When Chloë Touati and Stéphanie Le Ferrand co-founded Authentic Talent in Paris, it was obvious they each had three things in common: passion, energy, and a bold vision to make Hogan’s assessments the preferred assessment tools in the French market. And, if there’s one thing we at Hogan have learned in working with both of them, there are few who can match their drive and desire to improve the French workforce.
In the final edition of the Distributor Spotlight in 2017, Chloë and Stéphanie tell the story of how and why they founded Authentic Talent, and the unique adventures and challenges they’ve experienced along the way. Cheers to a great year, and happy holidays from your friends at Hogan!
Today, we want to tell you a little bit about us, two Paris-based HR consultants at Authentic Talent. Previously, Chloë Touati, who has a master’s degree in HR, was working for a small consulting firm as the manager of Talent Development. Stéphanie Le Ferrand, an occupational psychologist, was working as a senior consultant at Cubiks. In our respective roles, we both have significant experience working within consulting firms and many well-known tests publishers, such as OPP (European distributor for MBTI) and SHL. We understand and are accustomed to dealing with a complex and immature market. Although France is a large country with a lot of test providers, personality questionnaires are not that widely used.
We are convinced that the assessment market in France is undergoing a paradigm shift and that opportunities are plentiful. Therefore, we joined forces to launch Authentic Talent, a company dedicated to helping individuals, teams, and organizations with all human resource-related issues. We wanted to reconnect with our personal values and offer companies and people a different experience that is more aligned with authenticity and a concern for quality.
We wanted to stay true to our values but are also wondering how to offer premium service within the existing market in France. We are driven by our desire to build amicable but uncompromising relationships with our clients by offering tailored and not just off-the-shelf solutions. We wanted to promote transparency to ensure long-term partnerships with our clients by selling solutions only if we are strongly convinced of the added-value for the company and its employees.
It is difficult to offer a high quality strategy to clients who are used to listening to consultants selling tools like they are crystal balls. The assessment and development market is still driven by HR people who are decidedly not psychologists and mostly subjective in their approach. In France, gut feelings and aesthetics are often still considered to be important criteria. Competitors are selling solutions that are shiny and pretty on the surface, but are unreliable and of poor quality. Therefore, we are required to do a lot of heavy lifting from morning to night, getting up early in the morning, teaching clients until late in the evening.
A partnership with Hogan Assessments is the ideal solution! This company is known internationally for its high level of quality, the precision and nuance in their measurement of personality, and their unique approach of assessing the dark side. This partnership allows us to use and prescribe a “new” measurement of personality. We appreciate our close relationship with the head office in Tulsa and their US-based team. Thanks to that relationship, we are able to effectively support our clients with training or technical support. When we are in the question phase, there are always distributors ready to share experiences and advice to help us to promote quality in our market. This allows us to be flexible in our proposals to clients, to offer a different and constructive experience.
After the first main steps in this Authentic adventure, we have built strong relationships with clients in several sectors, positioning Hogan tools as the premium brand on the market targeted at the leadership population. We have been able to promote the assessment and development of talent with a high-quality approach driven by authenticity. This period has not been easy; we are still a very young firm. But every day we meet with challenging clients who share our convictions. In the short time since our creation, we have received excellent feedback from existing and potential clients.
We have already started the Hoganization with some fantastic groups with whom we are conducting enthusiastic projects, including Hogan for selection and development purposes. We are building a strong community with the certified users and offer them the opportunity to further develop their Hogan expertise. We are highly motivated to continue adding more business in the future!
We would be more than happy to welcome you all to Paris to meet us and spend some time together, sharing a glass of wine and a Hedonestic meal!