Today we’d like to introduce you to Florence Idowu.
Hi Florence, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I have always been a Founder since my early days at the University. I started a career coaching firm where I coached and mentored high schoolers; helped with career development plans and preuniversity onboarding programs.
However, I started Bavarde Talent Solutions after going through an unfair dismissal in one of my previous organizations. I was dismissed because they needed more time for me to work with them despite signing a part-time contract. This was an organization that was in total opposition to my career growth. As a Linguist and Communications Expert, I served as a training facilitator for a management consulting firm in Lagos, Nigeria, and continued on that path before establishing another startup where I focused on Corporate Training programs.
I organized training for employees and focused more on career transitioners. This included job seekers transitioning from one career to another, nursing mothers returning to the workforce, veterans, and employees moving to a different organization or team within their own organization.
Bavarde Talent Solutions as human resources, however, grew from just one function of HR – Training or Learning and Development to other aspects of Human Resources – Recruitment, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belongingness (DEIB) consulting, Organizational Design, and Development, HR Transformation and Alignment.
We now focus on being data-driven in all functions that revolve around People, Culture, and Strategy,
We work with organizations and serve as a strategic partner with small and medium size organizations across North America, Europe, and Africa. We started from Africa but we are going global.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Definitely, it has not been a smooth journey.
Being woman-led, BIPOC, and minority-owned, we have faced a lot of marginalization. We lacked funds, resources, and even leads.
The pandemic was also a significant hit.
Relocating to a different city also made it difficult to progress, but we are still standing and reshaping our structure to meet business needs.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Bavarde Talent Solutions is providing opportunities for Business Leaders to partner with our strategic partners. We help organizations move their HR departments from theoretical to business partnering and business reality.
We are a Data-driven Human Resources Firm focused on three major components – People, Culture, and Strategy. We provide end-to-end HR Services to small and medium-sized companies across North America, Europe, and Africa. We serve as a strategic partner to organizations and talk ROI from an HR point of view.
We are most proud of being data-driven and the essential aspect of our services is being a strategic partner with our clients. This is our employment branding.
We have various sets of services for organizations and individuals.
To organizations, we offer the following services:
Recruitment (or Talent Acquisition) Services
Talent Management Services
Talent & Skill/Gap Analysis
Business Consultation (Talent /HR Strategy)
HR Transformation (Structuring & Restructuring)
Learning and Development
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belongingness (DEIB)
Organizational Culture
HR Technology & Analytics
To individuals, we offer specific services to different groups
1. Speakers and Trainers
2. Job Seekers
3. Recruiters
4. HR Consultants
We have various aspects which we focus on
1. Job seekers – To job seekers, we provide career development and planning services, job hunting services, and other resume writing and interview preparation services. We also have experts for Executive coaching and leadership development. This is an aspect that is still a work in progress.
2. Speakers and trainers – we are building a platform where we would house our 200+ speakers interested in our vodcast and podcast programs. And we hope to formalize the processes to present them the opportunities for other speaking and training engagements in the future.
3. HR Consultants – As strategic partners to organizations, we cannot journey this alone. We have some HR Consultants that walk with us and we hope to open this up to the public as we grow.
4. Recruiters – we provide services where job seekers can work with a dedicated recruiter throughout their job hunting and search time. This is a premium service.
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
I have had two main mentors throughout my journey. However, there had been a need for seasonal mentors.
I am very selective of my mentors. I only select mentors based on my current needs, business needs, or future plans.
I engage with prominent business leaders in my industry and build relationships with them before inviting them to be my mentor.
I have also had other business leaders who were interested in my growth and development and had continuously offered advisory and coaching services to me and the business.
If you need a mentor, you need to first identify why and the timeline – a lifelong mentor may seem appropriate but not for all situations. You can also have seasonal mentors – identify the reason, investigate their proficiencies and professionalism and invite them to walk the journey with you.
Some would gladly accept, and some would decline – keep moving you will find the right person for your business and needs.
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Image Credits
Science Museum Stem Day
