A company is defined not only by its economic capital and technical skills (know-how), but also by its human capital. The interaction and motivation of employees are success factors that should not be neglected for the smooth running of a company.

Nowadays, it is unanimously agreed that human resources are the strength of a company, in other words: no company without human resources. Human capital, defined as all the aptitudes, talents, qualifications and experience accumulated by an individual, is therefore the most important issue.

TALENTS ARE THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE COMPANY AND ATTRACTING THEM IS A REAL CHALLENGE TODAY: TALENT MANAGEMENT.

Talent is the term used to define the highly qualified personnel of a company. The two elements that characterise talent are: significant professional experience in the areas of their functions and a greater knowledge of the sector in which they work.

Companies have therefore set up procedures to formalise their recruitment. Recruitment is a direct process through which recruiters collect applications for given positions, which involves time and cost of recruitment. Nowadays, and particularly in Central Africa, recruitment has become a search for the person with the most years of experience. The focus is no longer on potential, but on experience.

WAT&CO HAS MOVED FROM RECRUITMENT TO TALENT ACQUISITION

Changing the way you work often requires a change of mindset. As a recruiter, there is a strong desire to find a candidate who has already held a position or functions identical to those sought. At WAT&CO, we do not look for the clone or the "five-legged sheep" but we privilege the potential of our candidates.

No quality without error, no error without corrective action, no corrective action without training, so no quality without training. A vacancy is often more expensive than the training of a good candidate.

The different stages that make up the strategic acquisition of talent at WAT&CO:

1-ATTIRATE

We look for a personal and decisive connection. The most important thing is what we offer and how the candidate feels, because we believe that in the end, people do not remember what we said or did, they remember the feeling they had in front of us. Therefore, we ensure that the application process is as simple, smooth and user-friendly as possible.

2-SELECTION

The main challenge at this stage is to make sure that we choose the right candidate or that the delays in the selection process do not prevent us from recruiting the best profiles. We use videoconferencing, graduate programmes, work-study programmes. Our talent management aims to identify and support high potential rather than high experience.

3-MEASURE

Conscious of our core business of consulting, we attach less importance to the diplomas obtained than to the results produced. At WATiens(iennes): Excellence has no age. We remember that in 2000, a 15 year old boy became famous for hacking into the high traffic websites of the time like Yahoo!, EBay, CNN and Amazon. He did an estimated $1.7 billion in damages and was sentenced in the Youth Division to eight months in a youth detention centre. But he had subsequently received several job offers in cyber security: He was a talent to be guided. In 2012, in Canada, it was a 12-year-old child who was behind the hacking of several government websites. The child was still in the fifth grade of primary school. At the age of five, Mozart became proficient at the piano and the violin. We will not forget Anne Frank, who was 12 years old when she started writing her diary during the Nazi occupation. It was later published as The Diary of a Young Girl and was published in over 60 languages. Anne Frank died at the age of 15 from typhus.

That is why at WAT&CO, every candidate is tested. They are put into a professional context and have to produce results as if they were already employed. You can see young graduates on projects with seniors: At WAT&CO, potential is better than grades and quality results are better than experience. Even if the academic level remains an assurance, we know how to accompany our employees who want to make an academic breakthrough up to the doctorate.

4- BUILDING LOYALTY

The performance of a company depends on good management practices, particularly the loyalty of employees, who are the real drivers of any project. To achieve this, we have put in place a series of measures to guarantee our employees some personal and professional privileges. The first aspect of motivation at WAT&CO is the appropriate work environment, which is adapted to the seasons to make everyone feel at ease. For example, we have the Home Office method. Who doesn't dream from time to time of being able to work from home, rather than having to get dressed in a hurry to jump into a taxi and get to the office? In SWITZERLAND, for example, this dream has become a reality for an increasing number of employees. More SMEs in these countries are opting for flexible models and no longer require a permanent presence on the company premises. The second point of retention is the composition of the best possible team. This is a key point for promoting good team cohesion and thus facilitating relationships at work. This is why it is advisable to choose the best possible profile when recruiting, giving maximum consideration to gender parity. Moreover, at WAT&CO, we involve the employees in the final phase of the recruitment process of the job candidate. The other point of WAT&CO is social benefits. One of the best ways of retaining an employee is also to take an interest in his or her social condition. A good health insurance for an employee and his family, gifts for his children at special moments in their lives, are marks of esteem for the employees. Health is so important and can represent such high costs that it becomes a major factor in well-being, even before thinking about joining a gym.