Interview with Juan Martínez de Salinas on personal branding, networking and employability
I would like to share with you the conversation I shared with Juan Martínez de Salinas, an expert in networking and areas of skills development and personnel selection. I hope you find it as interesting as it has been for me, it is always a pleasure to share ideas and reflections with someone so restless and passionate about training and development.
Juan is an expert in networking processes, employer branding, recruitment 2.0, digital transformation and areas related to the management of people in an organization, (leadership, motivation, teamwork, entrepreneurship, personal branding, among others).
Creator of the Employability APP Guide Your Talent and author of the HR Blog.
Author of the book “Exercise your Talent”, Juan is also passionate about connecting people to add, evolve and advance.
INTERVIEW WITH JUAN MARTINEZ DE SALINAS
Q: What are the new trends in selection and recruitment today?
A: I believe that the trend that is booming in companies is to propose new ways of collaboration, not only contractual, but also collaborations of other types.
It is true that the Spanish labour market is still too corseted and does not help these new formulas that are already working in Anglo-Saxon countries, for example. I am referring to the knowmad philosophy, knowledge workers who work with the perspective of globality, who collaborate in several projects, who do not have a fixed ubiquity of the workplace, but who carry out teleworking, or with visits to the company or mixed formulas, (where part of the day is with the client and the rest, for example, remotely, even in a cafeteria, if they want).
This is becoming a trend but, of course, more frequent in multinational companies. In SMEs, unless they are technological or more modern, this concept seems to be still “light years” away.
New ways of working, interview with Juan Martínez de Salinas
Q: In this sense, with what you are talking about the new trends of working on a project basis, how does this new way of working influence the selection of these professionals?
A: Now there is more of a search for specialization, people who are experts in certain skills who are capable of developing specific projects. They are not so much looking for generalist profiles or “putting out fires” for various areas, but rather they tend more towards specialization.
The most frequent ways to find these profiles are by word of mouth, by reference, through networks, etc. For these projects, more than professionals who are “good at everything”, they are looking for people who have specialized in a specific area and are very good at it and who are very clear about what their value proposition is, what stakeholders they are targeting and what need they can help them cover.
With regard to the profiles most in demand by Human Resources professionals, the profiles that have to do with STEM careers, (an acronym for the words Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) are the ones with the most career opportunities.
Of course, on the other hand, there is also the incoherence that some of them have low demand from students and are left with free places.
Employability
Q: Why do you think this happens?
A: It’s a bit surprising. People are carried away by their vocation and I think that Literature careers can attract more attention than Science and there are certain careers or even professions, (for example plumbing, maintenance, etc.) with a lot of demand in the market but with few qualified professionals.
I think that we would have to achieve that supply and demand, something that has not yet happened and that could be achieved through much more collaboration between the social agents involved. I am referring on the one hand to companies and on the other hand to the education sector and professionals to achieve a balance between supply and demand and that the education sector is not so far removed from business reality at times.
Personal brand, interview with Juan Martínez de Salinas
Q: In this context, what is personal branding for you and what role does it play in employability?
A: I believe that both personal branding and employer branding are important in recruitment. Employer branding is the “employer’s brand” and “personal brand” is each person’s.
For me, personal branding is to be able to leave a mark on others, to draw attention objectively to your professionalism. When others are looking for information about something that they find with you and that you give them enough reliability and security about your professionalism to want to count on you for your career, expertise and competencies.
Sometimes it is difficult to marry working as an employee and having a personal brand regardless of the company you work for. Not all companies today understand the importance of their employees having a personal brand.
This is changing, but there are still companies that are “uncomfortable” that a person in their organization has a career path that goes beyond their company. Sometimes there is even envy between colleagues, managers, but I think it is increasingly important to build and consolidate this personal brand.
Employer branding
As we said, the trend is to work on a project basis, since today the only permanent contracts are certainly in the public sector and I believe that this will also change in the future and will evolve towards other approaches.
That is why I think it is important for people to be clear that outside of their main project, whether they are self-employed or employed, they can have alternative projects from different sources of earning money, (writing a book, taking a course, developing an application, giving a conference, etc.).
I still think that we have to raise a lot of awareness about this idea since there are many people who worry about their personal brand only when they see their main project in danger.
On the other hand, it is also very important for companies to take care of their employer branding. Nowadays there is a war to get good professionals in some areas, (Artificial Intelligence, Social Media, New Technologies, Computer Development, for example) and these profiles take into account if as a company you care about your employees, you are looking for their development, your team is happy, and that has to do with the image that your company has.
Employer branding has to do with whether your employees recommend working in your company to work. There are companies that confuse employer branding with launching a good marketing campaign to attract talent and pay a good salary, but there are many other factors that are valued today (career development, work-life balance, challenging projects, etc.).
Networking
Q: In this sense, what is networking for you and how can networking be effectively built?
A: It is important to take care of your people. I don’t like to talk about “contacts”, I think that term is something cold and in the end we are talking about people. Therefore, if you do not generate trust in your people, it will be very difficult for your network of trust to work.
No matter how much you have professional or personal contacts, if there is no mutual trust, if you don’t go further, that person will not trust, will not want to count on you. It’s vital to not only ask for things, but also to be willing to do things for others, without expecting anything in return. Sometimes you help someone knowing that that person at this moment cannot help you and in the end I always believe that if you behave well with people in the end “it comes back to you”.
Confidence
Trust is not an exact science, I believe that relationships should be made in the long term and on a “slow fire”. Juan Martínez de Salinas
Of course, there can always be people along the way who will fail you, trust is not an exact science, but I also believe that relationships are long-term and “simmering”. It is also true that the internet has often not helped this, sometimes you accept an invitation from someone and they are already asking you for a lot of things, but that does not work that way. The network is a means to an end, but don’t forget that “one on one” and trust is important, and that cannot be changed for anything.
It seems that this society of the 21st century does not help this, it seems that we want results immediately and personal relationships on the contrary must be taken care of and worked on. To develop good networking and weave a good network of contacts, you cannot remember a person only when you are interested in them, and this is more common than we may think.
End of the interview Juan Martínez de Salinas
Q: It has been a very interesting conversation, Juan. Is there any idea you want to add or deepen on what we have discussed?
A: I think it is important that in this new challenging context of the labour market, which has changed a lot in the last twenty years and will change even more in the coming years, (new professions, robotics, new technologies, etc.) we are going to have to be aware of the need to “recycle” ourselves.
There are recent studies that say that 80% of primary school students go to work in new professions. It will be impossible for the generations that are now working to learn a completely new profession, but we are going to have to recycle.
We must also be aware that robots are going to make functions disappear, (not so much positions, but tasks) and this is going to make it necessary for companies to recycle and adapt.
Long-lived society
It is incoherent that today society is living longer and longer, seniors reach up to 100 years of age, life expectancy has increased a lot, the retirement age will have to be delayed and alternative formulas will be able to be sought, (for example being partially retired but combining it with part-time work on projects) because otherwise the system is unsustainable, but on the other hand we find the paradox that many companies consider professionals over 45 years of age to be “older”, when in reality they have more than 20 years left to continue working.
We have to give more opportunities to people of that age and know that we can learn and adapt, we have to change the mentality of the company and society.
Another reflection that I would like to add is that it does not help to “pigeonhole” people according to what they have studied. Nowadays that doesn’t make much sense anymore. It seems that if you have studied law you have to work as a lawyer or if you have studied medicine you can only work as a doctor and that is not realistic either.
There are already many countries in which they consider that the fact of having completed a study does not condition at all where you want to specialize or where you have concerns about working. I think that in Spain we are light years away from the US or Asia, where the person and their experiences and skills are valued more than knowledge.
And you, what do you think about these ideas? What comments would you like to share?
More interviews here.
