Customer
Kirsch Group
Industry
Interior design and design
Year
2026
Services
Matching
Kirsch Group
Kirsch Group wanted to strengthen their work with Business Intelligence and AI, but faced a classic dilemma: investing in experienced profiles or thinking differently.
In collaboration with KOLLAB and the Jumpstart programme, they chose to invest in young talents with strong technical skills and high learning readiness. The result was a team that not only solves tasks, but also contributes new perspectives on data and reporting.
“The young people are insanely talented, and so much is happening in this area that almost the newest people know the most,” says Lise-Lotte Hansen, CIO in the Kirsch Group.
Challenge: Traditional recruitment was time-consuming, resource-intensive and made it difficult to assess the real match.
As recruitment became a strategic challenge
The need to strengthen BI and AI competencies was not up for discussion. The question was how to do it right.
Kirsch Group had previously worked with classic recruitment processes, where positions were advertised and candidates assessed based on CV and interviews. It is a well-known model, but also a model that often requires significant internal resources without necessarily hitting the right match.
At the same time, the organization was developing. After an internal reorganization, AI was moved from marketing to the BI department, where there were already good experiences with young talent. In collaboration with KOLLAB and the Jumpstart programme, the Kirsch Group therefore adopted a new approach and built on this experience.
The wish was not more generalists, but technical sharpness and the ability to work hands-on with data and new technologies. It changed the perspective: Experience no longer became the decisive parameter – it made potential.
A choice about potential rather than experience
In collaboration with KOLLAB, Kirsch Group made a conscious decision to go a different route. Instead of looking for ready-made profiles with many years of experience, they chose to focus on young talents that could be shaped and developed in line with the organization's needs.
Through the Jumpstart program, two candidates became part of the team, each with their own strengths in BI and AI. They were not employed as ready-made specialists, but as profiles with a strong foundation and a high learning capacity.
It was not only their professional level that was decisive. Equally important was their approach to work and their motivation to become part of the company in the long term:
“We are looking for talent. But we also go after someone who wants to settle down and thrive, not just jump on all the time,” says Lise-Lotte Hansen, CIO in the Kirsch Group.
The election was also a showdown with a classic pitfall in recruitment. Many of the sharpest profiles have a natural focus on rapid career development, which often means frequent job changes. For Kirsch Group, it was about the opposite, namely finding profiles that could see themselves in the company over time and become an integral part of the culture.
New perspectives create new value
It quickly became clear that the new profiles contributed more than just extra hands.
They brought new ways of thinking about data into the organization. Whereas in the past reporting was often built around classical structures, the team began to work more behavior-driven and experimental. New types of insights, new ways of visualizing data and new ways of supporting the business were thought of:
“They don't have that box that many people get with experience. They think differently, and you can see that in our reports,” says Lise-Lotte Hansen.
This meant in practice that data was not only used to explain what had happened, but actively to influence behaviour within the organisation. Work was done on new types of KPIs and more creative approaches to reporting, which supported concrete decisions and actions to a greater extent.
At the same time, the young talents showed a high degree of ownership. They themselves sought out new knowledge, took responsibility for their development and quickly put theory into practice:
“They do what they are passionate about. And you can feel it. They just get skilled quickly,” she says.
What on paper could look like a lack of experience turned out to be an advantage in practice. They were not bound by habits, but driven by curiosity.
A recruitment process that releases resources
A significant part of the success lay in the recruitment process itself, where the Kirsch Group experienced a markedly different approach, where the focus was not only on competences, but on the overall match between candidate and organisation. This meant that they were presented to candidates who were already qualified and relevant before the dialogue even began: ”KOLLAB has been better at finding the right match than we are ourselves. They quickly familiarized themselves with our demand and needs, and were able to understand the chemistry that cannot be written down in the same way,” says Lise-Lotte Hansen.
This contrasted with their previous experience with traditional job postings, where candidates were often skilled at signing up for the role, but did not necessarily match in practice. With KOLLAB, the selection was based to a greater extent on a real understanding of both the task and the organisation.
That significantly reduced the need for internal resources. Instead of long processes with many candidates, they could make decisions quickly and with greater certainty: ”We talk to one and then it's the right one. We don't have to spend a lot of time on screening and interviews,” she says.
A new view of talent and future recruitment
For the Kirsch Group, the process has not only been about filling two positions. This has given new perspectives on what creates value in recruitment, especially when it comes to young talent.
The collaboration with KOLLAB and the Jumpstart program has proven to be a strong solution for newly qualified profiles, where matching potential and mindset are crucial. For other types of positions, Kirsch Group continues to handle recruitment through their own HR department, but when it comes to young talent, they have found an approach that works significantly better.
The young talents have proven to be digitally strong, curious and motivated in a way that fits naturally into an organization that works with data and technology. At the same time, they have shown that experience is not necessarily what creates the greatest impact:
“I think the young people surprise so insanely positively. They are skilled, spacious and just a really good generation,” says Lise-Lotte Hansen.
Part of the explanation also lies in their approach to work. They do not work based on a classic division between work and leisure, but with a strong motivation for what they deal with. This creates a higher commitment and a faster development in competences.
Experience has made it clear that it is not about choosing between experience and talent, but about choosing the approach that creates the most value for the business:
“You shouldn't be so afraid of lack of experience. They have it – just another way,” she concludes.