Fadi Bachir is a human resources expert with a broad background in strategic HR and more than 14 years of experience, varying across different international and multinational global industries, from higher education to internet and retail. He is currently the Head of HR & Administration at Talabat.com and Foodonclick.com.
Fadi has a proven record in developing and implementing best practices in HR, along with a flair for creating work environments that attract and retain top-notch talent. Throughout his career, Fadi found satisfaction in bringing improvements to the workplace. With a genuine integrity that is readily recognized, he has established a reputation as an employee advocate who can be trusted and relied on to champion the needs of the employees while serving the best interests of the company.
With hands-on experience in recruiting and retention, and talent management and acquisition, Fadi’s career success is defined by an innate enthusiasm for seizing challenges and driving projects. Dedicated and accessible, he is adept at building the commitment necessary to make programs successful. A respected leader who prides himself on excellent communications skills and the ability to reach employees, Fadi has proven himself over and over again to be a productive and valued company resource.
My earliest ambition was to become a university instructor, up until mid-way through university. Certainly, I really enjoyed the teaching experience I’d gained in the first year after I got my MBA degree, but decided to keep my options open, and so continued on with a PhD and chose to shift and refocus my career goals from teaching to HR.
Going back to my career selection which was actually planned either by degree taken or experience earned, I had a number of jobs whilst I was studying and, in the final summer of university, I saw an opening for a position at a communications company which turned out to be a great place to start a career in HR because of the amount of HR operational tasks. The range of work enabled me to develop strong HR technical skills, which have been the foundation for my career.
HR has undertaken many major changes in the last decade, transforming from an operational employee requisition provider to a strategic business partner. The concept of business partner has been emphasized almost continually, but what does it mean? On the one hand, it means that the HR manager has been accepted as an executive of professional status equal to the rest; while on the other hand, it means that HR now plays a more strategic, partner-like, role in areas such as manpower planning, organization design and organizational behavior analysis. Today HR uses data analytics to generate and forecast manpower requirements.
When hiring new candidates, I mostly look for assertiveness, integrity and creativity.
The biggest mistake in my opinion is not being transparent and not reflecting their real skills, attitude and experience.
A company can stand out from competition by managing each of the following:
1. Rewards and recognition 2. Career development 3. Security and transparency
Technology is the biggest edge and has helped us control and optimize the data flow of applications, monitor progress and build an optimal database for talent.
I think the HR role will evolve even more and play a more advisory role in strategic decision making, especially in those which involve expansion and future investments.