Portrait of Patrycja Mothon: the spirit of encounters and the art of creating connections, for Les Clés du Digital
25.01.2023
After having worked in marketing, digital, and HR roles in several companies, and having created her own direct approach recruitment firm, Patrycja Mothon puts her passion and skills as a talent scout for the digital world at the service of Grant Alexander.
Patrycja Mothon loves meeting people and human relationships. Becoming last November Associate Director within the Digital & Technology subsidiary of Grant Alexander, a consulting and HR services group, she is accustomed to questioning and listening to candidates rather than presenting her own career path. But she also enjoys sharing her own experiences. Having arrived in France from her native Poland at the age of nine, Patrycja Mothon knew from a very young age that she wanted a profession centered on encounters and movement. As a child, when flipping through magazines, she lingered on the last pages that spoke of social and VIP events. She already imagined herself as a networker. After completing her baccalaureate at Lycée Montaigne, a Parisian school in the 6th arrondissement, and while a counselor suggested she become a notary clerk, she chose to study communication at Sorbonne Nouvelle before pursuing a Master’s degree (M2) in Management and Business Strategy at the Institut Supérieur de Commerce Européen. Her curriculum opened broad horizons for her. “I did internships and every year I tested a profession. It allowed me to know where I wanted to go.”
She cut her teeth on promoting the Book Fair, managed public relations for the Four Seasons hotels, became a press officer at the agency Le Public Système before securing her first real position in internal communication and event production at Total Énergies. An experience during which she confronted top management and organized seminars. “This experience opened my eyes to what a large organization was, in which everyone had a role. I was comfortable in this environment of executives. I had found my path.” Her boss, Anne-Marie Claret, also became her model of a female leader. “Her way of being, her authenticity inspired me a lot.”
After a little over a year in her department, and as the group did not offer new career opportunities, an announcement led her to Yves Rocher. The group was hiring someone fluent in Polish for the retail operations department to manage commercial campaigns in Polish, Czech, and Hungarian stores, as well as their direct marketing. Patrycja Mothon, who did not think her native language would ever serve her professionally, spent more than eight years at the cosmetics company, climbing the ranks to become Omnichannel Digital and E-commerce Director for Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, the Caribbean, and Israel, managing the development of the brand’s web presence and launching projects across these countries. Her mentor was Henri-Bernard Bedoin, current EMEA International Development Director for the group.
“I took my first steps in digital there. With my team, we developed websites for several Eastern European countries, and we were already working in agile mode, testing many innovations like augmented reality makeup with Modiface (since acquired by L’Oréal), iBeacons in stores, etc. We were quickly considered a tech lab. It was great fun.” Patrycja worked with developers and assumed a conductor role. It was also during this period that she performed her first recruitments to expand her team. “I always wanted to connect people. I had already started to get interested in HR at Total.”
A passion for headhunting
In contact with headhunters, whose work she finds “fascinating,” she particularly admires Marie Canzano, founder of Digital Jobs, and Hymane Ben Aoun, CEO of Aravati. She was approached to become Digital Director for Pandora’s French market. She would manage e-commerce, choose around twenty service providers, lead a team, and supervise many agencies. She had already built a network, attending events such as BigBoss, where she played an active role alongside Hervé Bloch, who would be her partner for a few years. She also committed to multiplying networking formats between digital professionals, IT directors, and HR specialists.
Her desire to become a headhunter matured and strengthened over time. She decided to confront this new profession at Ametix, a digital services company co-founded by Vincent Klingbeil, with Stéphane Boukris and Patrick Bunan, where she was responsible for developing the recruitment division. “It was a full-scale test, with trusted people.”
She then left the company after its acquisition by Docapost and continued by creating her own firm, New Elites Recruitment, to recruit digital talents. Her first client was Ôvoyages, and contracts followed through word of mouth. In total, she conducted about a hundred direct-approach recruitments during a period disrupted by the health crisis and lockdowns. “I forged my method, starting with a half-hour blind phone call to go straight to the concrete and essential, also using the informal ‘you’ which helps create a trust-based relationship.”
Patrycja Mothon also wants to accelerate, grow her company, and needs a team. “I wanted to continue doing this work differently, progress, share with others who have been doing it for ten or fifteen years.” She interviewed at Korn Ferry International but ultimately joined Grant Alexander. “I had seen on LinkedIn that they were creating a structure in digital. I contacted Christophe de Bueil who manages it, then met Henri Vidalinc (President of the firm).”
Patrycja Mothon, who presents her work as that of a “recruitment artisan,” joined the teams. “It’s a great firm, focused on self-improvement with ‘Athlete Thinking’ as philosophy, kindness, and team spirit. Joining this beautiful house also gives me the opportunity to provide organizations in this ecosystem with a unique support, not only for strategic recruitments but also for talent development or organizational consulting.”
In this new division, she relies on the group’s know-how and tools and her knowledge of the digital world to advise organizations in their search for middle-top and top-executive profiles. “It’s a big family… I love it. I’m no longer alone in my playground,” she enthuses. And when she is not at the office, Patrycja Mothon continues to organize meetings on weekends, tirelessly fostering connections among friends and contacts from diverse backgrounds. Her mind is always full of projects and she needs to be on the move, spending her free time traveling, discovering new places, and meeting people, guided by her mantra, borrowed from Winston Churchill: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”