Hi, my name is Georgiana. I am the CEO and founder of Beaglecat, and soon you will be listening to Employer Branding: The Inside Podcast. In this podcast, I regularly talk to employer branding managers and acquisition managers, and human resources managers in tech companies in Germany, Romania, and the US. For more content on employer branding-related themes, go to employerbranding.tech or beaglecat.com. Stay tuned!
Overview
In ep. 2 of Employer Branding: The Inside Podcast (Season 6), we had the pleasure of speaking with Selma Sadikovic, HR Lead at SNOCKS. We talked about the way HR blends beautifully with employer branding and recruitment to build a meaningful company culture. Also, we tackled several insightful aspects of what makes a good culture, leadership buy-in, and how to rock at employer branding without breaking the bank.
What you’ll learn by listening
- How employer branding, HR & recruitment come together to help build a stellar company culture
- What makes a good company culture: it’s all about trying out ideas to see what works & what doesn’t
- How to rock at employer branding with little money: when creative ideas come when you least expect it
- Leadership-buy & its importance in building a company from the ground up
- Recruitment marketing done differently: all eyes on people, their needs & their expectations
About
Founded by Johannes Kliesch and Felix Bauer in 2016, the vision of SNOCKS is to become the number one point of contact for basics and lifestyle clothes. SNOCKS aims to establish itself as the ultimate lifestyle brand in the long term, and it is one of the most successful e-commerce startups in Germany.
“We don’t just want to be your trusted outfitter and clothing manufacturer, but your competent partner when it comes to lifestyle products. This includes basics, men’s underwear as well as timeless classics and sweaters.”
Podcast link – Enjoy listening to S06Ep02 on Spotify!
Podcast transcription – Employer Branding T.I.P S05Ep.10
Georgiana:
Hello, hello! Welcome to a new episode of Employer Branding: The Inside Podcast. This is Georgiana as you’ve known for two years now. And today I’m talking to someone that I’ve been following for quite a while on LinkedIn and I admire her a lot. She’s doing a ton of things. I’ll just tell you that her name is Selma Sadikovic. And she works as human resources manager at SNOCKS, but she does a ton of things. So please, Selma, first of all, welcome! Thank you for agreeing to do this episode with me. And tell us a little bit about what you do and what the company does.
Selma Sadikovic:
Thank you so much for the invitation, Georgiana. I’m so happy to be here and to be a part of the HR Employer Branding podcast experience. Yeah, who am I? I started at SNOCKS two years ago as an HR manager. And I was kind of, I think, the 40s employee. So pretty late on the HR stuff, because I was the first one to work in HR at SNOCKS. And two years ago, I basically did everything. So I did all salaries, I did the employer branding, I did the recruiting, I did the opposite management. I did literally everything, you name it, I did it.
And now two years later, I have a wonderful team around me, of which I’m happy to be the leader of. So right now we have a recruiter, and we have a colleague who is doing our learning and development and the onboarding as well. And another colleague of mine is doing all the administrative and the law things. And one colleague of mine is doing office-related stuff. And yeah, the things that I’m doing is trying to lead the team, to the best of my abilities. And also, yeah, I admire and I love the topic of employer branding of new work of everything around surrounding this topic.
At SNOCKS, we started six years ago, selling socks on Amazon. And now six years later, we’re 110 employees, big e-comm. Maybe not a startup anymore, but we’re a brand. We have our own online shop, as well as we’re selling on many marketplaces. We also have underwear for girls and boys, we are selling some sports stuff. So pretty much everything you can imagine in the basic fashion world is what we’re trying to sell.
Georgiana:
Cool. Yeah. And since you you’re saying that you’re leading a team, but I think that well, while leading the team, you are sort of responsible for all the areas. So I’m wondering, what is it like for you to bridge the gap between all these? How do they come together, employer branding and the new work and maintaining a good company culture and a bit of recruitment?
Selma Sadikovic:
I think the biggest challenge here is that you have to focus on 10 topics at the same time. Because the team is not so big. I mean, all of my colleagues and my team members, they’re alone in their own team. So there is not a second person during the recruiting or a second person during the onboarding and development. So whenever we are, for example, brainstorming they can’t do it alone. They need me. So I have to, I don’t know like focus on 10 topics at the same time and always have some ideas and have the why not spirit to it. But I don’t know I think it’s the enthusiasm that brings me to I work every day. And I love to read and to connect with other brands, other people, other leaders and not leaders in HR, other pioneers seeing how they do it. And this is where my inspiration comes from.
And this is also what my team loves to do. They love to connect with other people and see, how are they doing it. Are there any things that we can maybe adapt, or maybe change so that it works with SNOCKS, so this is really, really cool. And I love the energy of all the people that I’ve met in the last years, and everyone’s so happy to help and also so open about their challenges and their everything they’re doing. So I think at the end of the day, especially when there’s like, I don’t know, like some kind of event or something when everyone comes together and always feels like yeah, like a big HR family in Germany, which is so cool. This is what I really love.
Georgiana:
Yeah, actually, you know what I like I said, I followed you for a while. And it struck me that you have that you speak very passionately, about many, many topics. And there’s a lot of good vibes, and there’s a lot of good energy coming from you. And from your LinkedIn posts. And I’ve always been reading them and telling myself, Wow, that’s really she must be someone who brings in all this good vibe into the company. So I have to talk to her. And so then when I read on your LinkedIn profile, that your personal aim is actually the same as the company. And actually, the aim is to become the best employer.
Selma Sadikovic:
Yeah.
Georgiana:
So this is, to me, a very ambitious goal. That I wasn’t surprised as it was coming from you. So please tell me exactly what makes SNOCKS the best employer?
Selma Sadikovic:
That’s a very good question. And I know that it’s a very, very bold statement. But I think, of course, I have to say this. But first and foremost, the thing that makes us this great brand, and it’s great employers, of course, our team, not only the team SNOCKS, but also the team HR, which is as passionate as I am. So they love what they’re doing. And they pour all their passion and energy and everything that they do they do it for for the brand. And we have so many cool new ideas. So, of course, that’s the first point, I think the second one I think is our approach have little to no rules.
So we try to Yeah, I don’t know, give everyone the possibility to kind of work, how they want to do it and live how they want to do it and not be obligated to any rules just because you have to. I was very inspired by a book that I read, which is funnily enough called “No rules, rules”. It’s written by the founder of Netflix, which is a big recommendation for everyone in HR. So that’s the second thing. And the third thing, which is something that that I had in mind last night, when we were watching the Champions League game where we had a little spot is the I would call it the wide not spirit. It’s just I mean, it’s our slogan, of course, but everything we do, we kind of just think, why not? Let’s try it. This kind of, I don’t know, like open open space, also for failures and for bad things that happened and everything.
So my personal approach and I think also the approach of the team SNOCKS and all the crazy things that we tried to do, whether it be I don’t know going on vacation with 100 people or just doing a Champions League add in two days, it’s just why not let’s try it. So we just see how it, how it works and if it does work, okay, let’s try something new. And if it does work, then it’s so cool. We did it. So I think that’s the key part in everything, which is why everyone is also so open to new ideas. And no matter how crazy that idea might be, you always know that you have some open ears in the team. So no one has kind of like ashamed of anything, or just trying trying to do and not trying to hide their mistakes. So I think that’s a very, very good sign of a good culture. That you can Yeah, kind of just try yourself out and not have many regulations of limitations, just so you can grow.
Georgiana:
Exactly and embracing the risks, I think, and being inquisitive and questioning everything, I think is the key to success. And obviously, you guys have done it, because you have a median tenure of 1.1 years, your company, which is at least compared to what happens in Berlin, tech. So what do you do to preserve these people? What do you do to stay the way you are?
Selma Sadikovic:
One thing that our founder and also my boss, you have always said it’s, it’s a fact of people’s game. So everything we do, we do it for the people. And I think the first thing that we always try to push is events. So right now we have a various number of events lined up for the team. For example, we rented cinema two weeks ago to play Mario Kart because we all love to play Mario Kart and the lunch breaks. So we rented a cinema to do it on the big screen, because why not? Right?
And I don’t know, right now, the Oktoberfest is coming up. So we’re doing another SNOCKS Tober Fest in our office in two weeks, where everyone can bring their partner, there will be some food, some variant and some beer and whatnot. Yeah, exactly. And I know we have our summer trip coming up, which is an annual holiday or annual vacation we do with all of the team members, we’re flying to Morocco for some days. So that’s the first thing events, I’d say. And then the second thing that we try to do is always reinvent ourselves. So whether there will be a rule or whatever that we have to implement, because we’re simply so many people, nothing is set in stone.
So everyone can always give their feedback and can always, maybe also sit at the table and be like, Okay, I don’t know if this is like the right approach or not. So the feedback culture within our teams is very, very important to us, because you have to see it like this. So many people that are working here are so young, and they’re doing this for the first time. So we have so many people leaving for the first time we have so many people are working for the first time. So of course, a ton of mistakes is is is in the making every day. So we try to reinvent and re-evaluate ourselves and also test and see, okay, this is a good approach or not, if not, let’s try something else. So we are constantly growing and constantly trying to Yeah, be better and be a better employer and be a better place for all the people.
Georgiana:
That’s a very startup-like mentality. I think is actually key to companies, even to those who have surpassed five years and have grown tests. 100 people, I think this is key in maintaining a good culture and really staying on the market toes once you lose that thing.
Selma Sadikovic:
For sure. And I see so many companies that are similar. I just call it age as we are. So five to six years. And they are so corporate, they behave and they act like they have like 2000 employees, they have like 110 or 50. And I don’t think that this is the way to go. I mean, of course, what you have to keep in mind is, of course there are people that need rules, they need rules, because they simply maybe it’s not their style of working right. So they need kind of like some limitations to be safe and to feel good.
And this is also something that we have to respect and this is also something that we had to learn the hard way because my my team will laugh but when whenever they come to me with a question, I’m always like The first answer I always give as what would you do, because I want to try and teach them that they switch on their minds and that they think about because, of course, it’s easier for me to just present them my answers on a table and be like yesterday and just do it, whatever I tell you, you do.
But I want them to also think outside the box, think of things that they can do on whatever so that they kind of develop the feeling that all the things they do is so important that they kind of develop ownership for their things. Because when I give you trust, and when I give you zero limitations, I want you to own it, and to just do it and not be dependent on me. So you can fulfill my wishes because I want you to feel like this is also your team and your work and your culture and everything. It’s not mine. It’s not mine. It’s not yours, it’s ours. But I think you get the point.
Georgiana:
And how much of all of this culture is synonymous with the founder, as it happens with most startups in the world, and how much has it grown on its own with you with the rest of the team?
Selma Sadikovic:
I think it’s a good mix. So we have two founders, we have Johannes and Felix. Yohannes is here in Mannheim, where our headquarter is, and he’s always the one with the crazy ideas with the crazy minds. So who was he’s always the one who’s like, okay, the Champions League spot is I don’t know, like, IX K Euro. Yeah, sure. Let’s try it. And you know that he won’t be pissed if it doesn’t perform because he’s like, Okay, let’s try it out. So all the craziness and the why nots where that’s coming from him. And we have Felix, which is our second founder, and he is bringing kind of all the other topics of interest at SNOCKS.
He’s a big fan of remote work, which is why he originally founded SNOCKS so he’s living in Zurich, but spends his winters in Bali where his brother lives. So all of the like your work and remote working. Yeah, like digital nomad lifestyle, is the part of the culture that is the that he is bringing into SNOCKS culture. So I think this altogether mixed with some of our ideas, and some of the ideas from the people that are working with us in the past six years is I think, a very, very nice mix.
Georgiana:
I’m wondering if you can tell me what the best or proudest moment in the company is for you so far?
Selma Sadikovic:
That’s a very good question.
Georgiana:
There are several, probably.
Selma Sadikovic:
I think the proudest moments I always have, it’s not an Amazon ad deal, or some numbers or whatever. There are, there are enough people in our company valuing these numbers. The proudest moments for me, as an HR leader, and as someone who embraces our culture is, whenever I see our people succeed, so everyone is kind of a specialist in their own like team or their own like discipline.
And as SNOCKS has become such a Yeah, I don’t know. Like he’s a very known brand and a very known startup in the E commerce world. Many people are. Yeah, like, asking, I don’t know, like, for example, a colleague from mine, he’s called Tomas. He’s working in our marketplace department, whether he wants to be a speaker at an event or whether he wants to join this conference, because they see how he has also like, contributed to the success of snarks.
Or, for example, when my recruiter Tim, he just told me a couple of days ago that he was asked to be a guest in the first podcast ever and he was so excited. So these are my moments of being proud because I know that there were but also we as an employer, and we as a brand, kind of helped the people behind all of it to fulfill their personal dreams and to contribute to their personal growth, which is at the end of the day, the most important thing, you can talk about everything. You can talk about numbers and about whatever and jobs and whatnot. But if you don’t allow your people to grow, also on a personal level, they will leave you. They just will. So these are my proudest moments.
Georgiana:
Nice. I think it’s rewarding for you to see how people have this sense of initiative and being how they feel encouraged to be their own selves and develop themselves. Personally supported by the company. Yeah, it’s, it has to be really rewarding that indeed. Let’s talk a little bit about recruitment marketing. We have about eight minutes left. Yes. So please me, how much do you make use of it? For growing the team? I’m really curious.
Selma Sadikovic:
Recruitment marketing in the original sense, I don’t know if you if we make much use of this. So every time that someone asks How the hell we generate these crazy amounts of applications? Yeah, I always say I think it’s a good mix. Because as I just as I just told you, the brand, of course, is growing. And of course, there are so many specialists right now working at snarks that are presenting themselves at various, whether it be events, or they publish something on LinkedIn, or whatever. And I think recruiting, as you also said, in your question is always a little bit like marketing. So you need to have many touch points with the brand.
Georgiana:
Less than simply branding, which I think is much more the case.
Selma Sadikovic:
Whatever you try to achieve, I think it’s always about the touch points. So I know many people follow for example, our social accounts. For example, the Instagram account where we have this crazy, because this crazy thing on Fridays, we just called jobs by SNOCKS. It was a random idea that my colleagues and I had, where we try to interest the people in a job offer that we have. So we constantly have some, like open job positions, for example. And every Friday, we just, I don’t know, bounce some ideas back and forth. And we try to make it a little bit of like, twisted or funny way. And the engagement on this story, which costs zero euro is insane. It’s insane. It’s enormous. How did we manage to do that? It was a random idea that we had on a Friday morning, I think. And it costs nothing. And it’s so funny, just because we have fun with it. And it’s such a cool thing.
Georgiana:
Employer branding at its finest, yeah, it’s 100% coming from the people projected to the outside. You’re rocking it.
Selma Sadikovic:
Thank you. So I think that’s, that’s a good example. And also, something that we really try to engage the people to do is LinkedIn, of course. LinkedIn, we don’t have to talk about it. It’s the fastest growing business. And we are encouraging the people to write on there. So why would they write on there? Because they can, and because they have something to tell. So we try to have, as I said, In the beginning, very few to none like rules as writing the posts, they can of course, do it when they work. I don’t know if this is even necessary to tell.
But I know some people that have to do their LinkedIn in their free time and not. Not when they’re at work, which is insane to me, but whatever. So we really encourage people to do that. Because on the other hand, no, on the on one hand, of course, it’s great employer branding for us, but on the other hand, they’re also showing themselves as experts. So it’s a win-win situation for the employer and for the employees. So that’s also I think, a big, big step why our employer branding is so yeah, I think good if I did this on myself, and it’s not a like, like the snarked LinkedIn account. Like, Oh meet the team or whatever it’s so, so much more interesting to see the different people writing about their experiences writing about their jobs, and knowing that they’re supported by the brand. Think is so, so important.
Georgiana:
You could you could definitely write the book Employer Branding 1on1. To everyone who’s listening, just follow the LinkedIn account of Selma. And follow the team from SNOCKS. There’s so much good content and useful inputs that you can put in place with very little money, which is fantastic. And that takes me to our last question, you have three minutes left if you had all the money in the world for employer branding, what would you do?
Selma Sadikovic:
Og that’s a tough question. I would like to do something crazy like I really have to think about that one.
Georgiana:
Sure. Crazy can be mean a trip, crazy can mean I sometimes think about it myself. If I had a lot, what would I do. And all these ideas for trips and events come to my mind and it’s hard to decide when you don’t have the money.
Selma Sadikovic:
I don’t know why but the first thing that I had in mind was they like SNOCKS branded airplane. Or yacht, even better. I was saying the airplane you brought the yacht and so now yeah, no, I think something like this. I don’t know. I was just thinking about this one influencer who had her wedding get off at Ani and she had her like everything in the plane was branded like even though little like water bottles at her everyday I think something like that. I don’t I don’t even know like the destination. But I think that would be so so nice. Like even with I don’t like 500 employees. That sort of crazy trip.
It would be great airplane.
Georgiana:
We can to fit everyone on.
Selma Sadikovic:
Maybe we will do it next year.
Georgiana:
Super cool, Selma. This has been so much fun. I’m really happy I met you even virtually. If you’re ever in Berlin, please let me know. Maybe we get to meet in person.
Selma Sadikovic:
And I’m going to be in Berlin very soon. So I will text you.
Georgiana:
I look forward to meeting you. Thank you so much for talking to us.
Selma Sadikovic:
Thank you so much. It has been a pleasure.
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