Fresh Talent: The Next Big Vantage Point for Enterprises

Talent today is the underlying factor for success of any organization; however, recruiting the right talent is not only challenging but is also becoming a costly affair. With growth comes a relentless thirst for manpower and what will contribute to the success of any organization to surge ahead of competition is the availability of talent to drive its ambitious growth agenda. In light of this, raw talent hiring can be looked at as one of the most cost-effective and productive recruitment strategies.

Scenario Today

India is adding one million people to the workforce every month and this will continue over the next 2 decades with average age of Indian declining to 29 by 2030. Source –Time of India , 2013

Only 2.3% of Engineers are suitable for IT Product firms and 17% for IT Services Industry. – Times of India

The most commonly asked question is, “Why should I hire someone with no prior experience, a complete fresher?” Whilst this may seem as an obvious drawback of a raw talent strategy, many would see this as a definite benefit. Attitude is number one and raw talent has an abundance of it. They have the willingness to stretch, accept challenges, criticism and take risks to get the best during the early days of learning and development. Once firmly entrenched, the benefits of hiring trained raw talent are immediately obvious. With the right orientation and training programs in the early days, the learning curve of entry level talent is usually very smooth.  However, how do we hire the right raw talent and build a pipeline which can meet the organization`s leadership needs. The challenges are many

• Limited Reach

Companies focused on hiring through Campuses today have a genuine issue in terms of reach for right talent. The National Employability Report also indicates that average employability in colleges in the top 30 percentile (around 750 colleges) is 28%, whereas it is around 12% for the rest of the colleges. This implies that almost an equal number of employable candidates are there in the top 750 campuses as compared to the rest. Consider that no IT company in India has a campus recruitment program beyond the top 750 campuses, which shows that almost half of the employable pool, i.e., around 50,000 employable candidates in the country, is invisible to recruiters.

Where, When and How do we select Campuses for Placements?

It’s a classic debate of the Quality V/S the Quantity, where organization`s HR look at evaluating this based on the Recruitment needs for that particular period.

A recruitment funnel that misses 50% of appropriate candidates is not a complete one. But many employers limit theirs in exactly this way by having a recruitment approach that reaches only the campuses that are having a standing or are known.

• Limited prior Information to Assess

Information, in times of today is precious and it could mean make or break for your business. Similarly information availability on candidates could well define the future organization face in the market. Companies hiring raw talent today have limited prior information to base their decisions on hiring. Yes, there have been a surge in assessment companies making a foray into their area, however, largely this is inadequate and incomplete from an assessment perspective. Information on College, Education Background and performance only give a limited set of information to base their hiring decisions on. No doubt, then we see hiring attrition rates from the Fresher community looking out for right jobs.

• Inadequate Assessments

Companies going through the Campus drives typically take the route of Formal Test, Group Discussions and Final Interviews. Yes, these test do give some perspective on potential candidates, however, whether they will be able to apply what they know in the typical corporate world scenario, still remains a dilemma. So you are never sure whether you have hired the best in its true sense.

“There are hardly any ways where you can examine the candidate before recruiting, apart from usual Aptitude, GD, personal interviews.”                     Recruitment Consultant

• Long Gestation time for Productizing 

After hiring the candidates, it typically takes 6 months, depending on the Industry, for any candidate to understand the corporate environment and start contributing productively towards organization goals & objectives. Although, organization puts its effort in terms of time, money and resources towards training & development of these candidates and efforts are made to curtail manpower turnover, high level of attrition in the entry level of employees continues to be a problem.

• Lack of a Feedback loop

There is no system within organizations, today, which track that the performance, development and satisfaction level of candidates who are hired within 6 months, so that we get a 360 degree feedback on the way resource development. This is highly critical for an organization as it takes into account the following

• Review your Hiring Practices and make changes
• Typically gives you ideas in terms of potential learning’s for new hire adaptability
• Understanding on resource profiles which profiles can make a difference and which will not.
• Critical Insights on what works & what does`nt.

Am I able to track the employability of my potential employees well in advance?

Addressing these Concerns

Companies are seeking to respond to these challenges by bringing recruitment fully in-house using online resources. However, these tools still create delays and a drain on resources due to the lack of time available for developing specialist skills and knowledge. These types of tools can also add to the problem because they don’t provide the finely tuned capability required to select and nurture high caliber candidates after the search has been completed. Therefore it’s imperative for them to evaluate tools extensively before taking them onboard. Here are a few things which should form core of your ion

•  Extend Reach in Tier II and Tier III Cities

Look at online tools which can extend your reach for Talent manifold. Not only do they give you visibility, but they are also helpful in a great deal with saving time and cost of screening through candidates that meet the organization`s criteria.

• Create a Talent Pipeline that can be tracked for Development

It’s imperative to have your recruitment funnel in place. In order to create this funnel, organizations should pre-screen and select a bunch of candidates which could potentially become their future hires. This can well be done through online tools which provide you insights on candidate profiles with a high level of evaluation with them.

Google, Infosys, Coco Cola like companies  using internships to hire talent – Time of India, 2013

•  Internship Opportunities for Talent Pipeline

Effective internships, training & development opportunities are required to build an effective Talent Pipeline. Moreover, speaking of additional manpower, setting up an internship program allows you to take advantage of short-term support. The extra sets of hands help your employees be more productive, prevent them from becoming overburdened by side projects, as well as free them up to accomplish more creative tasks or those where higher-level, strategic thinking or expertise is required

“Management students doing their summer internships are potential hires, and it gives the company an opportunity to observe them for a defined period to take a much closer look at their performance and potential,” says Bhaskar Das, vice-president, HR, Cognizant

•  Track Education to Employment Journey of your pipeline

Track the Education to Employment Lifecycle of your funnel, which helps you understand the   development, exposure psychometric index of the individual, thus giving you a 360 degree view on those potential candidates. You should be providing them guidance during this journey to help them move towards the direction, your organization intends to.

• Critical Feedback on their performance

Feedback, forms the critical parameter of evaluation of Talent; hence it is only important for any organization to provide critical feedback about the potential candidate on their performance. Moving forward this will only make it easier for any organization to evaluate your future Talent better.

• Build Training Programs based on this Feedback

Developmental needs provide directions for the HR to drive down and implement training programs, which will help them build up critical skills needed to become productive from day 1 of joining an organization.

• Focus on a Quality Interview approach with the selected / shortlisted Candidates

The need of the hour is to have tools which give a 360 degree view of any candidate to make a pre-assessment based on skillsets and then have a detailed assessment procedure for those potential hires, which gives them time to look at  details which might have been overlooked earlier.

 Conclusion

This approach will build up your future managers that will lead your organization to the next level. You would also realize that the candidates you hire will not only be the right fit for the right job, but also motivated enough to contribute to the organizational success. Thus retaining them for longer periods within the organization will never be a challenge. In a way this will be a true Return on Investment for your Fresher Recruitment process.