After Sales & Service Management for manufacturers of premium and capital equipment isn’t what it used to be.
RJM has recruited for MNC manufacturers across APAC and completed multiple assignments. Many of these assignments include senior management roles such as Country Managers managing entire business operations where successful candidates come from Operations and Commercial backgrounds. RJM has also placed mid to senior after sales and service management professionals. The nature of after sales has changed significantly over the last few years. RJM has access to such information when discussing hiring plans with hiring companies in this space. Just by listening to how job orders and the nature of candidate requirements has altered over the last few years speaks volumes. Savvy hiring companies who are in tune with the market and understand available talent pools understand they need to adjust their requirements and be more flexible but without comprising on making a quality hire who will still perform well in the designated role. Savvy hiring companies are playing the long game and ensuring the new candidate has a realistic period of time to adjust. It isn't just about hiring companies being flexible and adjusting their candidate requirements to what is available but also replacing "nice to have" candidate requirements to other skills sets that are "now more needed than ever". "Nice to have" should be replaced by "now more needed than ever" to ensure alignment with customers and other important stakeholders prevails.
“Nice to have” (but not necessary) candidate requirements include:
Direct experience with the hiring companies products or exact industry match
Exact technical experience or specific education background
Ability to draw and comprehend technical documents
Direct or indirect experience with the final consumer. Both direct and indirect business models such as experience with dealers including developing ,managing and training them should both be accepted. It’s a people’s business and people are people.
Language ability - needs to be scrutinised , for international outfits are candidates speaking English enough in the modern world? Each hiring company will have its own perspective and situation but should be approached with an open mind.
The successful candidate doesn’t need to have direct experience with the hiring companies products. They will need to come from an adjacent industry or have experience with products they are in or around the same family.
Super rare and "nice to have" technical experience of education background in a specific specialisation such as mechanical engineering or another nice to have such as must have direct experience with the customer or must have dealership experience on their CV is generally a thing of the past past.
“Now Morę Needed Than Ever” - the new candidate requirement essentials
Ability to build relationships with stakeholders and manage their expectations
Ability to manage teams and communicate expectations well
Resilience
Delegation and ability to coordinate
Soft skills , listening to challenges without making assumptions
Taking team members with them and committing to their career development
Change embracing
Empathy embracing
The most savvy hiring firms are not getting in their own way with focusing on “nice to have” candidate qualifications and making them mandatory when they do not need to. Firstly, this approach to hiring gives a hiring company a far slimmer talent pool to aim for which reduces a successful hire being made on time and inside budget. Secondly, nice to have qualifications are being replaced with “now more needed than ever” as that is exactly what they are , needed more than ever to handle increasing demands, volatility and constant change where effective communication with stakeholders is essential.
The reason
Candidate soft skills now are deemed more important than hard skills. Engineering skills and at least a basic understanding of the industry are needed as a minimum. Yes hard industry experience or close to experience is still of importance and value but it doesn’t need to be as required, complex and mandatory. But “nice to haves” can no longer be afforded as mandatory. Hiring companies will hurt themselves by not changing.
To conclude, this article isn't a strategy to encourage hiring companies to be more flexible with their candidate requirements to make things easier for candidates and recruiters. It's advice on embracing the right hiring approach. What's needed and what isn't in after sales and service management candidate requirements and what the best businesses are doing to be as efficient and practical as possible and the changes they need to make with accommodating ever increasing stakeholder demands
Available to discuss after sales talent trends and what the best businesses are utilising? Happy to share
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