Sofia joined LHC International in January 2020 as a 360° Senior Consultant in our Hospitality team. Since June 2021 she is People & Culture Manager.
In this interview, Sofia explains what her job as People & Culture Manager is and what it means for LHC International.
What are your responsibilities as a People & Culture Manager? Why did you change position?
I was a 360° Degree Senior Consultant at LHC until June 2021, filling hospitality positions with various clients. Then Garry, our CEO, asked me if I could consider the People & Culture Manager position.
I thought about it for a night and decided to go for it. I never regretted my decision for a single day!
As we are getting bigger and growing, it was important to find someone for this key position who knows the industry well, who knows our internal structures and, who understands our most important asset: the employees!
What does your day-to-day work look like?
The primary focus of my daily business is still internal hiring for LHC. We want to find the best talents who want to grow with us and positively influence the recruitment market.
We want to strengthen our image through sustainable client and candidate relationships and to be the contact person with the best industry knowledge in the markets, whether in Real Estate, Hospitality, or our other divisions.
The mindset of the potential internal candidates should fit us and our philosophy, therefore we also have several rounds of interviews before the employment contract until we make a final decision.
We are consultants but also partners and we like to go the extra mile, but always stay on eye level and authentic.
In addition, there is a lot of daily administration and regular personal conversations with each employee, because we need to know how each individual is doing with us.
What changed at LHC since you started your new position?
The first thing that has changed is that we now have someone responsible for HR. Due to our constant growth, there came a point in early 2021 when we decided that we needed someone to take care of this department.
Since there was no specific structure in this area until then, we needed to redefine the entire process with everything that goes with it:
- How to efficiently define internal hiring?
- What is important to us?
- Where to find good candidates?
- Which online tool where everyone can enter their interview stages
- Expansion of our cooperation with universities and colleges
- Participation in recruitment days
- Participation of Garry our CEO in events as a speaker at universities
- Permanent partnership with universities and colleges where we hire dual students
They are the talents of tomorrow and we are happy to hire committed and motivated graduates after their studies. We already had a very good experience with them.
In addition, we have introduced coffee dates with employees to keep regular contact. It is particularly important to me because I know how crucial it is to have motivated and committed employees. It is also important to retain them at LHC in the long term.
Furthermore, we want to know if there are challenges that we can fix to keep the focus on the essentials.
The interview was conducted by Margaux Sauvage – Marketing Manager at LHC International.
Are you looking for experienced recruitment consultants?
If yes, CONTACT US for a short call to discuss our future work together.
You can also follow Sofia on LinkedIn via this link.
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LHC International is a leading executive search firm for the hospitality and operational real estate industry.
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