Changing hiring outlook: Hear the experts!

Talent acquisition is no longer about a simple vacancy filling process; a recruiter also needs to understand why employees join, stay or grow in a company

Anthony Joseph, President, Global HR, Hinduja Global Solutions

For Hinduja Global Solutions, the focus on hiring has been to address the growth driven by client growth and the replacement caused due to attrition. Recruiters look for frontline employees who are highly efficient and detail-oriented.

In terms of the macro level shifts, there is an excessive focus on the negatives due to automation. However, it is useful to remember that shifts due to disruptive automation does not happen overnight, one sees incremental innovation in our industry. In the next 3-5 years, the nature of work will be significantly different from what we do today. The second macro shift is to do with the global movement of talent, especially to countries like the US, which has come under scrutiny of late. In terms of the industry growth, there are varied reports that predict slow growth to stable outlook. Apart from macro-level shifts, consumer behavior is central to understanding the potential of the market growth. The imperatives from a HR standpoint are to hire for volume and specialized skills. 

Talent acquisition is no longer about a simple vacancy filling process; the recruiter also needs to understand ‘What makes an employee join the company? What makes an employee stay? What does it mean to grow in the company? And what is the happening in the market outside?’

A major roadblock for the recruiting function is to keep up with uncertainties of the market. Delivering a well-articulated and designed hiring forecast is becoming a challenge in itself. What is an area of concern is the under-investment in talent acquisition function, not only from a monetary point of view but also in terms of time and training recruiters about the business, trends and technologies. 

To stay relevant in the current market, organizations need to shift from hiring for a role to hiring the right talent

Ramesh Shankar, HR Head, Siemens

In today’s world, organizations are competing for talent not only within their own industries; they are also competing with new age organizations. Hiring budgets are looked upon as investments in future building, and cover both the direct (logistical/administrative) and the strategic investments in brand building and recruitment technologies. The aim is to be relevant to the new generation and also provide the best in class experience to the customers.

The key themes that are impacting hiring include: 1) Digitalization; 2) Diversity; and 3) Localization. In our industry, we see displacement of jobs in manufacturing, for e.g. blue collared jobs are rapidly changing with the use of technology. And speed, quality & efficiency have improved. 

The focus on diversity has to do with increasing the percentage of women across all levels, especially in senior leadership roles. We will also focus on ex-service men and differently-abled.

Localization too has thrown open the possibilities of becoming a manufacturing hub. Producing things locally also gives a competitive edge from pricing perspective & we become more relevant to our local customers.

Amidst these shifts, we are consciously working towards making our organization structure simple with minimum number of layers. Expert teams are being created to facilitate speed of delivery and best in class service/product.

The challenge for TA, like many functions, is going to continuously evolve and revolve around being relevant. There is a clear shift from being fulfillment of a vacancy to value based alignment. Hiring has changed from mere ‘job requisition fulfillment’ to becoming a window for employer branding, business partnerships & engagement with the target talent pool. 

It is imperative for talent acquisition professionals to understand technical competencies and market level shifts for their specific industry

Shalini Pillay, Partner and Head of People, Performance and Culture, KPMG India

The current hiring outlook can be summed up as “bullish yet cautious”. It is bullish from the perspective of the market opportunity ahead of us, to grow and attract the right talent. And it is cautious because we need to be conscious of our internal needs and talent requirements in the current business context. The macro level shifts that have impacted the talent acquisition strategy are to do with technology. Automation, robotics, cognitive and analytics are transforming many job roles in a fundamental manner. 

The need from a talent standpoint is to hire agile and mobile talent. At KPMG, the talent acquisition team is organized in a way that allows centralization to deliver efficiencies needed for organizations operating on our scale. And it is decentralized to allow the team to be embedded into various businesses internally to cater to the nuances and demands of the specific business. 

The role of a recruiter is getting increasingly demanding and complex because there is a need to understand business requirements and the technical competencies that the business requires. Also, people in the hiring role need to understand and sense the pulse of the market. A key concern about the talent acquisition function has to do with the increasing commodification of the function with technology. With a number of service provides tackling different aspects of the talent acquisition cycle right from the first touch point to the candidate’s onboarding processes, it is vital for the TA community to reflect on which aspects of the life cycle of hiring need to be automated and which ones need a personal touch. 

The skill of selling a job at present to the incumbent will be outweighed by the need of fostering a long term association as talent availability becomes scarcer with time

Yogi Sriram, SVP – HR, L&T Group

The enhanced government spend announced in the national budget for the infrastructure sector is promising. The growth potential is high and we hope to win orders largely in smart cities, water, defence and aerospace, power, power transmission, renewables and other businesses which have significant growth potential. The intake of fresh talent will be more selective, and mid-senior level hiring will depend on the growth plan. In certain geographies, there would be selective expat hiring for skills that are not so easily available in India. 

Our top five TA strategic priorities include: 1) adopting a workforce platform by using digitalization to match skills, aspirations, team requirements, project requirements, potential of talent; 2) Building and improving L&T’s brand image on a global scale; 3) Hiring the best young engineering talent; 4) Creating a compelling candidate experience and journey; 5) Getting more reliable referees and authentic reference checks. 

To meet these TA priorities, we enable the TA team with skill development to meet the challenges of high quality recruitment. Internally, there is a dedicated leadership level TA team which works on critical hiring projects. The role of a recruiter is no longer about filling a vacancy, it is about creating a compelling employee journey to attract the right talent. 

The future challenges for businesses include the availability of domain specific leadership talent, highly skilled recruiters, shortage of experienced talent for roles in project management and the core infrastructure businesses along with the inability to access the best talent at leadership level from PSUs and the Government due to various restrictive clauses of employment. As the world is becoming more polarized, barriers to free flow of talent will be a challenge too. 

You can also read the complete analysis based on the findings of the study, 'India Hiring Outlook 2018' study conducted by People Matters and Indeed here.