Ricardo Rocha participated in the panel "Reputation, brand, competitiveness... what do candidates value when selecting a place to work".
The presentation by Noesis' Marketing & Communication Director focused on the importance of Marketing in defining Employer Branding strategies and in building brand and reputation.
Ricardo Rocha recognizes that times are changing. “We live in a highly thriving sector, in a sector where companies grow at a strong pace, where organizations increasingly need technology. We live in a full-employment sector, with no unemployment in the IT sector in qualified technical roles. Therefore, there is a shortage of talent in the Portuguese and global market and this is the great challenge that puts us in this war for talent”.
The Marketing Manager recognizes that there is a paradigm shift. “Today, candidates are the ones who hold all the power. Our IT Recruiters have increasingly demanding roles, where the proactive search is the reality of their daily work lives.” And if attracting talent is one of the biggest challenges for organizations, retaining the best talent is also one of the main concerns. “Our talents are approached on LinkedIn daily by our competitors and other companies”. In addition, the new work models allow “a programmer to be at his home office in Guimarães working for a company in the Netherlands or Germany without having to face emigration barriers”.
Marketing assumes vital importance in Employer Branding and the definition of human resources policies of organizations. Brands with the greatest ability to differentiate themselves are automatically better positioned to win the battle for talent and attract the best professionals.
In the opinion of Ricardo Rocha, “the great challenge of organizations in the IT sector is a People challenge, it is not a business challenge, and it is not a commercial challenge”, he says. “The great driver that will allow companies to leap is to be able to have teams to be able to deliver more projects”.
We must “look at the brand from the people's perspective and in a global way, we can't just focus on our consumers and customers”. According to Ricardo Rocha, there is nothing more wrong than separating brand and business from people, than putting brand and business on the Marketing side and people on the Human Resources side. “If we have to work on our brand as an employer, then we have to use Marketing techniques to position our brand and, therefore, we must bring Marketing skills to people management”.
Ricardo Rocha believes that “Marketing should be at the center of the organization, it has to be involved in the business and internationalization strategy, and the organization's leadership, and to know the ecosystem”. But it also must “intervene in the people pillar, in the Employer Branding strategy, in the definition of the Employer Value Proposition, in the recruitment and onboarding processes. “It must be close to the various communities: professionals, universities, and the alumni community, which is increasingly important in organizations. It is crucial to ensure that the talents that leave our organizations to embrace new challenges, have had a good experience and become brand advocates, and may even return.”
Another challenge for Marketing is to make workplaces attractive for the talents of the year 2022, which means that it is necessary to “create moments that are differentiators so that our people want to go to the office”.
Ricardo Rocha is peremptory. “If we want to have a People-centric culture, we need a Marketing centric organization”.