Finders Seekers Fireside: What You Get When You Work With Us

Anni (Head of Talent Acquisition Services), Sofia (CEO), and Vivi (Head of Employer Branding) sat down to hash out what it is that we at Finders Seekers offer our clients across our talent acquisition advisory and employer branding services. From transparency and data to building bridges and co-creation, here is an insider look at the Finders Seekers talent philosophy.

Sofia, let’s start with the journey: what problem were you solving when you founded Finders Seekers?

Sofia: Saku, Petra, and I started out in headhunting and realized that it was often being used as a kind of one-size-fits-all solution for deeper talent problems.  We quickly realized that the same solution rarely worked across the board for different companies and scenarios.

For example, without a good employer brand, recruiting was really challenging, and then a good employer brand could be sabotaged by poor recruitment.

We did some market research and realized that in Europe there were barely any companies offering both recruitment and employer branding services. We wanted to serve our clients across the entire talent lifecycle so that is why we started Finders Seekers!

For us it was super important that our offering was holistic and purpose-driven. Offering tailormade solutions is one of our strengths and our unique blend of talent acquisition and employer branding services means that clients can create blended packages that really work for them.

What drives Finders Seekers?

Anni: I would say that we are very people-driven. Talent and people are our priority, and that shows in all our work – internally and with our clients and candidates. 

Vivi: We are customer-focused, but in the sense that the talent is the customer: we are driven by their needs across the entire talent lifecycle. We have a holistic approach to understanding talent and where they want to work, why do they stay, what makes them leave etc. We aim to bring that “end-user experience” knowledge (be it the candidates or our customers’ employees) to our customers and help make them better together.

Anni: What I see as really valuable is that we are not afraid of having difficult conversations with our clients when there is a need for it. We see our purpose as being the voice for talent and we share all insights, even the most critical ones, with our clients.

How does Finders Seekers approach client relationships?

Vivi: Less powerpoints, more action! We want our clients to become self-sufficient in the long-run. We very much operate as facilitators and mentors with a hands-on approach of co-creation.

Anni: We want to be trusted partners for our clients in everything we do. That means we work closely together and don’t just offer high-level external advice. We combine advisory with doing the actual work.

Sofia: We are not a vendor, we are really committed to achieving client goals together. We bring our advisory angle to the table through hands-on work. This is not a traditional consultant type situation where we just sit on the sidelines, we really jump in and work with our customers.  For example, in an employer branding sense, we are doing EB research every day when speaking to candidates. We don’t need to separately invest in research. 

Anni: It’s not just about our unique Finders Seekers offering, but how we do it. For us, transparency is super important, as is close dialogue with our clients. That is what goes into a Finders Seekers partnership. 

Sofia: We really stand behind this idea of radical transparency: we want to share everything with our clients, even unfinished work. 

And we also want to help growing companies and startups as much as enterprise businesses, so we are always ensuring we have cost-efficient solutions that everyone can benefit from. 

One thing that is really important to us is that we are fun to work with. We don’t want this stuffy corporate atmosphere, but we also want to bring joy and fun to business and what we do. We believe you can have a laugh and be professional at the same time. 

Vivi, tell us more about client co-creation and what that means to you?

Vivi: We are very good at building bridges across different stakeholders within organizations, bringing them to the same table and co-creating together. We know how to leverage marketing, HR, and business terminology, and translate them all to each other so that people can speak the same language. 

On a practical level, co-creation is achieved through constant dialogues with our clients and for example shared Miro boards and facilitative workshops, face-to-face or online, where we use different co-design methods set for the purpose of the workshop. We lean on agile ways of working, have low-threshold daily communication via e.g. Slack and have consistent weeklies with clients. The main thing is that we are always transparent with everything that we are doing.

In employer branding we often talk about people trusting people, but it’s the same in talent acquisition. We want to support our clients and people across the whole lifecycle: before, during, and after employment.

How does Finders Seekers define success?

Anni: I’d say making an impact is the key. We want to make world-class recruitments with our clients, and the end-result should always be talent acquisition practices that bring value to both the hiring organization and the candidate. And of course it’s a big success every time we find that perfect match and help people find their dream jobs.

Vivi: A big part of that is helping our clients become more data aware and data efficient. We want to help them create better KPIs to reach their business goals and understand the actions needed to achieve them. Data should not however be blindly trusted but there is a story to be shared behind the data that can help inform decision making and steer the direction or invoke a culture of A/B testing different actions.

Anni: Data for sure plays a vital role. We talk to our clients and business stakeholders in their language, and share insights based on numbers and data. We want to ensure that what we share resonates and that our clients are able to have their own insights about the data so that they understand why things matter. 

Sofia: I think it’s important to say that we are not money-first and that we want projects that resonate with our people. We want to be the most magnetic place for people in the talent acquisition and employer branding market to work at because we are the best place to work for them, and a big part of that is bringing inspiring projects to the table.

Anni: Yes, we have high ethical standards and will not work at any cost. We have the courage to say no, if we don’t see the prerequisites for fruitful collaboration.

Vivi: At the end of the day, we are here to enable client success. We genuinely want to build winning teams to help solve the complex problems of modern times across the globe. That is why we exist. We want our clients to understand what success looks like and what the measures of success are, so that clients themselves have the keys to reach their goals and understand what needs to happen to build their winning teams.

What about Finders Seekers culture?

Vivi: For me it’s about creating a culture of trust, purpose, mastery and inclusion. And as a company, Finders Seekers is a company built on trust and a drive for diversity and inclusion. People always have autonomy. Culture is driven, supported, and created by our people through our own actions.

For ourselves and for our clients, we are building for people from people. And that means for all types of people. Inclusion is diversity in action. 

Anni: There is something very special about our culture – the warmth and profound trust that creates a safe space for everyone to be their true selves. Everyone is super committed to their work, but we also love to have fun together. We all are quite playful by nature and that is something we want to cherish, especially now when the company is growing a lot. Also, empathy is in the essence of the Finders Seekers DNA. 

Sofia: In terms of leadership, we have a strong servant leader approach that everyone at Finders Seekers follows. 

What do you offer across the talent and employee lifecycle?

Vivi: We have built Finders Seekers around the purpose of serving talent and building winning teams, so we have teams across all the different phases of the talent lifecycle, meaning that you are always supported by an expert who is specialized in that specific talent problem.

We cover the whole employee lifecycle from before being hired and the acquisition funnel (employer branding services), to recruitment (talent acquisition services) and onboarding (employee and newbie experience embedded in inhouse employer branding and talent acquisition services), to leaving and then possibly re-hiring. 

We are able to be part of talent culture building and change management because we understand the entire funnel. We have a solid foundation of talent insight and data that means we have a unique perspective and understanding of people. We have a lot of data, especially from the tech industry, and understand retention and tenure in a really granular way.

💡 Need an EB or talent acquisition partner that you can have fun with, but that’s also committed to deliverables? To bat EB ideas back and forth, get in touch with Vivi: vivi@findersseeekers.io, or email Anni: anni@finderseekers.io to discuss your talent needs.