Reinventing Talent Acquisition

The evening meeting of NHRD on 22/2/2018 had two speakers from two contrasting backgrounds and two contrasting styles of presentation; Mr Adil Bhandukwala Social talent evangelist representing Belong.Co and Mr Raghavendra Auradkar, IPS, Addl Director General of Police (Recruitment) of the Karnataka state.

The first speaker Aadil who is from a multinational background, underscored the fact that change is happening at a very fast pace  and this is to be kept in mind while approaching the subject of "talent acquisition". He displayed a list of preferred employers based on a study by a leading magazine. It showed that for every five year period from 2003 to 2009 and 2013, the 'pecking order' of preferred employers changed with different companies figuring in each list, meaning organizations can no longer take it for granted that they would continue to attract the best talent.The speaker then shared a  quote of Angela Ahrendts, Sr VP of retail at Apple: " I grew up in a physical world and I speak English. The next generation is growing up in a digital world, and they speak social", This means that you will have to speak the social language to the younger generation of today if you wish to attract,engage and retain them.

The entire talent map is being redrawn;power is shifting from employers to candidates. In the candidate driven market of today, the cost per hire is on the rise.There is an emphasis on speed and quality in hiring. Spotting and engaging talent is critical. Today there is a need to engage with prospective employees the way you would with customers.You cannot afford to wait for people to apply but need to go and find them like the sales people. In other words, the need of the hour is to shift from inbound recruiting to outbound recruiting. Talent maps and personas need to be generated which would involve among other things determining future talent needs, assessing viability of your current staff to meet the needs, sourcing high potential players in your field for future recruitment and developing a strategic plan to fill the identified skills and talent gaps.

The talent mapping exercise coupled with outbound recruitment, leveraging social media effectively will give you the direction and information as to where your talent pools are. They serve as a GPS directing you to the most efficient route and helping to foresee potential road blocks and enabling you to rework your plan if required. Aadil  gave an example of the position of "Devops Engineer" who are moderately hard to find in view of their limited supply as against a high demand. Opting for the traditional method of recruiting , by posting requirement on Naukri, would not be effective as they may not respond to the advertisement. On the other hand, utilizing the latest technology (Talent Map and persona generation framework) can get you all the relevant information for making the recruitment decision accurately and with speed. In the instant case, the following information among others becomes available

• There are only 2000 Devops engineers presently available in India with 2-5 years of experience, only 6% of them are female.
• The most common skill acquired by these engineers are in python.
• 793 of them are presently located in Bangalore, 96 in Chennai and 75 in Mumbai
• Presently Accenture employs the maximum number of Devops engineers      

The speaker said that niche social networks like Slack which are exclusive working/meeting place for  groups with specific skills like Devops can be effectively used to discover top, skilled talent. Leveraging Slack with discussion spaces like Hasgeek where like minded geeks discuss. learn new things and discover new opportunities, can be very effective for understanding preferences/ interests of future candidates and their suitability/fit for your organization. Quibb is a network that  lets you share what you're reading for work; post newsworthy articles, see what colleagues are reading, and discuss the day's industry news. The fifth elephant is the country's renowned science community and conference on data science, engineering and machine learning.

 In this connection one would do well to learn and use the art of scaling mobile phones.Tech conferences could be a good place to spot desired talent. Droidcon, for example is is a global conference focused on the engineering of applications built on top of Android. It provides a forum for developers to network with other developers, to share techniques, to announce apps and products, and to learn and teach. Mr Aadil Bandukwala signed off reiterating that the future of recruitment is in outbound.  

If the talk of the first speaker was on the new approaches that are necessary and have already begun to happen in the corporate sector in the area of talent acquisition, the second speaker for the evening shared his accomplishments and innovations in spite of the many challenges that one faces in the Government sector. Mr Raghavendra Avradkar ADGP said that when he took over in January 2015 as the chief of the recruitment wing, he was confronted with an acute problem of a huge backlog since no recruitment had been made for many years. The situation can be better appreciated when we look at the real time data which tells you that 40% of the police stations function without SHO (Station house officer) and the police personnel work for 14 to 16 hours in a day. The department worked on a war footing and as a result from January 2015 till date 37,000 people have been recruited. This is a landmark in terms of the speed and highest number of police personnel recruited in the country. 

The recruitment wing for the Karnataka police itself came into being only in the year 2002 and there are around 25 employees working for this wing. All activities of the department are required to strictly comply with the cadre and recruitment rules approved by the state cabinet. The speaker said that a major issue for him was to  build credibility for the whole system of appointment in view of a general public impression that recruitment to Government service is not based on merit alone but on  other considerations as well.It was decided to have zero tolerance for any deviation from the strict standard of the  recruitment process. In this regard, the assistance of technology was drafted and the entire process right from the stage of application to the appointment of successful candidates is now online.

The recruitment wing presently handles the recruitment of  police constables, sub inspectors,scientific staff and prison staff. On an average 25 lakh applications are received for a position of which 18 lakh are shortlisted  for the entrance test. The recruitment process includes an endurance test ( 1600 Kms run, long jump, high jump, shot put), physical standards test which prescribes minimum levels of height, weight,chest measurement,and viva voce. In order to ensure transparency, all the activities right from the written exam to the physical tests and viva are video graphed. The written tests are organized through independent educational institutions comprising of objective questions with an OMR ( optical mark reading) design.   

Mr Raghavendra said a number of innovations were introduced to make the recruitment process interactive and transparent for the candidates, This includes dedicated helpline, fax message intimations, display of eligible and ineligible list of candidates on line,  making available digital display boards  during the physical tests indicating the remaining time within which the candidate must complete the feat. Candidates know in advance that their process of evaluation would be in the alphabetical order. They can check the latest status of the process on "His page". The recruitment process of the police wing has obtained ISO 9000 certification and are in a mode of continuous improvement by bench marking with  other states and the corporates. 

Presently, the recruitment wing is focusing on the vacancy estimation for the next five years and also in developing a perspective plan for three years. The extent of the achievement of this Government department can be appreciated  only when we take in to account budgetary constraints, time spent on handling of  public litigation, delay in getting clearance for effecting changes/ improvements etc. Mr Raghavendra said that he took a decision not to obtain attested copies of mark sheets and other documents from candidates at the stage of application.The documents would be obtained from the selected candidates at the time of joining. This move of trusting the applicants, meant speedier processing and removal of a major hassle for the candidates who no longer have to go in search of gazetted officers . 

With that, the screen came down on a very interesting evening that discussed challenges and solutions of acquiring talent for two different sectors. Both have their challenges which may be a trifle different but they are working purposefully to meet them effectively in the long run...