Professional Talk by Mr. David Nosibor, Innovation Promoter, Mazars University Asia, Mazars Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd

ESSEC Asia-Pacific welcomed Mr. David Nosibor, Innovation Promoter, Mazars University Asia, Mazars Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd, to speak about some figures and trends in terms of social media, his digital transformation journey and his experience of fostering innovation in Mazars as part of a series of professional talks organised by Career Services at ESSEC Asia-Pacific.

Mr. Nosibor first introduced himself as well as Mazars, speaking about how he is an innovation promoter focusing on social media and social media training in Mazars. Mazars is an international, integrated and independent auditing firm with 14,000 professionals across 73 countries, providing services such as auditing, tax and consulting.

Having come from the sports industry as a sports marketing executive, Mr. Nosibor also shared his experience of working in the industry, and explained why he decided to make a job switch. With the aim of finding a place where he could do more with social media and create an impact on the whole company, using social media not just for implementing a wider strategy but having social media support the core strategy, Mr. Nosibor embarked on his career at Mazars.

Key Objectives for Mazars on Social Media

Sharing the key objectives for Mazars on social media, Mr. Nosibor explained that they started from scratch in 2011, and social media is used mainly for:

• Business Development and Market Intelligence
  • Leveraging on what people are saying to have a better understanding of customer perceptions
  • Getting in touch with customers directly
  • Use what is being shared on social media to understand the industry and carry out competitor analysis
  • Leveraging on the network of company alumni
• Brand Awareness and Image
  • Relaying key messages through the official account
  • Leveraging on the entire staff network as people tend to trust other people more than they tend to trust brands
  • It is important to be regular, consistent, long term and committed when doing social media
  • Take into account the different social media channels used in the region, as different countries use certain channels more than others
• HR and Recruitment
  • Building the employer brand
  • Targeting passive candidates through social media
  • Reduction of recruitment costs
• Influence, thought leadership and content marketing
  • Publishing free and high-value content
  • Engage personally with the audience
  • Building credibility and brand perception through content sharing
  • Creation of whitepapers and surveys – It is important for the way the content is broadcasted. It is all about designing the content in an appealing way such that people will be interested in learning about what you have, educating employees to reformat the content and knowledge which they already have to something which is more readable and shareable
  • Important to be more visual

Social media helps in developing a relationship with stakeholders, but it is just one tool among the galaxy of tools you have at your disposal. Social media cannot and should not be standalone. Every other aspect of the business needs to be doing well, and social media can support and further extend the company impact.

In terms of the maturity of different markets in the adoption of social media, Mr. Nosibor explained that in Europe and America, the usage of LinkedIn and various other social networks is more mature. Additionally, the mobile use in Asia is substantially higher than that of Europe, which means that people are using or viewing content on their social media networks on their mobile phones.

Mr. Nosibor also shared his experience and advice of engaging with the top management to convince them of the value of using social media, explaining that it is important to speak their language, and let them recognise the value of how social media can help the company to reach out to clients in a different manner. For example, to reach out to young entrepreneurs, the company needs to be out there interacting and building relationships with them. He also spoke about how it is important to highlight the cost-saving aspect and how social media can help the company gain greater visibility.

The importance of a complete professional profile

As Mr. Nosibor is also in charge of educating and training staff in Mazars, he explained that we need to show staff members how social networks can work for them in a practical way, teaching them how to optimise their professional profiles to build their personal brand and professional identity. Today, more and more companies are making use of LinkedIn to search for people with the right fit, and this is changing the game in HR and recruitment. To Mr. Nosibor, a complete and updated professional identity is necessary to become more reachable when clients are searching for services. He emphasised that including keywords in the profile is extremely important as well.

Mr. Nosibor also spoke about the essential elements of a LinkedIn profile, including:

• Photo
• Complete Name
• Headline
• Summary: He encouraged students to add a summary to their LinkedIn profiles in order to be noticed, as the summary is an opportunity to talk about aspirations, and allows you to be found by someone who might have a project or a job position in line with what you are looking to do.

Students were also curious about Mr. Nosibor’s advice with regard to approaching professionals on LinkedIn. Mr. Nosibor advised them to do some research about the company which they wanted to apply for, and to provide a reason for why they want to connect with others, to take the time to provide some context about why they want to connect.

Mr Nosibor also talked about an initiative he has launched along with other Mazars countries: the #Mazarsforgood Innovation Challenge. This competition is open to all aspiring entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs worldwide between 20 and 30 years old, willing to make an impact and change companies for good. Leveraging social networks is one of the key aspects of the challenge as teams are asked to promote their ideas by posting their videos on YouTube or Youku and share them on social networks with the #mazarsforgood hashtag to gain likes and views from the public.

The trailer presenting the Innovation challenge can be viewed at this page.

The engaging professional talk by Mr. Nosibor gave students an insight into how social media can be implemented across organisations, and brings value in so many different ways.