Earlier in your career, you shifted from audit to recruitment. Why did you decide to join PageGroup?
I submitted my resume to PageGroup when I returned to Türkiye, as it was the most well-known recruitment company, which I followed for job opportunities while I was completing my master and doctorate programs in England. Recruitment was not a career I had in mind until I had a meeting at PageGroup, after a short audit and academic work about the company. The first thing that attracted me was the corporate culture and the versatility of the work to be done. I met people who have a lot of potential, are young, dynamic, enthusiastic, and aware of the responsibility of their work. I felt it was a very good opportunity to work with these people in a global, strong, and prestigious institution; hence, my career at Page Group began.
Did any of your previous experience and skills in audit help you prepare for a career in recruitment?
When I joined PageGroup, I started working for the Financial Services division precisely because of my auditing experience. This experience has been an added value to address the details and nature of the recruitment processes. I addition, I can say that my non-thesis master’s degree on social research methods, which I completed within the scope of my doctoral program, helped me a lot in targeting the right resources. There is definitely a connection between my current role and my previous academic and professional experiences.
While at Page, you have also changed from Michael Page to Page Executive. What are the main differences between the 2 types of recruitment?
The approach, methods, and processes of the two brands are completely different. At Michael Page, you need to manage high-quality and fast projects, for middle management positions. You have a wide range of options, in what concerns not only the talent pool but also the project tools.
At Page Executive, while you still have different options to evaluate and flexible approaches, these are less diverse than at Michael Page.
The top manager you hire from Page Executive oversees all the company’s and employees’ evolution, in addition to their own professional career. And we must work having that double challenge in mind.
We meet all the potential candidates, who may be suitable for that role, within a 3-week period, managing processes where we focus on such diverse topics as compliance with the corporate culture, leadership skills, hard skills, and specialized know-how. We support all this work with our relevant assessment tools.
All PageGroup consultant apply this methodology for every type of position, basing the recruitment project on a 360º business model. Page Executive takes this one step further.
And what are the challenges and advantages of recruiting Executive positions?
Senior candidates might have a lesser accessibility level. However, we do feel the power of the Page Executive brand in this regard.
Besides considering candidates who are actively looking for a job, we also need to head hunt professionals for our processes. In this context, the company’s prestige is an advantage when establishing this contact.
Our processes take longer due to the tight assessment the candidate does, both about us and about the client company. As a consultant, we need to manage a limited number of projects to dedicate our maximum attention and care to each of them. Establishing this workload balance is one of the most important points for us, to offer a high-quality project management. I can say this is one of the biggest challenges.
Regarding the best part of this job, at Michael Page you change a person’s and/or team’s life, but at Page Executive it leads to very different success stories. When you manage the recruitment of executive level professionals, who are at the top of a company, you can observe not only their career path and journey but also how they build their teams, recruiting new people. This is one of the greatest joys of our jobs.
