A New Partnership Brought a New Reliable Way in High-Performance Recruiting

Exquisitz Asia is the new partner of Jobilla in Singapore. With the new partnership, Exquisitz Asia is able to establish a sustainable way to hire junior and mid-level positions successfully and broadened their field of expertise.

Carol Yong, CEO/Founder of Exquisitz Asia gave a partner interview from Singapore. Located in a convenient time zone for both East and West with bilingual abilities, Singapore is the hotspot for business and a gate between the West and the East. Jobilla, a Finnish digital recruitment company founded in 2015, is currently recruiting in 39 countries on five continents. On average, Jobilla's clients get seven times more candidates than traditional recruitment methods. With its raving growth rates, it belongs to the top 2% of all the Finnish companies during the last three years.


Giving Value Beyond Limits

Having had a brilliant full spectrum HR career in the corporate world, Carol set up Exquisitz Asia in 2018 with her business partner Avelyn Tan and a pioneer team of 9 professionals, offering help to companies to find sustainable talent and help individuals find sustainable careers.

With a vision of “Giving Value beyond Limits” Exquisitz Asia is now serving more than 50 MNC clients across APAC with an expanded team of 15 consultants and 50 global search partners. They serve all industries, especially food manufacturing, healthcare, hospitality, property, luxury retail, and FMCG. Having done this in 2 years is quite an achievement.

Exquisitz Asia has its focus on executive search at C-suite, professional and technical specialist level. Since they do this with great success, Exquisitz Asia's clients have often requested them to assist in hiring other very challenging service and technical positions at junior and mid-level. "This has not been Exquisitz Asia's focus, so they have needed to turn down many of these requests", Carol explains. "One of the key reasons for this is that we have not found a way to tackle this junior recruitment challenge in a sustainable manner – that is until Jobilla appeared on the scene."


Using Social Media Is Not Enough

"Whilst there are many popular and go-to recruitment portals visited by job seekers, they do not adequately reach out to all needful talent", Carol describes the situation. "Key reason is that real talent is often inactive in job seeking. One sure way to reach out to passive talent is via social media, as more than 90% of the population in most countries are socially and digitally connected via Instagram and Facebook. Many have started leveraging such social media sites for recruitment. However, this is often done in an ad hoc haphazard manner with no search optimization nor database analysis to track its effectiveness. Hence it becomes a rich untapped resource of talent for junior and mid positions."

Carol came to know Jobilla through IPTER, International Partner Team of Executive Recruiters. She saw the power and potential that Jobilla has to offer in the area of digital headhunting via social media sites. It helps employers find high-quality candidates for hard-to-find positions via a strategic marketing yet non-intrusive campaign on social media.

"It is an excellent tool in employer branding with powerful candidate lead generation cum all in one tracking system, and it is fully customized to local cultures and languages", Carol lists the benefits of Jobilla.

She tried Jobilla at first on a challenging search for English-speaking Japanese lawyers in APAC by launching a Jobilla marketing campaign in targetted countries. The campaigns were done in Japanese and in English. "I was really impressed. The publicity and marketing team at Jobilla is experienced, efficient and effective", Carol says. "The design and execution are close to superior. The results were instant and productive."

Employer Branding Is the Key to Success

Carol sees recruitment as an essential part of companies' success. Yet, there are some things that will make some companies shine better than others. "In the area of recruitment, the key to success is Employer Branding", Carol explains. "It comes easy for well-known and established companies but it is certainly challenging for startups and companies, who have not put in efforts on Employer Value Proposition. This is the value that Exquisitz Asia provides in Executive Search. It is being a brand ambassador for clients, giving a powerful bridge with right caliber executive candidates."

"Employer branding is in a way at least as important if not even more for junior or mid mass positions. Why? Because the demand is so much higher than the supply. Yet right-fitted quality talent is needed for sustainability. Having an established international platform like Jobilla embarking on Employer Branding and Recruitment on behalf of clients on social media is an important ingredient for overnight success", Carol sums up.

What Companies Should Know About Building an Employer Brand?

Carol has a clear view of building an Employer Brand based on her experience of successful HR management and recruitment in top-tier businesses. "Very often, companies spent an enormous amount of time detailing their vision, mission, and core values for their customers and how they see their companies should grow and prosper in terms of sales, profitability, and business growth."

"However, little or no time is spent on what sort of vision, mission, and values the company has to offer for their employees – rightfully, partners for success. What value does an employer bring to the table for their employee partners? This is often unspoken and there is a dead silence upon this that leads to poor talent retention impeding business sustainability."

"Once companies are able to unlock this important Employer value, they are on the road to successful talent retention and sustainability. Putting equal if not more focus on giving value to employee partners will certainly bring tons of benefits – passion, resourcefulness, productivity, creativity, innovation and the list goes on."

Partnership That Adds Value

Employer branding and recruitment marketing are where Exquisitz Asia's partnership with Jobilla will benefit clients. In most companies, the marketing department's main focus is on B2C/B2B instead of helping HR to create meaningful stories to connect with the right candidates. Often they also don't have the time nor the know-how to reach the target group nor is recruitment in their marketing KPI.

Employer branding is a long-term plan and must be at the heart of HR strategy. Companies should prioritize building their employer brand with their team and make recruitment marketing to be a key component of their overall HR strategy. All the recruitment marketing and employer branding should be done in a way that the company differentiates from its competitors.

With Jobilla's help, every company can craft a meaningful story about themselves and the company's work culture on the social media platform to help potential candidates connect with the company's brand. Jobilla can serve as the recruitment marketing platform to create the site, reach the right audience, and analyze what is working that will help the target group see why the company is an exciting place to work.

The Changing And Evolving World of Recruitment

Carol points out the recruiting world has evolved over time and has been largely influenced by the following factors:

• Political
• Economic
• Social
• Technology

#1 Political: while polarisation between US and China widened, the world operates like one big global community. Prior to the Covid pandemic, we see roles getting bigger covering across borders. A reversal happens post-pandemic where region roles are cut off due to border closures. All of these have a significant impact on recruitment and search competencies.

#2 Economic: It is logical to allude that recruiting opportunities are closely linked to the business health of the economy and of companies. Post pandemic saw a sharp decline in search. However, post-pandemic saw a significant up climb in search requests from strong regional players from all sectors including badly impacted hospitality and retail sectors. It shows when a company is strong, it not only overcomes bad times, it will pivot to thrive to stay afloat.

#3 Social: Social media usage by all clients and candidates for recruitment and employment has steadily increased in the last 5 years. It has now become an accepted recruitment norm on Facebook and Instagram. Candidates find it acceptable to be reached by headhunters on WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook & Instagram.

#4 Technology: The use of technology in recruitment will increase by leaps and bounds from job portals, assessments, and search optimization to tracking analytics in the last 5 years. However, technology can never replace human connection and the tight bonds between clients and candidates with search partners. Without the latter, recruitment success is short-lived and non-sustainable. Hence search and assessment technology-driven and led by trustworthy competent search partners will be the optimal approach toward talent headhunting.


An Uncertain Future Is Best Faced with the Right Partners

When asked about the future of recruitment, Carol’s answer is calm and steady. She sees with the right partners, the companies can adjust their ways to the change and manage new situations instead of being afraid of them.

“The future will always be disruptive, uncertain, and chaotic. Human tenacity is limitless and likewise, recruitment will continue to be important and evolving. Why? Talent is rare and latent. Talent will always need to be hunted."


What Is Jobilla?

Jobilla is a Finnish digital recruitment company founded in 2015, currently recruiting in 39 countries on five continents. It has developed its recruitment concept to be candidate-driven and suitable for modern world recruiting with its digital headhunter. The concept works: on average, Jobilla's clients get seven times more candidates than with traditional recruitment methods. The company believes it can change the way the ($450 billion) recruitment market works today with an efficient, targeted, and easy-to-use system. Jobilla is in the top 2% of Finnish companies in terms of growth for the third consecutive year and was awarded the Kauppalehti Growth Company 2021 certificate.