At Fractal, we hire for potential, learnability, and elasticity: Rohini Singh, CPO

In today's rapidly evolving AI-native landscape, the very definition of "talent" is undergoing a seismic shift. No longer are organisations simply filling roles; they're strategically investing in building the talent pipeline for the future. People Matters spoke with Rohini Singh, Chief People Officer at Fractal, on the sidelines of the Great Place to Work event, where we discussed the unique talent challenges faced by a cutting-edge tech firm like Fractal. She explains that the "half-life of a skill is now just six months," prompting HR leaders to rethink traditional hiring and development practices. Edited Excerpts:

You're a native AI company, having been around for more than 25 years now. What are some of the talent challenges that you're facing that are unique to your industry?

One of the unique challenges we face is the increasing redundancy of roles, or rather, the shifting significance of roles and the emergence of new skills. The distinction between role and skill is unique to our industry, as the half-life of any skill used to be two or three years about three years ago, but today it's possibly six months and shrinking.

For us, what's really important is the ability to focus on potential and learnability, rather than just what you know or a specific skill. Skills are easily trainable and get replaced and upgraded ever so frequently, much faster than what we've been used to in the past. Therefore, the shift is from roles and the significance of roles to a more skill-based approach to hiring.

For us, our philosophy on talent is that we hire for potential, we hire for learnability, and we hire for elasticity. We do not hire for skills. We believe that, over time and in the future, the ability for people to transgress across different roles, acquire new skills, and be effective across a variety of jobs will be far more important than it has been. So, that's quite unique to us and our industry.

How is technology helping you in finding the talent that possesses all three traits - potential, learnability, and elasticity?

Technology plays a massive role in all of this because evaluating people on potential is tough. Skill evaluation is easier.

In fact, technology will be far more critical, especially if you're pursuing this path of potential and elasticity. Because there, you're really looking at people's ability to problem-solve, to break problems down, or to look at decisions with a backwards approach—your critical thinking, logical reasoning. These are the things we're looking for, and for us, technology plays a very vital role. We have a proprietary, in-house, AI-enabled engine that we've developed over the last two years. It conducts a 360-degree evaluation of an individual.

Our philosophy is that people shouldn't be reduced to labels of skills, like "She's a prompt engineer" or "She's a SQL person." We're all human beings, and we bring infinite potential to the table, with multiple aspects to our personality that fuel that potential. Our AI-enabled platform offers a comprehensive view of an individual's aspirations, motivations, learning abilities, agility, and ability to articulate thoughts clearly. Through a combination of all this, we then assess if they'll be a good Fractal fit.

When we discuss this type of talent, what is your assessment of its availability in India? Do we have enough, or might we face a shortage in the future?

We assess that there's an abundance of this kind of talent. If you look at the latest NASSCOM report, it states there are close to 5.4 million IT professionals employed in the IT-ITeS sector, and that's just employment statistics. From colleges and campuses, this talent is abundant. Because, like I said, we're not focusing on what you already know; we're focusing on your ability to learn. And when you open up the aperture, you're truly looking to tap into human potential; there's infinite talent available for us to work with.

Additionally, when we hire at Fractal, we recruit from a diverse range of backgrounds. So, even when we hire from campuses, we have people who join us from fields such as mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, textiles, and even economics and statistics.

We hire behavioural scientists. We hire people from a broad and very diverse spectrum, and we've done that deliberately. It's a strategy for us because we're not just focused on skills. To build a highly diverse and thriving team, you need to open up that talent aperture.

There's a lot of skilling and training that goes into getting people to understand what the company's trying to achieve, align with the vision, and bring in efficiencies. And since you're looking at people who could adjust to different roles and transfer to other roles, how does training play a part in all this, and what is your strategy to leverage your workforce's potential to its fullest?

Training is a very strong pillar of our strategy. We actually have an in-house Academy, which is the Fractal Analytics Academy. We also have a majority shareholder in one of India's largest data science communities, as well as a tech platform called Analytics Vidhya.

We believe in the power of learning and how that can transform people's careers and career trajectories. One of our core values is "Learn and Grow," and this is deeply embedded throughout the organisation. At Fractal, people are expected to be the CEOs of their own careers. So, Fractal's responsibility is to architect and create an ecosystem of different learning opportunities, but you need to take charge of your growth. To grow in our environment, not just at Fractal, but also in our industry, learning is an integral part of your daily life.

On average, every person at Fractal invests approximately 76 hours per year on learning, and it's a part of all our KPIs. So, we're expected to learn, and that's the only way in which you're going to thrive in the industry and your career.

As a talent leader, what is your assessment of the general situation regarding the academic curriculum in the country, particularly in technology and engineering?

Students need more exposure to, and hands-on experience with, emerging technology, as well as an earlier induction into hands-on work experience, to better understand how the world of work operates. That's an ecosystem that needs a little more thought and investment, especially in AI. It would be amazing to see a university system where students are taught fundamentals and applications of AI earlier on rather than later. Many students, as we've observed, are upskilling themselves outside of the curriculum.

So, they're relying on numerous external sources to augment their learning, which organisations find valuable. There's value in it, and that's creating employability and differentiation for them in the job market. Universities should recognise that and integrate those subjects and areas into their curriculum. I'm starting to see some green shoots around this. Some organisations collaborate with universities and embed training programs, particularly in areas such as data science, AI, and emerging technologies. So, there are green shoots in this space, so it's not all gloom and doom, but I'm hoping that this gains a lot more traction in the coming years.

How do you look at the new-age workforce? If we have to project five years from now, by 2030, how do you envision the demographics, changes in the hiring process, or the kind of talent you will require in your organisational setup?

The future of work is going to look dramatically different from what we've experienced so far. People would look for a lot more freedom, flexibility, and the ability to have a voice in the design of their work experience. Therefore, the future workplace will require a higher level of inclusion and autonomy than we have seen so far. We believe that trust-based ecosystems, which have the ability to provide some of these fundamentals to individuals, will be able to attract differentiated talent. The classical approach of "Let me ring-fence my top talent," I don't think is going to be very relevant in the future. At least, that's the way we see it - it's going to be more about tapping into people's potential and unleashing it, enabling them to thrive.

It is going to be very exciting because we'll all be forced to question the old ways of working. We'll be compelled to think differently, think more laterally, and out-of-the-box, and become the true value creators in businesses rather than custodians of policies and processes. This actually forces the profession and professionals to go a lot deeper than we have so far. I'm actually very excited about this, and I think only people who can step into this challenge without seeing it as a challenge, but rather as a very exciting natural progression, will thrive.