Spark Pool of Talent, generating synergies between talent and companies

On June 29, 2017, U·TRANS organized, together with Marinva, Hunivers People Hub and Riedulab, non-conventional consulting companies, the first workshop SPARK POOL OF TALENT. The event was fun and playful, and it took place in the space of Teamlabs, in Barcelona, ​​and held 45 participants.

SPARK was conceived with three main objectives:
– Enhancing networking among all the participants from diverse backgrounds
– Encourage learning
– Interconnect talent and job opportunities

SPARK is also the acronym for Strategic, Proactive, Analytical, Resourceful and Keen to learn, which is exactly the profile of the professionals that our companies are looking for. Critical spirits with ideas and desire to innovate!

Each company organized a workshop to present their business areas and way of working. Likewise, during the course of each workshop, nine professional competencies of each participant (passion and emotion, initiative and improvisation, curiosity and desire to learn, reflection and creativity, analysis and synthesis ability, self-assessment and continuous improvement, sympathy with the client, written and oral communication, ability to work as a team), skills we believe are key to professional development in our companies.

Dynamic

After a brief staging and the presentation of each company, the four workshops took place. The participants, divided into groups, were asked to find solutions to several challenges formulated in an original way.

U·TRANS’ workshop proposed a meeting of the Quadruple Helix in a fictional municipality (Torranaps del Vallès). Each participant played a different role in discussing the momentum of local economic promotion policies, trying to reach consensual solutions. The goals of the activity were to assess the initiative and to practise improvisation skills in written and oral communication, as well as teamwork of the various participants.

Huniverse People Hub’s workshop consisted of a brief introduction to self-assessment of participants in various dimensions (knowing what we are looking for, personal and digital branding, curriculum vitae), followed by the design of a mental map to develop group self-analysis, putting in value personal proposals and the need to have a coherent and competitive story. The workshop was useful to observe the abilities of self-evaluation, self-criticism and continuous improvement of each participant, as well as their curiosity and predisposition to learning.

After lunch, Riedulab’s workshop took place. It was focused on education. Each group was given a role (university education, school education and non-formal education), and during the course of the debate four questions were asked of participants, focusing on four stages of work: brianstorming, imaging, matching and impacting. The mission of this workshop, in effect, was to analyze the participants’ reflection and creativity capacities, on the one hand; And analytical and synthesis capacity, on the other.

The last shift was for Marinva’s workshop, focused on game thinking. Through various role-playing games participants were introduced to gamification, game design and play methodologies, and they were invited to play simulating the company’s work methodology. In this last activity we could analyze the skills of passion and emotion in the game, the ability to interact with customers as well as teamwork.

Assessment

At the end of the workshops, the evaluation of the day was done through a live survey, and it counted with very positive evaluations by the participants. In the same way, the participating companies believe that it has been a good opportunity to know talent and that the talent knew our respective brands and, above all, our philosophy of work.

The day was intense and fun, full of challenges and games, and designed to explore the skills of the inscribed people. All of them were seen as a surprise before a process of capturing unconventional talent. And that is a good way to learn, as well as to break the ice and relate to people with similar professional interests and, above all, a good excuse for talent to flourish. We hope, therefore, that this is the first of many activities under a new brand with its own entity, SPARK!