Recruitment is changing.

In this evolving landscape, where talent aspirations and expectations have undergone a paradigm shift, recruitment techniques and recruitment technology have evolved keeping pace with the shift. At one point in time, the HR professionals who are involved in the recruitment process had no need to acquire specialized skills to create a great candidate experience, but no longer today, where the recruitment professional is extremely specialized and knowledgeable in various domains.

During the extremely engaging panel discussion which comprised of panellists: Rachel Fitton, Head of Talent Acquisition APAC, HP Inc; Sanjeev Somasundaran, APAC Head-Programs Staffing, Google; Andrew McGlinchey, Senior Director of Product Management, Indeed.com and the Chair, Unmesh Pawar, Global Managing Director, Human Resources, discussed some of the emerging ideas in the recruitment space. Here are a few of them.

Is recruitment similar to matchmaking?

Unmesh Pawar said that recruitment was similar to matchmaking. Rachel Fitton not only agreed with the statement but also said that probably what organizations are doing wrong is that they have not registered themselves on Tinder. It is for many organizations a great opportunity to brand themselves. But efforts must not be superficial. Rather, the brand must connect authentically with the candidates. 

One of the ways through which companies can create a great impression on the candidates is ensuring that they are well represented on the campus in terms of people from marketing, sales, operations. This is to ensure that the candidate can assess the culture and would be left with a positive impression of the organization.

Do not compromise with recruitment

Sanjeev Somasundaran spoke about how important it was to create processes and to set up systems for recruitment. One of the reasons that he said which was responsible for the success of Google was that they never compromised with recruitment. And hence organizations must equip the hiring team with the resources that they require. Further, the systems and the processes must be established to ensure that it is not just the hiring manager which takes all the decisions.

Don’t overhire: warning for the startups

Rachel Fitton talked about how start-ups should be careful so as not to overhire. This is because the challenge comes when they realize that they have too many resources and then you cannot ask people to leave.

Democratizing recruitment: Can candidate profiling help?

Unmesh Pawar shared an instance where Accenture partnered with a gamification company and profiled the internal candidates using a score that got generated. Through this, they could solve the problem of not being able to visit all campuses. Instead, what Accenture did is that they provided the link to the game to the campuses that they could not visit. And later, for candidates which had similar scores as that of the internal employees, the process was fast-tracked. Andrew McGlinchey though warned that one must be wary of the biases inherent in psychometric assessments while using such measures for recruiting people.

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