4POTENTIALS – nominated for this year’s recruitment company in diversity!

4potentials founders already launched in the late 1990s that companies must try to recruit more based on characteristics and future potential than, for example, educational backgrounds and historical experience.

In every recruitment, we try to challenge and develop customers so that you recruit from a broader base.

For example, gender and age have nothing to do with talent. We would never ask about things that have nothing to do with competence – to make a selection.

We try to be personal and believe more in trying to identify a candidate’s potential than just filling a job. This usually leads to rewarding and open conversations where the candidates later consult about choices in life. By really trying to care about a candidate and trying to see the potential, we have been able to attend meetings where candidates have said. ”Thank you for saving my life” or where candidates said that you are absolutely fantastic at being on the candidate’s side. Once there was a customer who thought we were far too much on the candidate’s side. That was a great feedback!

We believe that if you try to train, develop employees in always trying to look after the candidate’s best interests and try to see the candidate’s potential, prejudice decreases when you recruit. You simply get better at seeing the potential instead of following a requirements profile.

Sometimes we fail in our quest to listen. Because when you go in to give, give and give everything you have in a candidate meeting, you build up an expectation to always deliver something extra.

But sometimes it is like today when a candidate who had been refused a job – got her dream job – thanks to our coaching.

4potentials has 55% female members in its talent network.

Our talent lists are often topped by women. And not because they are women but because they possess skills and potential. https://hrpeople.se/2018/02/24/fredrik-andersson-8-av-10-ledare-kommer-att-vara-kvinnor/

Where you were born on earth has nothing to do with talent. However, we understand that not all people have the same chances and therefore we have a network where everyone can apply.
The width of the network is extreme. With members in 70 countries and with people who work as doctors, priests, carpenters, brokers, journalists and with an age spread of over 60 years, we believe that we are de facto one of the players in the recruitment market that has one of the widest networks that works as 1 of 150 channels we use in a recruitment.

We work little with search. Because we know that search is very much about starting from 1 recruiter’s network. We turn it around and use 6400 members’ networks.

By anonymizing the recruitment process and not using personal letters and constantly being curious, we try to develop and see the unique potential of more and more people. During the pandemic, we have started a facebook group where we help the unemployed with contacts, empathy and jobs.

We have no policy that we should be open-minded. It’s hell in me of course that you should try to be as objective as you can – to try to see all the potential! No one is 100% open-minded – but everyone can try to see more of the candidates ’potential – than the customers’.

Our last 20 recruitments have been filled with 14 people who were not part of 4potentials network. But by asking the network, posting ads on 150 social media pages, searching and placing ads in the ”wrong places”, we got completely new candidates. For example, we have closed the collaboration with LinkedIn – because not everyone is there.

Here are ten tips to try to ensure more diversity and potential as a recruitment company:

  1. Bring in more people for an interview. Give 5-6 new people the chance – that doesnt meet the clients requirements. Listen to why they applied. Help them with their CV or job tips – so that you increase their chance to get a new job.
  2. Post the ad in the ”wrong” forum. A Facebook page for job vacancies in Skåne always contains people who want to move to Stockholm or vice versa. And maybe it’s your candidate?
  3. Search more for potential than education.
  4. When you see something you do not understand – read on. New worlds open up every day
  5. Avoid managerial recruitment companies that talk about skills-based recruitment, diversity and that they are open-minded. Let them and us prove it. Challenge the companies to recruit! Challenge us!!
  6. Work less with researchers who are afraid of making mistakes. Let the ad appear instead in more new forums. Challange the Executive Search Consultants. Dont pay them if they only present X – and pay them extra if they find Y or Ö..?
  7. This article should of course be in English if you want more people to read it.
  8. SAY NO TO assignments where customers do not work for diversity.
  9. Congratulate other recruitment companies that are good at this. Encourage and share the success of others in diversity! 4potentials arent always best. There are other that also makes changes within diversity.
  10. Have civil courage – stand up for those who are bullied. When 4potentias sponsors a sports club, we chose a women’s club without bullying.

Apply to 4potentials!

We are proud of being nominated for this year’s recruitment company in diversity!

But we can always be better!

Below a bouquet of flowers from happy members in our network.