- Hello and welcome to Ask the Expert. My name is Christopher and I'm your host. On today's episode, we are in Germany for the High-End show in Munich. With me today, I have Helle and Steffie from our HR team. Do you mind telling us a little bit about what it is you do at Dynaudio? - Nope, I'd love to. I'm Helle, and I'm head of HR at Dynaudio. I'm responsible for the entire employee life cycle. I do the strategy for HR, I'm responsible for the policies that we have, I'm responsible for adhering to the love and the dedication that we have with our employees for the entire Dynaudio DNA, basically. So the culture is very much at the center of what we do in HR. And of course, we do a lot of practical things to work with that, and Steffie's very much at the center of that. - Yeah, so I have my daily base at Dynaudio and spend a lot of time around the employees, also. I'm dealing a lot with the recruitment process, and talking to candidates, so we have both the internal and external point of view here. - And I guess working in HR, you meet everyone in the company, right? - Right. - Exactly. - The best part of it is that you... - It's everyone, so many different people to talk with right? - You get to meet everyone. That's an exciting part I think. - It is exciting, so it's not just the HR for management or HR for production, it's HR for everyone in the company, so we get to deal with both the production workers that we have that actually work in our factory everyday, producing the fantastic loudspeakers that we do, and we have the contact with the engineers that develop all the fantastic concepts. And we have contact with any other people that work with us selling the products throughout the world, placed everywhere basically. So, it's an exciting everyday life that we have. - You know what's going on at Dynaudio. - We try to, make it our business basically. - Very much. - I think that we should jump into the questions, is that okay with you? - It's fine. - Sure. - Perfect. - The first question that I would like to, to have answered, to share with our viewers is what does the recruitment process look like? What can I expect? - Yeah... - Do you wanna start off? - Yeah well, the first thing that you would experience, would be going perhaps on our website, or meeting our job ad at one of the different sites where we post it. So our, yeah the candidate would apply by uploading a CV and his or her application online. Next, is us receiving it, and, well, the processes that we do the coordinating the organization, but actually it's the Hiring Manager who reads the job ad, and the candidates' applications. So it goes directly to whom it concerns. - And I guess that the process like that, it varies in time right, because some positions, you get a lot of applicants for right? - Yeah. - And so there's no kind of fix for saying oh it's always a week, it really depends on... - You can set a target and say the optimal process would last a month or a week or whatever, but it's really really hard to live up to that, because situations vary as you say. Sometimes you have a position where you have so many applicants that the screening process in itself, just takes a long time. If you have to give everyone a fair treatment. And read their applications, and look into their CVs and give them an answer, and other times it's like you know, you have very few applicants and it's really really hard because you actually do have to go out actively and look for people to apply for this position. So it's really really difficult to say that something is set. - And I guess that when you are hiring, when you're going out and trying to find the right candidate there's an emphasis on right here, right? Because, you do wanna fill a position I guess, with someone where there's a match on several different areas right, competencies, culture. - And what is important to also remember when applying is that we are always announcing the ideal situation. So whether you are right, medium-right, or you don't feel right at all for the position, we'll always encourage everyone to apply. - That's a really good point, yeah. - Because it's really the argumentation for why you are the right match that we are listening to, not necessarily what we thought would be the perfect match. - I know that, you know when you write a job application, that you see a job ad sometimes you're: "Oh yes! I fit in these five points but number six, that's not me." - Not so sure. - I put it to the side right. - So we would love for you to apply anyway, don't rule it out beforehand, just give it a shot, and send us your resume, send us your... - Well argued applications right, because I mean... - Cover letter with the reason why you wanna work with Dynaudio, why you think it's the perfect match, regardless, and we'll look into it, and we'd love to meet you, and talk to you basically, if it is a match. We have you know, various steps that we go through to find out whether it is the right match, you will as an applicant, if you are considered, after the screening to be a candidate that we wanna talk to, you will meet both the Hiring Manager, more often than not you'll meet a peer, a colleague from that function that you'll be applying to, to find out whether the competencies are there, and whether you would fit into that atmosphere, the culture, the whatever group of people that you're applying to work with. And then you'll meet HR as well, because we have another role in the whole process, trying to figure out whether the cultural match is right for the entire company, whether the credentials are real, we take references, and we also give you a test to go through, which will look into both your personality and various aspects of that, and we'll have a discussion with you on the basis of that. We don't want you to be scared from the process, it's always really really nasty to be tested, you'll feel put on the spot, but there's no need to basically, because there's no right or wrong. - Can you say anything about, you were talking about this a need for a match of competencies obviously, there's a need for a match in culture, and then there's the test. Is there any one of these three that we emphasize when we have to choose a candidate, so if let's say, it's all 100% that 80% is the test, probably not like that. - No the test is not 80%. As I was trying to say before, there's no right and wrong answer, it's only a basis of conversation. It gives us some ideas what we need to dive a little more into, what we could ask more you know in depth questions about, is there anything that we should be aware of in terms of what you prefer, what you like, what you need from your manager and stuff like that. So, it gives us a little bit of a cutting edge in terms of being precise in our conversation with you, but it doesn't mean that we say okay now we have the test result, this is you. So that's not the way it works luckily. So we put a lot of emphasis on both the qualifications, it goes without saying that if the qualifications are not there, we have to talk a little bit more about that. - So I can't apply for engineering. - But the cultural match is really really important as well. So if the cultural match is not there, I mean even if you do have the qualifications, you may not be right for the position. Sometimes we say it's easier to put qualifications on you over time than it is to create the cultural match. So we need the right people who really want to work with this company, and find it equally fantastic as the rest of us do basically. - Well how many, Steffie, how many people can you expect to meet when you are at, if you get to the next round and you get invited to an interview at Dynaudio. Should I expect that there's eight people staring me down, or is there an equal. - Well you would, you can expect to get probably a call from me, because I'll call you up and invite you to the interview, and at the interview as I was saying, it's normally the Hiring Manager who greets the candidate, and the Hiring Manager will normally have a peer or a partner from the department, so you'll meet one of the team members which is really essential for the job and the match. So, I think that you should be very aware of that. It's not the criteria that comes first really, it's the match of the personal charisma and if these people find a fitting match to both the team and the company. So that's what the candidate has a chance of evaluating as of the first meeting. So for the second round, then you would have to meet me or Helle for the second round of interviews, so there is only for the second interview where you've got into the company, normally you are invited out on our, what's it called, headquarters. Where we live and you have a feeling that you are invited into it, so the second interview will be a very relaxed conversation with normally Helle who will give some feedback for the interview and for the test, so that's really it. It's normally not more than three people that you are confronted with. - So if we scroll all the way back, the process as I see it, and understand it now, is that you learn about the position, you write an application, you apply, if you go through the first layer of checking up, then there is an, you get a call, it's an interview, and again if you pass that there's a second interview. - What does it look like from that point, is there a, you know, this is how it always looks, or does it vary a lot on the number of applicants or the position? - When you get to that step, the field is really narrowed down quite a lot. So you'll only have two or three candidates left, so it doesn't take that long from there. It would quite rapidly go into a phase where you're actually getting a yes or no, we're interested in going on and negotiating with you on certain criteria, on you know, the conditions for an employment, salary which is always nice to talk about, and you know, working hours, references, tasks, responsibilities, titles, whatever can be, you know, discussed. And then, if you actually reach an agreement from that, it's more or less from day to day, that we can say okay here's the contract, we'd love you to sign, please come and join us. And from there on it's the question of saying: "Oh their starting date is first of next month, we'll be waiting for you at nine o'clock, we'll be having a lovely breakfast with you and your new department." And from there on we have a fine onboarding process that you'll be following, and I'm sure that Steffie can tell you lots more about that actually in detail, which is really really good because it gives you sort of a head start in the company where we take care of you in the beginning and see to it that you're actually not left to your own devices, but you're helped onboard. Which is really important for us, yeah. - So I was unfortunate, not to be chosen for the position, what happens next Steffie? - Well you will get an email from us with a reply, a rejection if you're not one of the chosen to run for the position. So you will definitely receive an answer from us, and the sooner the better. - And I know that there's a lot of companies that hold on to applications, do we do the same? - Well yes, we will ask you if it's okay for you as a candidate for us to hold on to your application for the six months period that we are allowed to. - And is it like that you then, Helle, go into that database and say, well we have this position, there's these three candidates that might be a fit for it. - Yeah, we might do that, and that's the whole idea behind actually keeping people's reference papers and applications, so if we have another position open in a certain area, for instance an engineering job within a certain field, and we've had that recently as well, then we might look into the same pool of applicants that we had then to see if there's someone that might still be relevant and interesting to us, yeah. - Is it still a good idea to even though that, we're imaging that I'm an applicant and that I know that you kept my application, is it still a good idea for me to reapply? - It's always a good idea to reapply because then we'll know that you're still interested, actively seeking, and we're not, you know, calling you in vane and disturbing you if you've actually moved on to another position somewhere else and not interested anymore in actually moving on, so yeah absolutely, always a good idea. - Always a good idea to apply. - Perfect, thank you! Guys, I think that we were, we covered all of my questions, so I wanna say thank you for taking your time out of your calendar today and joining me. - Thank you. It's been a pleasure. - Thank you for having us. - And thank you for watching, keep the questions coming, and we'll see you next time.