Article: How leading organizations are changing their TA formula for success

Talent Acquisition

How leading organizations are changing their TA formula for success

Organizations are adapting innovative recruitment practices and evolving their TA formula.
How leading organizations are changing their TA formula for success

In the People Matters Talent Acquisition League, an august panel revealed how leading organizations are changing their TA formula by adopting innovative recruitment practices. This panel discussion was kick-started by Yogesh Kumar Bhatt, Vice President and Director at Manipal Prolearn, who spoke about what skill versus talent is when it comes to hiring. 

Yogesh stated, “The mantra for hiring is the ability of the person to learn, and that is what talent is.” In today’s world, where the pace of change is so fast, based on interactions with many leaders especially in the IT sector, what he has noticed is that people are moving from hiring for talent to hiring for skills, and this change is very prominent. 

A while ago, banks in public as well as in the private sector would get people and let them learn and practice what the job entails and then hire them. Today, however, various models enable hiring, and Bhatt speaks about three of them. The first one is where a company partners with an organization, and this organization will give them the kind of description of the people and skills they are looking to hire, candidates interested in going through a programme which helps them gain assurance about the skills they possess and the job they aim to have, and then the recruitment takes place. 

The second model is one where people are taken in for their inherent capability, they are admitted in the programme after which they go through training which is specific to the skill requirement of that particular job and then the starting company employs them. The final model Bhatt speaks about is quite a recent one called Learning path, which is for potential employees whose set of skills has something lacking, and this learning path guides them in that particular area, and then the company assesses them. There are many such models in the retail and sales markets too.

There is a business imperative for companies to be tuned with the times

Rajani Athreya, COO HR at DBS Bank agreed that there have been significant changes in the way organizations attract and engage with talent. She said, “Today we live in an environment which is extremely digitized and this can be seen in the way we do business, communicate and connect with people. The construct of competition is changing completely, who would have thought that Google would make cars?”

There is a business imperative for companies to be tuned with the times in which we live and being able to attract and nurture the right kind of talent. For example, we can look at Indian posts which was dwindling and almost died because the majority of the population moved away from sending physical letters. However, in 2016 they have reported a 900% increase in their profitability, and this happened because they were in tune with the times and used e-commerce companies for delivery to get back on their feet. 

Rajani stated, “We need to be able to understand and institutionalize the changes around us, as far as building and attracting our own talent is concerned”. Speaking specifically about DBS Bank, Rajani Athreya says that DBS Banks aims to be the best back in the world by 2020. Being digital, agile and creating collaborative cultures within the organization are the anchors this bank uses. 

With being in tune with the times, companies need to be able to reach the right kind of talent and attract them in a manner that appeals to them. How DBS Bank does this is, they no longer have Talent Acquisition specific models, tests and interview processes for young talent. They have adopted Hackathons as a way of attracting talent. Hackathons have a way of showcasing to you how the talent interacts with each other in an environment of stress where they have to collaborate, but they are also competing with each other.

She revealed about how the company’s summer interns are being put through a collaborative environment, where they have been given live projects to work on in teams, innovation mentors, structured training in human-centric design technology, etc. she says, “It is essential to build capability that is in tune with the times”.  

DBS Banks is also moving away from the traditional job description-based job searches since it does not really speak to a job seeker as to what the job really is. What they have now is video based job descriptions with present employees speaking about what a typical day is like for them in the particular role they play in the organization. This brings to life the position in the organization for the job seeker. There is also AI which helps save a lot of time of the workforce in the organization, and it consolidates, and shortlists resumes. 

Rajani added, “Within the organization is a marketplace where we need to cross-pollinate talent, build new skills, provide people with the empowerment and opportunities to move across the board and maximize capability within the organization”. 

Alpana Vartak who is the head of Talent Acquisition at Cipla revealed that while pharmaceuticals is a highly skill-based space, but at the same time there is also an opportunity to determine what kind of talent it wants to integrate. 

Alpana added that the company is in a part of their journey where they can embrace technology in the most contemporary way and is journeying towards what the right model is for the organization, after reviewing some of the best ones. 

She concluded that what organizations need to ask themselves is what the pace and the direction the organization wants to accelerate it is, think about what the most contemporary and easy to integrate into the organization is and lastly, to see how they plan to sustain that journey.

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Topics: Talent Acquisition, #TAL2018

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