Ahmed Mohammed, new talent acquisition director at HMS
You might say travel and adapting quickly to change is in Ahmed Mohammed’s genes, one reason his human resources career in recruiting and talent acquisition has suited him so well.
Born in the Togolese Republic, or Togo, during one of his Nigerian father’s first diplomatic assignments, Harvard Medical School’s new director of talent acquisition spent time in more than 50 countries during his youth.
Mohammed attended schools all over the world—middle school in the Philippines and high school in Nigeria and Tanzania—before eventually arriving in Massachusetts to attend college.
Now, he's an individual who appreciates variety, something that his job at HMS provides.
“You get to learn and do so many different things, and one of the things I enjoy is the ability to have flexibility,” he said. “When you’re creating something new, when you’re in an entrepreneurial environment, where nobody has done it this way before, it’s possible to take some risks.”
Fresh approach
What Mohammed, 45, has been asked to develop at Harvard Medical School is a fresh approach to nurturing, attracting and recruiting administrative and nonacademic talent, a challenge he took on successfully at Dartmouth College in 2015 when he was asked to create a new talent acquisition department from scratch there.
“We were able to build a strong foundation for recruiting within HR. We were reaching out to people all across the country, and we were attracting and recruiting amazing talent throughout various areas of campus,” he said. “We increased underrepresented staff minorities through creative programs and strategies, which is a big challenge at Dartmouth because of its location.”
“We started several new initiatives," he added. "We were able to pull together a report for the president with an action plan for the whole institution around inclusive excellence to support the recruitment of students, faculty and staff."
Mohammed had previously served as a lead recruiting consultant-manager at Harvard University for three years before being hired away to Dartmouth. Because of his success in Hanover, Harvard ended up luring him back last September, to the medical school and to Boston, where he has family.
He said he saw HMS as an opportunity to contribute while working with some of the best medical professionals in the world, plus he enjoys taking on challenging roles.
“One of the challenges here that everyone understands is competition. It’s a changing workforce with many levels of complexities. We’re competing with many different kinds of organizations, industries and institutions, so we really do have to have a strategic plan for attracting and retaining talent to HMS,” he said.
Mohammed has a team of five talent acquisition partners at HMS and he has proposed a plan for short and long-term strategies: first, to manage current business talent needs, and then, to devise new methods for identifying, nurturing and attracting the best candidates for positions.
It’s not a simple or easy task, but Mohammed said there are some basic steps to achieving these goals that revolve around culture, professional development and mission.
“Culture is really important,” he said. “You want to have a culture that is attractive to the ever-changing demographics and diversity of the workforce out there.”
That means being mindful of today’s workers’ expectations for things like flexible work arrangements, which he said can be crafted in a variety of ways beyond the traditional approaches. Offering professional development opportunities is also essential, he added, because top candidates often look for growth opportunities in their career paths.
“The types of individuals that we want to go after, who make positive contributions to the mission—we have to put in a lot of work to keep them here because their minds are always growing,” he said. “We have to be ready to show them what is next for them here at Harvard Medical so they can stay.”
Change agents
Mohammed said the School should also be open to the kinds of innovation that creative, entrepreneurial hires will likely bring.
“They’re bringing new ideas, so as an institution of research and learning, we have to be ready to accept change, react positively to new ways of doing things or new ways of thinking about possibilities,” he said.
“We can’t attract fresh talent into our organization and not expect them to challenge the status quo or try to change something that is not working,” he said. “Otherwise, we’ve got their hands tied behind their backs, and eventually they’ll get frustrated and leave.”
One other key is for recruiters to find people aligned with the HMS mission, according to Mohammed. This is important because it can often be difficult for academia to compete with organizations or industries that have much deeper pockets, he said.
“What we can do is look for people who have a strong sense of mission,” he said. This can be done by improving recruitment efforts and engaging the right talent communities, he said. A more focused interview process can help recruiters understand the kinds of individuals they are dealing with.
“What are they passionate about? Why do they want to be here? What are their core values?” he said.
“As a talent partner, hiring managers often ask me, ‘How do we get people to share our core values?’ You don’t, I usually say. Instead, the task is to find people who are already predisposed to sharing our core values,” he said. “We must attract and then retain these people—and let those who don’t have these positive values to contribute go elsewhere. This alignment is not a ‘nice-to-have.’ It is critical to our success and supporting the mission.”
With the support of Kate McDaniel, chief human resources officer for HMS, and the rest of the HMS human resources team, Mohammed has been working on refining recruitment processes, utilizing more and different recruiting resources and tools so that his team can help transform the recruitment culture.
He also seeks to improve alignment with departments on priorities and objectives, which can help recruiters understand the organization’s talent needs, and he wants to help build a stronger HMS employer brand, establish talent pipelines for hard-to-fill roles and enlarge the pool of qualified candidates from which the School has to draw.
“The reality is, today we’ve got candidates—all kinds—that are out there on various platforms with different backgrounds, seeking opportunities through nontraditional means,” he said. “We have to meet them where they are, just like our competitors are doing, and not solely rely on our brand or traditional means of attracting or considering candidates.”
“We have to spend time reaching out and building strategic relationships with passive candidates even before they apply to our open positions. Networking alone is not enough. Resumes and educational backgrounds alone cannot tell you the whole story or give you a fair sense of an individual’s value. If we are not proactive, we will lose the talent war against those competitors who keep finding creative ways to hire the best,” he said.
Mohammed said one piece of advice he has for hiring managers is to be careful in setting rigid basic requirements and qualifications for jobs. Sometimes, he said, recruiters can unintentionally screen out great talent because of rigid screening criteria. Candidates can be seen as either under-experienced or as having too much experience for a particular position if screening criteria is not carefully crafted.
“This whole conversation about being over or under-qualified can be very tricky. I always say, ‘Talk to the candidate first.’ You might be surprised to learn people have completely valid reasons for going after a job,’” he said. “Some managers may unintentionally disqualify a candidate and then say, ‘We can’t find the right talent out there.’ Well, they may just have to look a bit closer and have an open mind,” he said.
Most importantly, he added, it’s critical to set appropriate and realistic requirements for job openings so HMS can attract diverse and qualified talent.
Fortuitous path
Mohammed himself did not take a straightforward path to HMS. After earning his bachelor of science in management at Northeastern University, he worked for several nonprofits, including Easterseals, one of the country’s largest nonprofit health care organizations, as a job placement and recruitment specialist.
That work led to a position as a job developer with Work Opportunities Unlimited, helping to create jobs for individuals with disabilities, and then eventually to a position as a human resources manager at Lowe’s in New Hampshire, where Mohammed gained experience training hundreds of employees and other human resources managers. He did all this while simultaneously earning his MBA magna cum laude at Southern New Hampshire University and starting a family.
“We directly changed cultures [at Lowe’s] in at least two big retail locations during my time there and won awards. Our customer service results and employee satisfaction really skyrocketed, so it was great,” he said.
Mohammed’s experiences at Lowe’s and while pursuing his MBA encouraged him to apply for a recruiter position in higher education at Dartmouth College. Within 12 months the school promoted him to associate director of recruitment services. It was a position he would hold until family considerations drew him back to Boston and his first stint at Harvard.
There are no silver bullet solutions to following a rewarding career path, he said. “The key is to always be analyzing your goals and professional landscape and making decisions that will have a cumulative effect towards your action plan and definition of a successful outcome.”
All of which is to say, there’s been quite a bit of moving and growth involved in Mohammed’s career to date, but he still relishes travel. The only continent he hasn’t yet seen is Antarctica.
In the meantime, he looks forward to his challenging and gratifying role at HMS, helping hiring managers fill positions through productive partnerships and assisting job seekers find work in a rich academic culture that promotes learning and knowledge.
