At a one-day special event, Edge Innovation Center collaborated with Egypt’s biggest online recruitment platform Wuzzuf and ITWORX Education, a leader in learning & development mobile platforms in the Gulf and the Middle East, to shed some light on how technology is disrupting the human resources field.
Titled Talent in the Digital Era: Are we Ready for Gen Z?, the one day event brought several major players from the industry to discuss topics such as Strategic Workforce Planning, How AI helps cutting through the candidate ocean seeking the right talent, and Employer Branding.
Ahmed Khalil CEO of Edge Innovation Center stated that “We believe that the topic we’re discussing is particularly important in Egypt, as experts predict that millennials will occupy more than half of the entire workforce by 2020. We’ve partnered up with WUZZUF and IT WORX Education to present content of extreme value to business decision makers, to prepare for their future workforce planning.”
We sat down with one of the speakers of the day Yasmin Abd Elaty, an Employer brand and Recruitment Team Member at Vodafone, to discuss her topic “Inbound Hiring: Employer Branding.”
How do you believe brands can brand themselves to reach not only millennials, but also to the younger and even more tech-savvy Gen Z?
“I think that the main thing to reach the tech-savvy Generation Z is to be authentic. The brands [should] not try too hard, because these people are smart. They already know different brands, different employers so they already know how to search for work. They know what [brands or employers] are good or bad, so do not try to be someone you are not.
For example, if you are a company that does X [offline work], you cannot express that you have been doing digital for a long time, understanding digital and technology well, but you can show yourself as a company that is now embracing digital transformation. That is why you are looking for people “like you” to transform the company [towards] a more digital direction.
Once you are real, and you’re authentic, and not trying too hard by trying to be someone you are not, I think that they will believe it more.”
What do you believe younger potential employees are looking for when looking for perspective companies to work at?
“I don’t think that money is the main thing they are looking for, I think that they are looking for what is challenging, what is exciting; they are looking at the job itself.
Will it be challenging, exciting, will it teach them? They are still young, they want to learn, they want to experience different jobs, be exposed to different things. They want to work in an environment that at least encourages them to innovate, to try, learn, experiment and fail.
This is what will be more attractive to them.
Of course, the paycheck is important, but I know a lot of candidates that can leave a company even though they are being paid well because they want another [more] exciting job.”
What advice would you give larger companies when “rebranding” as an employer brand?
As I referred to in my session, my advice would be to build your employer brand inside out.
Do not try to build it based on what other companies are doing, or how you want to see yourself.
Start with your people, start with your [current] employees and see what is the main thing they love about your company. That makes them want to work for you as an employer, that [made them] chose you as an employer and makes them want to [continue to] work with you as an employee.
Then take this, which is called the employee value proposition, what is giving value to them, and make this your selling point as an employer brand. So, you can give people something to believe, not just say things that can be said anywhere else.
As long as you have validation behind what you are saying, and this is what [your employees] believe inside, then you can build your employer brand based on it.
Talent in the Digital Era
The event featured key panels and talks from Raya Group HR Director Hazem Abdelhady, event partners Erik Goldenberg of CEO of ITWORX Education, Ameer Sherif, Founder and CEO of WUZZUF and FORASNA, in addition to other prominent speakers like Ashraf Mansour – Strategic Programs Manager Dell EMC, Hanaa Sabry – Strategic Business Partner Coca Cola, Hassan Kahar – Organization Development, Capability Building & Reward Manager at SODIC, Nancy Helmy – HR Director at Merck KGaA North East Africa and Yasmin El Sheikh – Talent Acquisition Partner IBM MEA.
“Part of WUZZUF’s role as a market leader in Egypt is to draw helpful insights that push the whole industry forward. Overseeing both sides of professionals and employers -supply and demand- with more than 20,000 employers and 1.5 million job seekers, we can already see the challenges with recruiting younger generations who are in fact the coming decade’s senior managers and executives.
Our mission is to tech-enable every employer with the smart tool that helps them win the talent war over the best caliber especially in today’s challenging workforce market.” Stated Founder and CEO of WUZZUF and FORASNA, Ameer Sherif in a press release.
