The Talent demand-supply mismatch world over, especially in India, draws attention to the widening gap between industry requirements and available employable talent pool. 40 percent of young people with tertiary education will come from China and India as the trend of access to higher education in G20 shows. With 25 million Gen Y youth joining the talent pool in our nation in the next 5 years, the numbers are obviously not the problem! In our country, despite the availability of this huge potential talent pool, recruiting remains a challenge – and this is, and will remain, detrimental to corporate India’s competitive edge.

The critical concern is the existing skill gap. There seems to be no predictability in our talent acquisition processes. To solve this ‘Talent Process Predictability’ equation, we need to address the value chain from the supply perspective. What employers struggle with, is that the employability framework has a limited last mile connect, i.e., the connection between the skilling pipeline and jobs.

So, how does one solve this conundrum? The solution possibly lies in a supply chain management model. A demand-driven supply chain solution to employers will help achieve significant business performance improvement. India has about 623 districts where jobs will be generated and the talent pool available in these pockets must be mapped to ensure an end-to-end solution. RPOs will have to innovate and come up with ideas such as mini Talent Stock Exchanges to enable better control, footfall and conversions.

India’s recruitment market is about Rs.180 billion, perhaps insignificant as compared with global numbers. However, to move to the stage of a mature global market, we need to deploy tools that have the mind of a strategist and precision of a scientist. This is not an easy task, considering there is no process in the world that has as high a failure rate as recruitment processes. However, it essentially means improving the Sigma value of each of the process from “Requisition to Start”. This will propel the recruitment industry to higher growth and eventually maturity.

Companies that begin to map lead indicators such as manning, outcome productivity, hiring productivity, and other such metrics will eventually yield the benefits. There is a huge competitive advantage in solving the talent process conundrum. RPO professionals will need to move from a ’hit and trial’ approach to ’outcome orientation’. The right numbers and better predictability can improve the workforce output of an organization by 20 percent! Now that is worth working towards!