Do you wonder how talent acquisition works in the luxury industry? Do you wonder how you should choose your employer?
Understanding the role of HR and what large, multinational brands want to see in the candidates they hire can help jump start your career and set you on the path towards success. Amelie Perdu, Human Resources Director, Southeast Asia for Richemont, and Dylan Choong, Regional Vice President, Human Resources for Sephora in Southeast Asia have both shared some incredible insights about career development and the role of HR in building a successful business.
What does HR encompass?
HR, or human resources, works to drive the people strategy for the different regions where they work. It is a career that requires professionals to look at not only what the brand does today, but also what they need to do to prepare for tomorrow. With tasks that range from examining the budget to analyzing the markets and planning ahead for company development, the HR position requires balancing a variety of priorities.
For conglomerate firms, the HR department must also learn how to bring together different businesses with different levels of maturity into a single umbrella. At LVMH, the parent company of Sephora, and Richemont, the HR departments work to provide support for the teams and employees. They consciously work to respect the unique ‘DNA’ for the different brands, including their own brand story.
Career mobility
Within organizations the size of LVMH and Richemont, you can have two general types of career mobility. On the one hand, you can have people who want to move to a different Maison, a different section, within the larger organization. Sometimes you might have a candidate working with the retail businesses, for example, who realizes that they would like to find new employment within the luxury hotel industry. Making this shift requires carefully examining the capabilities of the talent and their fit in the new role.
You can also have projected mobility that is deliberate and in an upward direction. It involves a careful examination of how the talent has performed over the past few years. The HR team would want to carefully flesh out what their goals are for their career and see not only where the talent is now, but also where they can be a few years down the road.
“Mobility for us is deliberate. it's a conversation we have very early on across different leadership levels....the idea is that we shouldn't want to bring you in today, to just talk about today.” – Dylan Choong, Regional Vice President, Human Resources for Sephora in Southeast Asia
Talent acquisition
When it comes to bringing in new talent to the organization, a hiring manager wants to see the person’s capabilities for learning and agility. They want to find candidates who are eager to thrive and understand the organization and will help propel it forward. Ideally, the HR team wants to onboard people so that they will not want to leave within that first year. It is critical to find employees who will align well with the organization so that the investment made in bringing in the new talent is not lost.
Millennials have expressed unique concerns that HR and hiring managers have become increasingly cognizant about so that they can reflect these changing priorities. They understand that aligning employee expectations with brand offerings helps to cultivate loyalty. In the past, the best way to build a benefits package lay with compensation.
Today, however, employees care about work-life balance, flexible schedules, and leave policies. Richemont HR works to take these into account to build better relationships with their millennial and Gen X employees.
“It's really important for HR and also management to understand GenZ and their expectations, to try to adapt the way we onboard or the way we are attracting people, the way we are adapting the benefits.....Today the millennials are looking for work-life balance and hence it becomes important for us, the organization, to understand and to adapt.” - Amelie Perdu, Human Resources Director, Southeast Asia for Richemont
Career Landscape
For large corporations, building diverse teams that help to break through glass career ceilings remains a priority. At Sephora, the 10 people on the leadership team represent 10 different nationalities, and 70 percent of the team is female.
Richemont has built a leadership team that is half European and half Asian, but on the Maison side, all the managing directors are European. The brand has noted the issue and works with the Maisons to create a better balance.
Those who want to reach the top levels of management in large brands should not discount the start they can receive working on the floor. For Sephora managers, there are severals who started working on the sales floor and now work as the general manager for the brand on a country level. Working at the ground floor of a business can actually be very valuable for those who start to rise through the ranks, as it provides valuable insight into how the business works and the customers it attracts.
When the HR departments look for hires, they want to find people who are agile and willing to learn quickly. They want to find people who understand how to manage P&L effectively while also grasping the people and consumers involved in success.
Each person is in charge of their own career path. The ability to scale the heights of an organization depends on your willingness to work and perform. For some people, they are ready and this happens quickly. No one, however, should be fooled into thinking progression to the top is very structured. It can happen in an individual’s own time frame.
Those interested in reaching leadership positions also need to notice the importance of emerging skill sets. Jobs and tasks are being disrupted across industries as culture and technology change.
The top skills today involve customer focus and commercial acumen. Those who succeed understand how to drive a business forward. Successful candidates need to love serving people.
On a more specific level, the digital role has grown tremendously. Analysts are now front and center within a company, and marketing has shifted towards performance marketing and digital marketing. The ability to manage massive data sets has become critical.
Those interested in working and succeeding with the luxury brand industries should note this valuable insight into the inner workings of these brands at the leadership level, and also the valuable career path that a career in retail can provide.
Webinar discussion with, Amélie (Quignard) Perdu and Dylan Choong
Amélie joined Jaeger-LeCoultre as the Senior HR Manager, Talent and Development in 2015. She is now the HR Director, South East Asia for Richemont. Her role is to define and drive HR strategy to support our business growth. By attracting and hiring the good profiles, by developing our people to ensure they will have the right skills and they will be ready for the future challenges, by defining a fair and competitive compensation and benefits approach, Richemont will continuously build efficient and performant organization.
Dylan Choong is the Regional Vice President, Human Resources, for Sephora South East Asia, and leads the people strategies for one of the fastest growing & most innovative omni-channel beauty retailer in the region. Prior to Sephora, he was the Director of Human Resources at Starwood Asia Pacific Hotels & Resorts. He led Starwood Asia Pacific to award achievements in employee engagement and career development, setting Starwood Asia Pacific apart as an employer-of-choice with more than 25 awards and accolades won.