Marketing Manager Floarian Auburger explains in an interview with green startups what makes the Munich startup Talent Tree sustainable and what makes the young company so successful after such a short time.
Why is TALENT TREE a green startup?
FLORIAN AUBURGER (Marketing Manager): Because we bring together people who want to create a digital and sustainable future. Because we need innumerable Digital Climate Champions for our humanity challenges – that’s what we call visionaries in the clean tech sector. Internally we love and live sustainability, our ecological footprint is important to us. Because sustainable is not only our relationship with our customers and candidates, but our entire value chain.
Since when is TALENT TREE available and what successes have you been able to celebrate so far?
Our CEO Julian founded Talent Tree in January 2015. Over the last few years, we have occupied some key positions in young, fast-growing companies such as TESLA, TADO, SUNS, or VOLOCOPTER. Our work is especially successful when our relationship with our candidates and customers is sustainable. As a talent tree, we are a consultant and contact person for every branch fork in life for our candidates, whom we would like to accompany for a lifetime in their career development. Some clients who have mandated us later became candidates and vice versa.
Describe your market, what specifics are there?
Above all, our market is characterized by permeability. That makes our work so exciting. The boundaries between the industries in the CleanTech startup scene are open. This offers companies as well as candidates a high degree of flexibility. In addition, we are looking for candidates who are “hybrids”. Her profile is characterized by humility, hands-on mentality and leadership qualities. During the selection process, we focus on these soft skills of the candidate. The constant role change is also specific to our market. A successfully mediated candidate can become a customer and a customer can become a candidate. Finally, our market is special in that it does not exist for us the conventional salesman who only sits on the phone. Because the demands on tech skills – even in the non-tech jobs – have increased immensely.
Who is your target audience?
Digital talent, sustainable tech companies and visionary investors. We call them Digital Climate Champions, because they shape a digital and sustainable future. Bringing them together is our challenge and passion. In particular, we focus on CleanTech startups, which are in a mission-critical growth phase and depend on individual advice. For these young companies, we culturally and technically retain excellent specialists and executives – successfully and in the long term.
How do you describe your unique selling point?
We are an organic company ourselves and know the specific challenges in this phase. With our know-how and network of experts in the tech startup scene, we find a solution for (almost) every problem. In addition, we use an outstanding network via our advisory board. A focus of Talent Tree is on the soft skills of the candidates. Our experience shows that the more the position to be filled is associated with leadership responsibility, the more important are the personality traits and cultural fit of the candidate. We are convinced that soft skills ultimately make a difference, whether a startup develops well or not. We consciously think of Talent Tree as a tree. We accompany our candidates on their way of life from the tribe to the smallest branching. At each turnout, our candidates should be able to rely on us as contact persons in the field of jobs.
Are you looking for debt or strategic partners to keep up the good work?
We pursue a sustainable approach and continue to grow on our own. At the same time, we are currently developing our own SaaS product as a learning & development platform for companies and employees. It offers employees a curated Learning Journey in the form of an App & Web solution, taking into account the wishes of both the employee and the employer. In the medium term, we will also be focusing on the subject of climate education and will also be issuing creative measures and recommendations.
Your wishes for the year 2019?
Stay healthy, continue to enjoy our work and bring together more visionary companies, talents and investors every day to create a digital and sustainable future.