How can we show future recruits who our company really is? How do we bring out the human side of the teams? Here are the two sides of the coin:
- Stéphane Genin explains the approach as seen by a partner who runs SmartView. Stéphane details the strategy and the ambitious plan to recruit IT consultants in the Paris region, Lyon and Montpellier. The specialties are Atlassian, Microsoft 365, Agile and Business Intelligence... with an interest in expanding the specialties in IT.
- Liz Misbach is an Atlassian consultant. Liz looks back on those six five years at SmartView. She gives another perspective to people like her who doubt.
After publication, another contributor wished to express himself. The principle remains the same: we publishElie Théocari 's words as they are at the end of the article.
They say the grass is often greener elsewhere. What's up?
Why SmartView: A staff member's view
Liz was coming off two unhappy work experiences when she joined SmartView. So Liz, is the grass really greener at SmartView?
I joined SmartView 5 years ago, thanks to a recommendation from a former colleague. At the time, I was coming out of two difficult work experiences. I wondered if I would be able to join a company that promises you everything, only to find out later how bad the human management is (you probably know that fear management that consists in repeating over and over again that "no one is indispensable"...).
What struck me immediately was the honesty and vision of my manager Stéphane Genin (partner at SmartView). It was the first time I had heard about the "liberated company". And after reading books on his advice, I really adhered to the principles of empowerment, autonomy and trust granted to employees. Coming from a start-up background, it was really important for me to (re)find these values in a company. I was not surprised to find that our Director and partner, Christophe Monnier, is also very active in the start-up and business creation scene in Montpellier.
So, if someone asked me "why SmartView?", I would say that the company and its associates really put people at the heart of their project. Of course, as in any business, nothing is 100% perfect.
The most important thing, in my opinion, is that we listen and hear each other's opinions. Everyone looks for solutions to problems when they arise in order to evolve together. And this is a luxury in my opinion in a company today. Because it's not just another marketing pitch to make the company seem virtuous, while the management behind the doors is quite different. And this reality is important, at least for me.
I also find the founding values of the company in my daily work.
Pride
The pride of seeing the company grow year after year, of seeing the work done in pre-sales with new customers. But also the pride of hearing our clients who are delighted with our services recommend us to other companies or who call us back a few years after the end of a service
Initiative
I was able to continue working on the marketing and communication part of the company, which is my core business. I was able to redo the website several times when I wanted to improve it. And this, without requiring time-consuming approvals or negotiations. We are thus allowed to take initiatives that concern the life of the company.
Solidarity
Whenever I had technical problems that I couldn't solve, I could always count on the help of my colleagues very quickly. Even if they are working at the same time for other customers. And if one of our colleagues who works for another offer needs help, we respond.
Honesty
We don't hesitate to say "no" to our customers. We are not in the business of selling expensive solutions and plugins at any price. And we will not hesitate to tell them if they are not going in the right direction. We are honest with the client and we will not tell them what they want to hear but what we think is right for their project. We sell the reality of what we do.
Why SmartView: An Executive's View
Stéphane wanted to explain the approach, the strategy, and his pride in serving SMEs and CAC40 groups on a daily basis. So Stéphane, what makes the grass green at SmartView?
Why grow and recruit IT profiles?
We want to be a big company in software innovation, not a big company. SmartView has not set a growth target in numbers. The goal is to grow in positioning, in reputation, in perceived value to our customers. We're looking to amplify the momentum we're in.
This vision is made possible by the company's solid growth. SmartView is listed for the 5th year in the "Les Echos" Growth Champions list.
Why we are recruiting IT consultants
In 2020, it was initially an uncertain time for everyone because of the pandemic. Then, we became aware of several fundamentals:
- Customers care about SmartView. Why do they care? During the first containment, they were concerned about our health. Some major clients have listed us among their priority suppliers (we work with both large CAC40 groups and SMEs)
- All the clients we asked for testimonials agreed: Aromandise, CDC Habitat, MBDA, a major French banking group, a world leader in electrical equipment and energy management, etc.
- Our 4 teams (Agile, Atlassian, Business Intelligence and Microsoft) work together on more and more projects, in complementarity on their expertise. The customers appreciate more and more our crossed competences. On the market, the IT domains are often split in silos (Atlassian and Microsoft, BI and Agile for example). This organization reflects their IS which are not monoliths. They are sets of intertwined and complex technologies and tools that must interact to be efficient. Linking expertise and finding bridges between knowledge is a necessity and a singularity of SmartView in its market. This is made possible by the company's human scale. The agile transformation measurement project is an example of this.
- SmartView is more visible than before. The Atlassian ecosystem has changed: strategic tools, price increase. The Microsoft ecosystem is bringing out a new business profile between business and data analyst with the Power Platform within the Microsoft 365 offering (formerly Office 365). People are asking: who is SmartView? SmartView is not just another generalist IT company. Our customers have realized the added value of SmartView as a transformation gas pedal. This trend is growing: we are involved in more strategic IT projects. Operational assignments (e.g. "How to tool my IT process") are complemented by strategic consulting (e.g. "What are the requirements for my IT process").
- Social diversity in IT is a reality at SmartView: almost equal numbers of men and women, employees from different cultures, etc.
What are the challenges for SmartView?
Traditionally, SmartView responds to its own customers' requests. How can we become more proactive? How can we anticipate customer needs and requests to better serve them, and save them time in their own transformation, give them a competitive advantage, and better serve their fellow citizens for the Public Service?
- Strengthen customer contact
The first challenge is to meet the ecosystem. We want to spend more time sharing our vision of the transformation, our vision of the company.
We want to allocate more time to the more strategic part (next to the operational part). A new person is joining the sales team to give it more time. This will generate more demand from customers.
- Expand our IT consulting team further
The second challenge is to have more time available for our clients. We are accelerating our development on existing and new topics. Customers appreciate SmartView for what we are (our values, our ability to say "no", our truly objective and neutral views of vendor solutions). The talent that joins SmartView enriches our expertise.
What IT profiles do we recruit?
Beyond the know-how, it is the personality that interests us the most, the "soft skills". Know-how remains important and is constantly evolving. Soft skills are essential in a consulting role based on understanding needs and mutual trust. What counts is what these people will bring to the table, how to better serve our key accounts for example. We want to further expand our scope within IT departments (our current focus) and also support business departments in partnership with IT departments. The skills of the new recruits allow us to offer new missions.
How will these hires enrich our IT teams?
We are looking for a wide range of IT profiles: from functional consultants to highly technical engineers (developers). We want to find technical solutions for our customers without putting the technique at the heart of the issues; the technique and the tools are means, serving the needs, not the other way around. What interests us is the ability of an employee to adapt to the needs of the customer. And we are also looking to expand our teams in agility and business intelligence.
We know our market, we can still grow. We grow because of the people who join us. These IT consultants adhere to our values to better represent SmartView.
In practice, new recruits bring other ways of looking at things and participate in the life of the company. Since its creation in 2010, SmartView has been evolving in a controlled growth dynamic. And the human element remains at the heart of our approach.
Why SmartView: A Collaborator's Vision
Elie Theocari has done several jobs in a very large ESN (Entreprise de Service du Numérique). Elie explains why he switched to SmartView. Here again, his testimony is transcribed as is. Elie, can you take SmartView or leave it?
I've been a SmartView consultant in Montpellier for more than a year, in the Agile Product Management team (a big word to say that we are a team of trainers and coaches around agility). And I'll try to explain why I made, and still make, the choice of SmartView.
Before SmartView
I worked for almost nine years in a very large ESN, also in Montpellier, where I did a bit of everything: development, project management, testing, functional and technical design, Scrum Master, Product Owner for third party clients, coaching...
A very enriching experience in ESN from a professional and personal point of view. Not everything was perfect, but I experienced very interesting things, I progressed a lot, technically and humanly, in contact with colleagues and teams of which I will keep for the most part excellent memories.
Why then did I leave?
The desire to move on. The ESN in which I "grew up" brought me its share of satisfactions, but also frustrations. Going around France (Marseille, Toulouse, Paris, Lille (!)...) while we had local agencies everywhere with consultants as competent as me. Working exclusively for large accounts, which are very difficult to move and have values that I don't always share. Having a high turnover, seeing people disappear one after the other and being replaced at the drop of a hat by others who arrived in large numbers.
I left my job without signing anything else elsewhere. I gave myself time to look around, telling myself that I would not sign with another ESN to avoid falling into the same trap. Three months later, I signed with SmartView, I'm still there today and it's a company I recommend without hesitation.
At SmartView
We are a small company (about 30 employees), with a small half in Montpellier. It is very easy to discuss with everyone up to the highest level of the pyramid (which only has two floors in our company), to say when we agree, when we disagree, to propose to do things differently and to start a debate.
I was integrated into a team composed of three other people, with more seniority than me professionally speaking, including in the field of agility. But we all make proposals, we all take initiatives, and there is no one person who has more weight than the others because he or she is responsible for the offer or has twenty years of experience behind him or her. In less than a year and a half, we have reviewed our training approach from top to bottom, the what, the how, in order to bring a real plus to learners. Everyone was involved in a constructive approach, even though everyone had their own habits and comfort zone on the subject.
We work for mainly local clients, creating an honest relationship with them. We don't sell just to sell, we know how to tell a client when we don't think we can do more than we have already done, and we know how to turn down an assignment, even a juicy one, or a training request when we don't think the conditions are right to do it properly, without being judged.
Since I was hired, I have worked exclusively with companies with less than 500 employees, with a real desire to move forward at all levels, in very different and all interesting jobs, which is a real source of motivation for me.
Our management trusts us. The entire team has been telecommuting for over a year without a manager calling us every hour, or even every day, to find out exactly what we are doing. We are not micro-managed or stalked. That means we are in control of our work schedules, as long as it's done in a way that makes sense. We can all make decisions at our level to move the company forward.
We are not trying to achieve a "utilization rate" of our "resources" that is through the roof. During the COVID period, the people who were on probation (including me) were kept on, and the people who were on short-time working received 100% of their salary. Because we all have time to improve our practices, our tools, our postures.
We can participate in seminars, conferences, juries for schools, watch videos or read articles to progress, organize feedback to share with everyone, have a coffee with colleagues. Of course, like everywhere else, we have production imperatives, but they are not incompatible with doing things that we feel are important.
So why SmartView?
So no, everything is not perfect either. It is possible to find yourself without an assignment. We can work on missions that are sometimes less interesting. Sometimes we are "in the juice" for a certain period of time. There can be communication difficulties between us, and some information can get "lost". We can have an idea one day and drop it a week later for another one that has germinated. We are spread out over three cities and there are people we see less of than others.
But frankly, what is not perfect today, we have the latitude to work on. What is not perfect today, we are all responsible for and can all contribute to making it better. Everyone can propose, everyone can act, everyone can make SmartView the environment they want to develop their career and grow.
Some of us don't like the word NSE, but we are a service company. I myself thought I'd given up on NSEs. So why SmartView? Simply because SmartView fits my idea of a company that wants to contribute to the society I want for tomorrow: respectful, fair, open, less focused on numbers and more focused on impact.
Oh yeah, and we have a foosball table. Anyway... join us!
Go further
Changing jobs in IT? Find a job in IT? Moving to Paris, Lyon or Montpellier? You have experience on Atlassian, Microsoft 365, Agile or Business Intelligence? In other fields of IT?
How about sharing our experiences? Get in touch here. We are based in Paris, Lyon and Montpellier.
PS: Have you noticed that we write these texts without ".e" and "é/ée"? Why add feminine words when gender diversity is part of everyday business? SmartView places gender diversity at the heart of its social and environmental responsibility (SER). To see for yourself, discover these women, the consultants, engineers, project managers, and mothers via SmartView's LinkedIn page.
