Welcome To The Jungle is, quite simply, a UFO of its kind. This is a platform that, in recent years, has refreshed recruitment methods on the job market while establishing itself as a transversal , online and on paper, that is good to read to know what is being done well in the world of French business and start-ups. Located in a building in the heart of Paris, Welcome To The Jungle and its one hundred and twenty employees are run by a fun duo in sneakers composed of Bertand Uzeel and Jérémy Clédat.
One summer morning when it's still a bit chilly, he's the first one we meet for coffee. At 35, Bertrand Uzeel doesn't have much of the image we have of a successful boss: an Australian biker cap and knuckles tattooed like a pirate, a past as a sound engineer and dreams of cinema in his head. A new king of the jungle side!
At the start of the Welcome To The Jungle adventure, there is this idea that the principles of recruitment on the job market, in the business world, are far too austere...
When you show up at a recruitment fair, which is a sort of fairly broad panel of what the world of employment is, everyone is dressed the same way. It's like walking around La Défense one morning and seeing all these people in gray suits arriving at the top of the escalator. Everyone is in suits, really. It's an absolute dress code.
With Jérémy Clédat, the co-founder of Welcome To The Jungle, we went to one of these fairs one year to hold a short conference. I then found myself also in a suit, as if I had been conditioned by the place and the situation, whereas, usually, I spend my life in jeans and in a t-shirt . It was as if my unconscious had ordered me to look like the others.
If you are good with a style that stands out, I think it is easier to make an impression.
Just before the conference started, I started feeling bad. I didn't feel comfortable in my suit. It wasn't me. So I swore to myself that at the next conferences, I would dress however I wanted. In later years, when I went on stage in my t-shirt, I thought at that moment that I had to be really good to capture the attention of my audience. It was like I was starting at a disadvantage. Here we are.
But be careful, if you are good with a style that stands out, I think it is easier to make an impression. You only have to look at Steve Jobs, at Apple: the guy was a genius, and with his undershirts, his shapeless jeans and his big sneakers, he imprinted a style that everyone remembers today.
Was this “disadvantage” really detrimental to you?
I think my style was a hindrance, yes. Some of the more traditional investment funds that we went to see when we were raising funds must have thought we were clowns when they saw us. The same thing must have happened with some of the banks that gave us an appointment. We would have had an easier time getting started at the beginning if Jeremy and I had worn suits, like everyone else.
My tattoos certainly didn't help either. During the first meetings with the Welcome To The Jungle board, I wasn't really serene. I put my hands under the table. It's not because I say that I should be taken as I am that it's easy. I put a hell of a lot of pressure on myself, I'm always afraid of being seen as a clown, that people will take me for someone who has nothing to show off except his looks and his tattoos. I think that all this is unfortunately a fairly French problem. In the United States, a guy dressed in a tank top and jogging pants, covered in tattoos from head to toe, can very well attract the attention of an investment fund simply because he's going to tell them that he has the best idea in the world and that he's going to do everything to make it happen. In these cases, there's no problem. We trust him. For Anglo-Saxon funds, what matters above all is the idea and the ambition that goes with it. The look is secondary.
Where do you think this French austerity comes from?
In the world of employment, there has never been any desire to change anything. The proof is that on the website of any big company, the so-called “careers” page for recruitment offers is like a kind of poor relation, with an old, soulless photo, few colors, where everything is obsolete. Clothing is the same. There is a kind of cultural complex that says that you might sell a PowerPoint better if you are in a suit and shirt. You need to have a kind of shell to sell better.
We live in a country that loves traditions, that has a particular idea of what elegance should be. I'm not saying that suits are worse than jeans, I'm saying that you need a bit of everything. I'm saying that the opposing camp, the one that wears suits, must accept that someone who doesn't dress like them is just as credible when it comes to selling something.
At the same time, if the suit is a cliché element of the corporate world, there is also a kind of cliché on the start-up side, right?
Start-ups are all driven by a kind of mission. These companies want to reinvent everything: tech, the way to interact with the environment, employment. And it also works with style. We tell ourselves that we can work in a different way than in a suit, to the point that it becomes a mantra and a cliché. Some people cultivate a kind of creative style to the extreme to show that they are not corporate in the least. You must wear a t-shirt, an overshirt or a work jacket (preferably Hast), wear loose jeans, have cool sneakers, Veja for example and, of course, come to work by bike.
The majority of start-uppers are people in the CSP+ category, who have studied in preparatory classes and business schools, who may be from good families and who, in their own ways, have also been conditioned by these environments.
Let's just say that people started to let loose a little bit. Those with more classic styles started wearing hoodies during our Zoom conferences.
Let's not lie to ourselves, we embody a bit of all that at Welcome To The Jungle. We're a company of bourgeois bohemians. At our company, people are a bit alike. That's how it is. I'm absolutely not advocating that to be better, you have to wear jeans, just as I'm not advocating that to have a successful company, you necessarily need a big open space and a table football. There are some who are better in suits, in small offices, and that's fine. The most important thing is to know how to stay true, not to try to be cool by all means. There are companies made for people in suits, which work very well that way.
When you are a start-up, is it easy to recruit different people?
It can be hard. I too sometimes get nervous when I see someone who seems to have not made an effort. It can be taken as a sign of disinterest on the part of the candidate, almost as an insult. You have to get beyond that, to put that feeling aside. You have to try to get to know the person you are dealing with, and that is not necessarily easy. I have already seen people with a badly buttoned shirt, with dirty clothes, who, in reality, were well-made heads, super geeks. The only thing that matters is to be able to see if the person will be good for the company.
Are there any eccentrics in Welcome To The Jungle?
There are some, yes, and fortunately so. We have very stylish people who would blend in perfectly with the decor of the most fashionable places in New York. We have hard rockers all in leather, who really claim it. On the production side, there are street guys who also like to show it off, and it suits them well. I'm not saying it's a permanent show, but people like to say what world they're affiliated with. I think it's quite healthy. And everyone works, especially! When our clients come to our offices, they're often disappointed. They expect to discover an extraordinary world, a sort of zoo where you skate around the corridors, with a can of soda in your hand and hang out. No, at our place, people work. It's studious.
Have looks changed with confinement?
Let's just say that people have started to let loose a little bit. People who have more classic styles have started wearing hoodies to our Zoom meetings. They work really well like that, and I think they're thinking that now they can dress like that at the office too.
The lockdown has helped open up a few chakras, I think. We're fine in jogging pants, we're fine in chambray shirts , we're fine in hoodies. That said, I'm not entirely optimistic either. It's the same as that guy who comes back from Bali telling everyone that he swears everywhere that he'll only eat seeds and pray to Kirshna every morning. I'm not sure it'll last very long. Normality will certainly take over again. People will go back to their habits. I can feel it.
At a very young age, you dreamed of becoming a pianist. Before launching Welcome To The Jungle, you were a sound engineer. And the style? Have you always had the same one?
I didn't have a style, me, at the beginning. For years, I had no money, I was surviving on music, I was doing productions for free to get myself known and I didn't have the means to build a special wardrobe. In addition, I only worked with studio rats who didn't care about fashion, who had been wearing the same old t-shirt with a Led Zeppelin logo for twenty years. It didn't help.
When I started earning my living in my late thirties, I became interested in clothing. To fill my closets, I drew inspiration from what I saw in magazines, I picked up ideas for brands and silhouettes. Very quickly, I adopted a standard but good quality look.
It's like everything in life: once I got into it, I never stopped. I like it. I couldn't be anything else today, whatever I do, whether it's imagining things for Welcome To The Jungle or, as will soon be the case, acting in a web series, and doing a one-man show on stage. This look, this diversity in the way I present myself, with my sneakers, my jeans, my shirts (Hast of course!), is what is strongest in me today. If Welcome To The Jungle continues to grow, I hope to stay the same. I have found myself.
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Photo credit: Laurence Revol (thank you)