- Recruitment isn’t only filling roles — it’s a driver of business transformation and long-term growth.
- Modern hiring strategies must blend technology, transparency, and internal mobility to meet the needs of a changing workforce.
- To attract the next generation, even legacy industries like mining must rebrand and rethink engaging talent.
Hugo Arouca knows how the right recruitment strategy can impact a business.
He saw it happen at Mercado Livre, the leading e-commerce platform in Latin America, where he served as Head of Talent Acquisition at a time when the business hired more than 60,000 employees in just four years.
“At one point, we had more new-hire leaders than leaders with more than a year inside the company,” Arouca said during his Cultivate session.
It taught him the impact of good recruitment practices: if they hired the wrong talent, it could have steered the business in a different direction.
Today, Arouca is watching yet another business transformation unfold at the global mining organization Vale, the world’s largest producer of iron ore, pellets, and nickel based in Brazil. As Vale’s Global Head of Talent, he’s working hard to change the perception around the mining industry and connect with younger generations of prospective hires.
“Everything that we build as a society depends on critical mining, and everything we believe we want as a society depends on mining, including AI, decarbonization, and electrical transformation,” he said.
What many people don’t realize, Arouca added, is that modern mining is an innovative industry that cares about the environment and offers a stable career. “Mining is the future,” he said. “It’s building the future together.”
Through his years of experience in diverse industries, he’s learned that each business must develop a distinct hiring strategy that supports its greater goals.
Below, we recap Arouca’s insights about how his team at Vale is using technology to recruit new hires to work in the mining industry, while also sharing strategies about how they hire from within.
Hugo Arouca shares how Vale has rebranded and started to rethink how they’re recruiting new talent.
Mining for talent is an internal and external pursuit
Mining businesses like Vale are feeling the talent squeeze. McKinsey research found that HR leaders report difficulty in recruiting and retaining workers, and, in particular, the younger generation is turning away from industries like mining as a career option.
Arouca said a rebranding campaign is needed to capture the attention of potential hires and inform them about opportunities in sustainable, high-tech mining, while educating them on how a business like Vale is working to protect the environment.
To do that, Arouca is focused on recruitment efforts that are internal as well as external.
At Vale, discussions with leadership teams focus on ways technology and data can pinpoint what skills are needed and then map those skills to the organization’s goals 15 or 20 years into the future. They’re also enlisting their workforce to help recruit that talent.
“Everybody here needs to be a headhunter,” Arouca said. “We’re changing the mentality and bringing all of the agents into the process.”
In addition, Vale is working hard to recruit internally.
“By focusing on a talent marketplace internally, we’re trying to make all the positions within the company visible and make the process transparent so that people can apply and participate in an interesting and friendly journey through the internal processes,” he said.
As part of the organization’s succession planning, talent leaders are working to build a strong pipeline of potential leaders from within. Using a talent intelligence platform has helped build stronger connections between the talent acquisition process and the talent management process.
Arouca talks about how understanding the basics of the organization’s operations helped them transform hiring processes for the better.
Hiring is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor
Even within an organization, different hiring strategies are necessary to fill diverse roles, including geographic diversity. Vale operates across three regions in Brazil, and each area has different cultures and social environments. Strategies specific to those areas are helping the organization connect with target populations.
To reach prospective technical teams, who make up nearly 70% of recruitments, Vale created a QR code to share at soccer games and church events and invite more young people into the funnel.
“They then feel supported because we bring them into the journey, and we have this data visibility in the region,” Arouca said.
In contrast, he said there’s also a need to hire highly educated professionals for other jobs within the enterprise. For that, his team is devising long-term campaigns in collaboration with area universities.
“We need to develop the people from the society because we don’t have enough professionals ready to do what we need,” he said.
In total, Arouca estimates that Vale may reach out to 100,000 people through mailings, phone calls, and interviews to access and acquire the right talent.
From the organization’s perspective, it’s essential that everybody who participates in the recruiting process has a good experience so that they have a positive association with Vale, whether or not they’re hired.
“Inside some regions, Vale is the main company in the region, so we have a very powerful position,” Arouca said. “We also have this responsibility to everybody participating in our recruiting process that they need to feel part of it. It’s part of the society that we are all in.”
Tech-powered TA teams gain time to think strategically
Technology has the potential to elevate recruiters and transform the hiring process so it’s faster and better than ever before. Even as that happens, it will remain important for people to remain in the loop to interpret data and guide strategic decisions to ensure hires are indeed best fits.
Along the way, talent acquisition teams will benefit from gaining time back, which they can use to focus on responsibilities that entail more complexity and planning. Freeing time has allowed Arouca’s team to think more deeply about things like innovation, the future of mining, and social impact.
“With more time, we will be able to explore new ways to achieve what we need as a society for the future,” he said.
After spending nearly two decades in talent management, executive search, employer branding, and business development, Arouca loves telling people about what a beautiful career recruiting is and explaining the impact it can have on a business.
“When you put recruitment in the mindset of the company,” he said, “it goes to another level of business transformation.”
TA teams have the power to help a business succeed or falter, and today, the same goes for talent intelligence platforms.
“It can potentially be useful as a tool — Eightfold is an example,” Arouca said.
At one time, recruiting at Vale was seen as transactional, and influenced by personal networks. Now, the organization is embedding technology, structure and transparency into its hiring practices.
For any business, talent acquisition is about more than filling roles. It’s a lever for success throughout the enterprise, and plays a critical role in shaping future growth.
Watch Arouca’s Cultivate ’25 session, “Talent at the core: Vale’s TA strategy in a changing world,” available now on demand.
