According to Amanda Ristalahti, the best thing about her job as Aico’s Talent Acquisition Lead is the wide variety of tasks, freedom to manage her own workload and most importantly, getting to interact with countless people. Continue reading, as she is about to give you a deep dive into what her work life is all about! 

To be honest, my days, weeks and months vary so widely, if I were to write just about one random day, it definitely would include plenty of material, but wouldn’t really give a comprehensive understanding of what Talent Acquisition work at Aico is actually like. So, in order to give a better overview, I just decided to talk about what I was hired to do, ignoring the fact that one workday simply can’t fit everything in.

Recruiting for Aiconauts-to-be

When the need for a new hire is established, I work together with the hiring manager in order to define the role description, write a job advertisement and create whatever materials are needed for the recruitment marketing process. Depending on the role, we might do some sourcing of our own, or in some cases, work with an external headhunter.  

Once the ad is out and applications start pouring in, it’s my job to do an initial review and alert the hiring manager when promising applicants land in front of my eyes. Usually, I act as the point of contact, so I coordinate the interviews, answer any questions the candidate might have in advance and communicate the outcome of the recruitment process to all applicants. 

All Aico’s hiring managers are extremely skilled in what they do, so they don’t need anyone to hold their hand during the interview. Therefore, from the two rounds of interviews we tend to organise, I only participate in one. In the final stages of the process, I schedule the aptitude test and request the candidate’s references. If nothing alarming is revealed, it’s my honour to make an offer and hope that they accept it. 

Finding new Aiconauts to join the team is bliss. When we have several vacancies advertised simultaneously, recruitment matters consume the majority of my time, and other stuff gets temporarily de-emphasized to some extent. This is because I’ve made candidate experience one of my personal top priorities and want to be sure to allocate enough time for these interactions. 

Employer branding empowers the whole organisation

In short, everything I do under employer branding is built on two crucial things:

At Aico the overall responsibility for employer branding remains under the admin team. As Talent Acquisition Lead, I’m responsible for planning our employer branding strategy, defining relevant targets, following analytics and suggesting new things for us to try out.  

On a daily basis, this means: 

However, employer branding is a company-wide effort - that can’t be emphasized enough. And since we have multiple teams and employees across four different countries, but only one employee working in talent acquisition, we needed to figure out a way to make sure that the nuances of each location and team is heard and expressed correctly.  

With this in mind, for the past six months, we’ve been piloting an employee ambassador program. Together with the ambassadors, I’ve brainstormed and tackled projects like increasing Aico’s social media presence (psst, you should also follow @aicofinancialclose on Instagram!), defining Aico’s Employee Value Proposition and organising office events. 

Defining my own ways of working

Throughout all this, there is one thing that remains unchanged. It’s the way I structure my workdays. In order to keep some sort of balance between my different tasks, I aim to spend half of the day on tasks that require uncompromised focus. These tasks can be anything; 

The other half of the day I reserve for meetings, emails and administrative tasks. During this part of the day, I may, for example, focus on social media management or candidate communication, compare service providers’ offerings or track analytics.  

Office days are a clear exception because when surrounded by my colleagues, I value the chance of an ad-hoc face-to-face catchup. That’s why I’d rather not plan a long list of “must do’s” or schedule back-to-back meetings for office days. And yes, Aico supports remote working and flexible hours. However, considering the nature of my role, I make an effort to show up at the office on a weekly basis. 

Independently, but never alone

Due to Aico’s culture of embracing autonomy, it is up to me to notice potential improvements concerning either recruitment or employer branding and turn them into development projects. The freedom to define my own work, as long as it fits the bigger picture, of course, is by far one of the most inspiring things I value at Aico. 

While this is currently a one-person job, it’s a job where I’ve never felt alone. I get reminded every day that I’m surrounded by extremely talented and kind individuals. Colleagues who are willing to lend their time and share their knowledge, as well as participate in activities in order to get employees’ voices and experiences out there.