Hélène Lory Delambre, Head of the project of the strategic plan, spoke to us about Mission Impossible… The number of agents recruited in 2024? The state of the art in relation to the objectives of the strategic plan? What’s new in terms of preferred channels to recruit ever more efficiently?
Econocom Stories : Hello Hélène. Thank you for sparing the time to tell us about the Mission Impossible programme. How’s it going so far?
Hélène Lory Delambre : We’ve set ourselves an ambitious target: hire 32 agents for the first year, 2024, with an overall target of recruiting 100 new agents by 2026. And today, I’m pleased to report that we already have 26 new agents, which is very encouraging.
Econocom Stories : How did you achieve this positive result?
Hélène Lory-Delambre : It’s mainly down to a strong team effort, which was boosted by the JUMP campaign. The Management, HR and Communications teams in each country have all been working together. We’ve also implemented a solid recruitment strategy, with some help from headhunting firms in various countries.
Employee referrals also played a key role: 37% of our new agents came from Econocom agents’ and employees’ network. Moreover, a third of the new agents were former employees who wanted to set up on their own, and another third was hired via recruitment agencies.
Econocom Stories : What about the geographical breakdown of new agent hires?
Hélène Lory-Delambre : France and Belgium, our two historic markets, were the main driving forces, but what’s encouraging and promising is how things have progressed in other countries too. In Germany, for example, where the agent model wasn’t very widespread, we have three new agents, and we’ve also hired some new ones in Spain. In the UK there didn’t used to be any agents, whereas we now have two. In each country, we’ve reached historic milestones, which means we’re well on the way to establishing the agent model for good.
Econocom Stories : What were the main issues you encountered?
Hélène Lory-Delambre : The biggest challenge was convincing people to give up their employee status: being self-employed isn’t for everyone. A lot of candidates were interested but needed more time before taking the plunge.
So to help smooth the transition, we set up the Agent to Be system, whereby candidates can start off working for us under an employment contract and then become independent agents. This allows us to identify promising candidates and help them transition to independent status, particularly in Southern European countries, which are culturally less receptive to self-employment.
Another goal we have is to maintain these efforts for hiring both sales agents and salaried Account Managers. For 2024, for example, we’re aiming for a net increase of 23 Account Managers, to replace those who have switched to being agents.
Econocom Stories : You’re also developing a new digital approach. Can you tell us a bit more about this?
Hélène Lory-Delambre : Sure. Since October 2024, we’ve been working on some digital pilot projects in addition to our “human” recruitment sources (i.e. headhunters and employee referrals), to increase our social media presence – LinkedIn, for example – and our Google ranking (SEO and SEA), and ABM (Account-Based Marketing). The aim is to continually promote the agent programme via digital channels, because that’s where we all spend several hours a day, and thus maintain a steady flow of targeted candidates.
This digital strategy marks a departure from the JUMP campaign, which was mainly about raising awareness of the agent system: we’re now looking to get more direct engagement from candidates. As of 2025, we hope to be less dependent on headhunting firms and optimize our recruitment costs.
Econocom Stories : What are your plans for 2025?
Hélène Lory-Delambre : We’re going to continue increasing our onboarding efforts to maximize the performance of new recruits – both agents and Account Managers. We’re also going to keep focusing on employee referrals, which have already proved very effective. The idea is to make the process even simpler so that our employees can promote recruitment opportunities in their network more easily and become ambassadors.
And while we’re on the subject of employee referrals, I’d just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that we have a dedicated website: mission-impossible.econocom.com !
