Last month the Nordic ScaleUp Academy turned the focus to Talent Assessment and Effective Recruiting.

In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins creates a lasting and memorable metaphor by comparing a business to a bus and the leader as a bus driver. He emphasizes that it is crucial to continuously ask “First Who, Then What?”

You are a bus driver. The bus, your company, is at a standstill, and it’s your job to get it going. You have to decide where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, and who’s going with you.

In the case of the Nordic ScaleUp Academy, it’s more appropriate to use the metaphor of a rocket. Our scaleups spent the day focusing on finding the right people to put in the rocket for the scaling-up journey!

Nordic Scaleup Academy had a Q&A with Jesper Ericsson from Symcel AB and Veli-Matti Heimonen from Solnet

What were the 3 main takeaways from this session for you and your team?

Jesper Ericsson, Symcel

  1. To create an effective hiring process from candidate selection to interview.
  2. To identify the improvements in our collaborators to bring them from a lower performance level to a higher one
  3. Job interviews, how to create a well-structured routine to choose the best candidate and verify their references in a thorough way.

Veli-Matti Heimonen, Solnet

  1. The excel tool for role profiling is very useful for grade and job evaluation
  2. Good tips and best practices for the overall recruitment process
  3. Asking the question: “Would you hire this person again”?

Were there any eye-openers that you had not thought about before?

Jesper Ericsson, Symcel: Yes, some insights to improve when recruiting new people. There were some tips that will help to identify weaknesses and strengths of candidates that were not a common practice before, e.g. Job Scorecard tool

Veli-Matti Heimonen, Solnet: The importance of communication and best practice sharing inside the management team and spreading this to the rest of the organization.

Has this session changed the way you approach talent assessment and recruiting? If so, how?

Jesper Ericsson, Symcel: With the help of specific tools it will be clearer to improve people’s performance and also improve the recruiting process in a more accurate way.

Veli-Matti Heimonen, Solnet: This session generally highlights the importance of talent assessment and management. Very good, practical tools for implementation.

How do you foresee this session helping you with your recruitment strategies moving forward?

Jesper Ericsson, Symcel: Implementing the given tools to standardize the recruiting process.

Veli-Matti Heimonen, Solnet: It will help us to create and align the company’s HR policies.

Program partners

Over the past decades, there has been a healthy growth and development of the startup ecosystem in the Nordics. Startups are getting off the ground with more frequency, however, scaling up is still a great obstacle and companies in this stage find themselves with less support. The purpose of the Nordic ScaleUp Academy is to provide the tools and support to increase the amount of successful scaleups in the Nordics.

Nordic ScaleUp Academy is a joint effort by the Swedish DI Scaleup, Finnish Verona Growth, Maria 01, & Startup Foundation and the Norwegian ScaleUp XQ. The program is part of the Nordic Innovation’s Nordic Scalers initiative. The Nordic ScaleUp Academy coaches are Pelle Tornell and Jannes Dahlgren. The 2021 version of the program will take place entirely virtually.

Di ScaleUp: We are an initiative from Sweden’s largest financial newspaper to contribute to the flourishing of midsize growth companies.

Verona Growth: We discover new businesses and renew existing ones by helping you to work with and like startups.

Maria 01: We are the Nordics’ leading startup campus, bringing together tech startups, venture capitalists, corporates and ecosystem supporters under one roof.

Startup Foundation: We support entrepreneurship and the creation, growth, and internationalization of startups in the Nordics.

ScaleUp XQ: We strengthen international tech companies ripe for commercial scalingand growth.

Nordic Innovation House: We are a community platform accelerating high-quality Nordic tech startups, scaleups and growth companies. Via our strong community and network, we connect Nordic companies into the right ecosystem stakeholders.

Nordic Innovation: We promote entrepreneurship, innovation and competitiveness in Nordic business and aim to make the Nordics a pioneering region for sustainable growth. We are the initiator of Nordic Scalers program.

Written by Verneri Välimaa, StartUp Foundation

For more information visit: 

www.nordicscaleupacademy.com