Frolov 42:35

it's ambassadors and it's one of the greatest things of this, and you can be genuine and authentic about this because it's not that you are promising them anything, it just you can show them, you can talk to them, you can engage with them, you can kinda communicate with them, and doesn't mean anything for any of you, but at the same time it's about building your relationship. It's incredibly great to have all these people around.

Pauline Bertry 43:02

I love it. Look, I have a last question and maybe like it's it's a closing thought. So what would be your kind of the best advice or recommendation for an agency or like a consulting boutique who are start, who are just starting to think about their like employer branding, the warm client, the warm candidate pipeline, etc So What would be your kind of advice or wish for them? Where do they start? Like what's the best starting point?

Denis Frolov 43:34

I would say two things. The first one, love people you work with, because these people help earn you a lot of money. And if you're gonna love them like really, really much, they're gonna help you like earn really, really more. Yeah, and the second

Pauline Bertry 43:52

That's a great advice.

Denis Frolov 43:54

thing, I believe, start talk to people and ask. them why they do or choose this or that. Ask people why they choose to work with you. Why you ask people why they didn't choose to work with you and so on so forth to understand it's like The minimum available diagnostic tool for you to see problems. Wait for the moment when it's gonna be like really too hard to solve and you can understand your cross and cods cons at the real moment. I believe it helps a lot. And for me it's so frustrating and sad that a lot of companies, a lot of leaders just don't talk to their teams at all. And I can understand if you're talking about like I don't know, ten thousand people team, but if you're talking about like 40 people team, guys.

Pauline Bertry 44:48

Yeah.

Denis Frolov 44:49

You don't have kind of Yeah. Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 44:52

No excuse, go talk to your people. I like it. Thank you so much for your time. It was

Denis Frolov 45:00

Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you for having me. And well, that was so great. Thank you so much.

Pauline Bertry 45:05

was great. Thank you so much.