HR Council & employer brand: become the company talent chooses
Recruiting better often starts before recruitment. Audit of your practices, salary grid aligned on the market, credible employer brand: we help you become the company that the candidates choose, with the eyes of recruiters who speak to these candidates every day, in France and in more than 25 countries.
The HR Council and the employer brand bring together the missions that make your company more attractive and your recruitments more fluid: audit of your practices, salary grid, employer value proposition, candidate experience. Located upstream of recruitment, these missions address causes rather than symptoms. When candidates decline your offers, when recruits leave after a year or when your ads don't get any answers, the problem rarely comes from sourcing alone.
At Cadran Talents, we carry out these missions with the eyes of recruiters who speak daily to candidates in more than 25 countries, through a single interlocutor. Diagnosis, recommendations, implementation: we take care of everything, with you and your teams.
→ Tell us about your situation and we will offer you the appropriate mission format.
What is the HR Council and the employer brand?
L’HR audit is a diagnosis of your recruitment and retention practices: process, deadlines, tools, candidate experience, remuneration, integration. It leads to concrete and prioritized recommendations, not a report that sleeps in a drawer.
The employer mark is the image that your company refers to candidates and collaborators. It is built on what you really are, not on a slogan: the values lived, the working conditions, the opportunities offered. It's all in the distance. between what you promise and what the candidates see.
A consulting mission usually lasts four to 12 weeks and may cover a specific subject, such as the salary scale, or your entire recruitment system, both on-site and remotely.
HR audit, salary scale or employer brand: what difference?
The honest answer: everything depends on where you start and the problem that costs you the most today.
| Format | HR audit | Salary grid | Employer trade mark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Objective | Understand why your recruitment blocks | Paying just, internally as against the market | Attract and loyalty to the right profiles |
| Duration | 4 to 6 weeks | 6-8 weeks | 8 to 12 weeks |
| Primary | Diagnosis and Priority Action Plan | Grid by post and level, market benchmarks | Employer Value Proposal and Communication Plan |
| Ideal for | Slow processes, lost candidates en route, turnover | Wage differentials, denied offers, internal tensions | Lack of applications, low visibility |
| Involvement of your teams | Interviews with managers and HR | HR data and discussions with management | Workshops with staff and management |
A simple observation from our missions (and hundreds of interviews conducted each year with candidates, All sectors) : the majority of the refusals to tender are due to a difference between what the candidate understood of the position and what he or she discovers, or to remuneration judged to be out of step with the market. Two topics that are addressed directly by an audit and salary grid.
No format replaces the other. The audit remains the best starting point when you don't know where it blocks, and our page on the direct approach Explains how we then recruit. The employer brand, on the other hand, serves you when the problem is not to find candidates, but to convince them.
Are you wondering if headhunting still makes sense in the era of LinkedIn? Our honest answer:
When to choose an HR audit
Your recruitments are dragging around for no clear reason. Some difficulties do not come from the market. Too many validation steps, unavailable managers, feedback that takes ten days. In health as elsewhere, the candidate who is waiting leaves with the competitor. Review the process overall reveals the frictions that each actor, taken in isolation, does not see.
You're worried about the turnover of the early years. When several recruits leave for 18 months, recruitment is not the only issue. Untenable promises, sloppy integration, management, remuneration: the audit goes back to the source, through interviews with the employees in office and, when possible, with those who left.
You grow up fast and your practices have not followed. Moving from thirty to one hundred employees in two years means moving from recruits made by the founders to a process that must work without them. The audit lays the foundation: roles, steps, tools, shared evaluation criteria.
When to choose a salary scale
Your offers are refused for money matters. When several candidates decline on pay, it is time to compare your practices with the real market — the one we observe every week in our recruitments, not in the general surveys. A grid built on recent data allows you to make fair offers from the first time.
Your employees compare their salaries. Unwarranted deviations always end up knowing themselves. A clear grid, with explicit levels and criteria, gives managers a framework to decide and employees a reading of their progress. It is also essential to meet the obligations of pay transparency.
You're recruiting in several countries. The same post is not paid in the same way in Paris, Lisbon or Montreal. We build coherent grids between countries, which respect local markets without creating perceived injustices within your international teams.
How we do it
1. Cadmage and diagnosis. We're starting from your concrete problem. We define together the scope, full audit, salary scale or employer brand, possibly supplemented by a reference check on your latest recruitments, and we set measurable targets.
2. Listen to the field. Interviews with management, managers, HR and a sample of employees, analysis of your recruitment and compensation data, review of your ads and online presence. We also question candidates who refused your offers, when they accept.
3. Analysis and recommendations. We believe what we've heard with what we're seeing on the market. You receive a frank diagnosis, recommendations that are prioritized according to their impact and cost, and a realistic schedule.
4. Implementation and monitoring. We stand by you to deploy the recommendations. A good action plan says what it is must be done, not just what's wrong. A report, a vote, an interlocutor, even on several countries.
Let's be honest: a HR advisory mission involves a lot of actors, management, managers, HR, collaborators, sometimes staff representatives. We coordinate it together and spare you unnecessary meetings.
On site or at a distance? Both work, differently
On-site missions are valuable when corporate culture is at the heart of the topic, when teams are gathered in the same place or when collective workshops play an important role, for example in building an employer value proposition.
Remote missions remove the question of geography. An audit may cover three subsidiaries in three countries, and video conferencing often encourage the frankness of collaborators, who express themselves from a space they have chosen. It is also the most economical format.
Most of our missions combine both. We recommend the mix that fits your goals, schedule and budget.
Why entrust your HR advice to Cadran Talents?
A look of recruiters, no theorists. We have conducted over 1,200 recruitments for more than 180 clients. Every recommendation we make comes from what we see working, or failing, in companies comparable to yours.
Recent market data. Our remuneration and expectations benchmarks for candidates are continuously updated by our recruitment missions in France and internationally. You're not working on two-year-old investigations.
Consultants who did the job. Our consultants were HRD, hiring managers or managers before advising. They know what an action plan costs to implement. For a concrete illustration, read our customer case on the recruitment detail of a luxury house.
Commitments that you can verify. Cadran Talents applies a charter of ethics that covers the confidentiality of HR data, the respect of the employees interviewed and the transparency of our recommendations, including when they are not in line with expectations.
→ Request a proposal for your HR advisory project — we come back to you in a working day.
Frequently asked questions
What is an HR audit?
An HR audit, as we do, is a diagnosis of your recruitment and retention practices. It is based on interviews with management, managers and employees, analysis of your data and our knowledge of the market. It leads to a prioritized action plan, with concrete recommendations and a realistic timetable.
What is the employer brand?
It's your company's reputation with candidates and collaborators: what it says about you, what it feels like to work at home and what it says when you leave. An employer brand mission is to formulate what makes you really attractive, make it visible and ensure that the experience experienced by candidates and recruits keeps that promise.
What is the difference between HR audit, salary grid and employer brand?
The perimeter and the question asked. The audit is looking at why your recruitment or loyalty is blocking. The salary scale answers a specific question: do you pay fairly, internally and against the market? The employer brand deals with your attractiveness and the consistency between your discourse and the reality you experience. The three often combine in this order.
When do you need advice rather than a traditional recruitment firm?
When the problem repeats. A position that is difficult to fill is recruitment. Repeatedly refused offers, early turnovers or unanswered announcements are a matter for counsel, because the cause is in your organization, your remuneration or your image. We do both, which allows us to tell you frankly which one will be most useful to you.
How long does a mission last?
An HR audit takes four to six weeks, a salary grid six to eight weeks, an employer brand mission eight to twelve weeks. These periods include scoping, interviews, analysis and restitution. The implementation of the recommendations is then carried out, at your own pace, with or without our support.
Is a salary scale useful for a small structure?
Yes, and often sooner than we think. From thirty employees, historical differences become visible and managers lack benchmarks to make offers. A simple grid, with some clear levels and market benchmarks, is enough to secure your recruitment and prepare for growth.
What is the candidate experience?
This is all that a candidate is experiencing, from the first contact to the final answer: clarity of the announcement, responsiveness, quality of interviews, transparency on remuneration, adherence to the announced deadlines. Good candidate experience increases your acceptance rates and protects your reputation, including those you have not retained.
Can you intervene in several countries?
Yes, and that's one of our strengths. An audit or salary scale can cover your headquarters and your subsidiaries, with interviews conducted in the language of each country by our consultants and local partners. You receive a single, coherent return from one country to another, and a single contact for the entire mission.
Ready to become the company that talent chooses? Tell us about your project — we will design the mission that gives you concrete answers, led by recruiters who know the field.
