Creating a Community for HeadHunter ➝

Context

HeadHunter, a big IT company, was interested in the professional growth of heads of all departments. HeadHunter’s L&D team wanted to work with the heads throughout the year to empower them.

The L&D team decided to create an expert community where the heads of departments could get instant feedback from their coworkers, discuss difficult cases, share best practice, get to know each other and strengthen their social relationships.

The community would also help the L&D team identify the learning needs of their internal customers at different stages of corporate life.

Objective

Create the environment for a self-learning community.

Who worked on the case: Julia Selezneva and Kristina Gegeliya

Research

A series of in-depth interviews with potential community participants: managers (HiPo) who had worked with the company for 1−10 years.

Research Goals

Identify the company’s key values for the community.
Understand the current communication structure among managers.
Explore working and non-working learning practices and self-development.
Gather expectations for the community.
Assess the company’s interest and desire to develop the community.

Solution

We designed a workshop based on research and held the workshop for managers, HRD and the head of the L&D team. During that workshop participants developed the concept, the strategy, and the implementation plan for a self-learning community.

Results

A 2 strategic roadmap of a self-learning community for managers (HiPo).

The roadmap included values, rules of behavior, tone of voice, community manifesto, as well as administrative and organizational aspects: launch timeline, presence platforms, entry and exit points, community management team, event directory, launch costs calculation and carefully selected metrics for community success and health.

Additionally, we developed a unique positioning for internal communication: "We are not just building a community. We are transforming our team’s needs into relevant actions. We are helping our team stay flexible and build upon experience".

Feedback

"It was clear that our middle management had not upgraded their skills in a long time. So we wanted to train them and help them develop their people management skills.

We ran a mastermind group and realized that traditional training was outdated. Instead we decided to create a learning community. After joining that community our middle management could share their experience, help each other and learn in a new native way.

I brought this idea to LLLab because it is one of the most useful communities I have ever joined. Julia and Kristina proposed an inspiring and comprehensive strategy for launching the community. Now we can launch it any time".

Darya Barova, Head of T&D, HeadHunter

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