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Developper les bilans de compétences de l'Apec
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Apec
is a major player in the French executive job market. It is a partner for
companies recruiting executives, and supports executives at all stages of their
careers (first jobs, mobility, and professional development). Today 40,000
companies and 530,000 executives use Apec services. Apec called on Quatre Vents
to help it strengthen its position as a provider of skills appraisals.
Skills appraisals have become crucial to career guidance and training. No career
is complete without one. Apec is the leading provider of skills appraisals for
executives, with 1,000 appraisals performed in 2007. Besides these figures, Apec
is also a pioneer in this field. In the 1970s its consultants designed the
skills appraisal method.
"Since
we were the first to do them, our skills appraisals are the benchmark and our
expertise recognised by HR teams", states Olivier Guilhaume, Marketing Director
at Apec.
"We want executives to know that."
Apec chose Quatre
Vents as its consultant because of the agency's skills in operational marketing,
as well as its care for HR concerns, which attracted Olivier Guilhaume. "It
quickly became apparent that Quatre Vents had a thorough enough knowledge of HR
to apply operational marketing techniques to our needs. Very few marketing firms
are at ease with the subtleties of our industry. We noticed how remarkably their
teams were able to delve into our world and master our jargon. As a result, the
offer made by Quatre Vents ended up perfectly adapted to our needs."
The right doseThe skills appraisal is regulated by law,
but also subject to strong competition from other French companies. "The
challenge was therefore to promote our offers while avoiding adopting a pure
sales approach or mere institutional speeches", explains Olivier Guilhaume. In
other words, we had to find the right balance between information and sales
pitches. The Quatre Vents and Apec teams chose two approaches to promote the
skills appraisal: information (e.g. what is the appraisal for, how is it
performed, by whom, etc.) and presentation largely based on the personal
experiences of executives and Apec consultants. "The goal was not to make
executives or readers feel hemmed in, but rather to understand that Apec was
already providing a service by informing them of the appraisal." After the
go-live last May, followed by a print version, an e-mail campaign started in
June. It gradually gathered impetus until finally reaching height of 100,000 to
120,000 executives per year.
