Milen Velikov, host of the podcast 'Капиталът Човешки': Challenges and Trends in HR

How did you start your career and what drew you to this profession?

I had a rough start to my HR career, not because I didn't want to, but because almost everyone wanted other candidates than me. I started it with a lot of self-promotion and a dozen unsolicited messages asking someone to let me into the actual practice of learning with no expectation of reward. After the 4th internship in about 2 years, it happened. 

I knew about the work of the Human Resources department in theory from my university education, and in my practice and in my first serious workplace, I came across great colleagues, a bountiful company with supportive and curious employees. That's how I came to love my job, because the clichéd "I like working with people" or "because that's what I studied" is not enough. 

What are the biggest challenges you have faced in your role as an HR professional? And specifically in the Recruitment part?

Challenges to want, of any nature - those that are caused by internal reasons in the company and those that are caused by the current state of the labor market.

Among the internal ones, I can include unprepared managers, unrealistic candidate profiles, mismatched conditions for what is wanted and what is being sought, lack of communication, a lot of ego and emotions at the expense of rational thinking, lack of support and reciprocity in the partnership relationship , hiding information and more and more. 

External ones are related to the seriousness of job applicants, one-sided understanding and expectation of professionalism, often their immature attitude to the selection process. 

Freeing people is always a challenge that almost no one likes. 

Some of these challenges have given me experience, stronger adaptation and confidence in communication and expectations, and others have wasted me quite a bit of time. It cannot do without challenges in the field of "Human Resources", which in turn, in most cases, makes the working day interesting and dynamic. 

How has the role of HR changed over the years since you started working in this field?

There are rarely the same responsibilities and expectations for this role in companies - it is different everywhere because companies (and those who manage them) are in a different process of maturity, volume, culture and expectations. The visible change is related to the presence of such professionals at all, as well as the slow change in the attitude that such a person can do more than hire or fire a given employee and is not just an employee. 

The change in role was caused by international companies and the partial shortage of employees with certain required specialization and competencies. But - still in places the main focus is either recruitment or personnel administration. The Human Resources function has a dozen other professional branches that can be helpful when they find themselves in an environment that is supportive, welcoming, and committed to an organization's most important asset—people. 

What advice would you give to aspiring HR professionals facing challenging tasks such as rapidly growing a team from 100 to 150 people in a short period of time? How can they handle such high expectations from management and succeed?

If you expect a beginner HR to find and hire 100-150 people for you (with all the conditionality of what type of specialists it is, what type of companies and branch and for which town) in a year it is quite unrealistic and practically doomed to failure. A revision is needed in the expectations for such type of young colleagues and the goals set for them, because the disappointments afterwards are great for both parties, and the activity on LinkedIn is huge.  

And something else that many refuse to consider - the role of personal branding, of who people are hired for, is an important aspect of who will want to work with him/her. People often leave their managers, but they are also often attracted to competent ones. It is also important for hiring managers to be involved in recruiting, as they are most interested in having more choice and commitment to selecting the best fit for their team. This is about acting together with HR, not one giving up due to lack of opportunities and the other just waiting. For young HRs, such a partnership approach is important, because the confrontation with the wrong expectations that once someone is hired to select people, he automatically comes with a database of 20 thousand candidates, of which 10% will be bumped into the door to come is valid in fairy tales only. 

There are many different pieces of advice I can give to my younger HR colleagues, but I know that each piece of advice pales in comparison to personal, real-world experience based on a mistake made or a more stressful situation that can be overcome. Advice is forgotten, and often one-sidedly reflects someone else's path, and there are many paths. 

What trends do you see in recruiting and hiring in the coming years?

I leave a small loophole that I do not have complete observations on the selection in the various branches, organizations and localities, but a few things make an impression on me:

• Even more focus on formal or informal recommendations to invite someone for an interview or offer them a job, but still in places these recommendations are confused with outright snobbery;

• Administrative work to be taken over by various digital technologies that minimize human intervention and excess paper – digitization of employment records and leave.

• Focus on the data and the beginnings of analyzes on them, since everyone has opinions, but anonymous surveys in companies and the willingness of employees to participate in them give us different directions and prerequisites for future updates. This also affects the selection - what we offer, what is actually wanted

• Unfortunately, people who have various physical challenges are still not given more chances, women of a certain age are still viewed with skepticism because more of them want children and inappropriate questions about these personal topics are not a taboo subject. In a country where the demographic catastrophe is frighteningly large, it is right to tolerate the birth of a child/children, and not to release people because they have to take care of their children due to a lack of places in kindergartens. There is still a lot of emotion and sometimes discrimination in talent selection. 

• A perceptible increase in the salary published in the job ads, which saves time for both parties in the selection process.