The Hindu Business Line : Using the Web to find talent

Aadith D. Vikram, the 22-year-old Managing Director and Vice-Chairman of PGC Industries and Group, Tirupur ( www.pgcindustries.org), with a finance and management science degree from the University of Strathclyde, is effectively the new-generation boss of his company. But he keeps asking, “Where is my boss?”

Well, that’s the name of a web portal ( www.whereismyboss.com) started by PGC Infotech to offer online, live interviews between prospective employees and employers.

“Keep checking the WIMB site,” says Vikram. “We are planning to give one new feature every month which will always be unique in the market,” he promises during a recent lunch-hour interaction at Business Line. “Undoubtedly, we are the leaders on technology in a job-board space,” he adds confidently. Vikram sees the building of a database just by word-of-mouth as a sign of acceptance. “More than 670 companies have shown their interest to hire candidates through us which is a welcome sign for any start-up venture.”

He speaks passionately about the low charges for live interviews, the AI (artificial intelligence) and predictive technologies in his software for ranking the candidates most compatible with a job description and contextual search, which can for example limit a hunt to only candidates who have used a certain skill in the past year or who live within 20 km or search for a term within a specific section of the resume.

“For large businesses that spend heavily on travel and other expenses to interview candidates face-to-face, there are huge cost savings,” argues Vikram. “We will be able to shrink the cultural and geographical distance.” Edited excerpts from the meeting and a follow-up e-mail interview:

As someone who has ventured into the industry recently, can you give an overview of the online recruitment industry, its processes, and the evolution?

The organised sector in the country is expected to create an additional one million jobs in 2008, with a prediction of 3 per cent growth in employment in 2008. Only faster mediums like job portals can quickly build this human chain to satisfy the demand.

Human capital is arguably the most treasured and valued asset of any organisation, and is primarily responsible for adding value to all other assets of an organisation. Recruitment, the very word, means a logistics nightmare for the HR arm of many organisations. Many companies rush to recruit and hire candidates, later discovering that a particular individual may not be the best person for the position.

Since recruitment that ends up like this is very costly, organisations are looking for methods of reducing the time and effort. This rush and explosion gave way to job portals to make recruitment more in-house and effective. Job portals came as a transparent medium between the recruiter and the job seeker.

Over the past 10 years recruiting has undergone almost revolutionary changes as electronic tools such as Web sites, resume databases, job listing services and applicant tracking systems have become embedded throughout the recruitment process. Online job sites have revolutionised the recruitment landscape for both employers and job seekers and largely increased the efficiency with which hiring decisions can take place.

Gone are the days when online recruitment was the exclusive domain of the technologically savvy, the curious and the ultra-sophisticated. Today, with this medium tried, tested and proven to be true and more importantly indispensable, professional recruiters and employers alike rely on job portals as a primary source of professional talent both on a stand-alone basis and in some cases to complement traditional hiring methods.

There has been a paradigm shift in the way companies recruit thanks to the value, efficacy and ease-of-use of today’s career sites. With Internet penetration levels growing, geographic boundaries blending when it comes to professional mobility and the quest for top talent at a feverish pitch in booming regional economies, this medium is definitely here to stay.

How do you think demand and supply can be matched optimally? Or, what are the challenges for the hirers?

The Net has changed the way information sequence takes place. The younger folks know a lot more things and can carry themselves quite gracefully in a tech-driven environment. The talent pool can be built only through a medium that can scale up our operational and recruitment speed.

Today, the talent pool has to do a lot with age. Striking a balance between the generation today and generation yesterday is the biggest challenge for the day. Today’s problem and solution is the Gen-next.

The advantages and disadvantages, however, of today’s youth power are: They are multi-task oriented and can effectively do parallel processing, retaining interest levels for short periods; have wide bandwidth of information though very shallow in depth; very self-centred; always have a long wish list; conflicting value system and ethics; lack of focus; give in to peer pressure easily; scant respect to hierarchy systems; very ambitious; and low commitment levels.

The need of the hour is to groom leaders in order to make them the change agents who can harness the power of positive thinking, and create a good talent pool. To evaluate and script a talent resource will be a tough ask for the hiring managers.

How do you evaluate someone’s performance in a system where no one is in a job long enough to allow such evaluation? Today, the situation is very complex. Millions of latent talent need to come closer to hiring managers. Hiring managers have to adopt the right technique to recruit the right candidate.

What are the features that job seekers and employers most look for in job portals/boards?

Employers look for reduced time-to-hire, reduced cost of hire, wider reach of candidates, state-of-the-art filtration tools, sophisticated management tools, confidentiality, priority database, effective and timely applicant screening.

Job seekers aspire for reduced cost of getting a job, wider access to jobs in companies, ability to track the progress of their application at every stage of the hiring process, confidentiality, priority database and proactive hiring.

You speak of video-interviews. Is this achievable, given the level of broadband/Internet penetration in the country? Also, can it replace face-to-face interaction?

The current job portals offering only paper resumes are entirely objective and more detailed, while video resumes are entirely subjective: The content is typically candidates simply talking about themselves.

Now, technology has advanced and the use of webcams is widespread. Today, the essential target demographic, which is the 18- to 25-year-olds, is well aware of the technology available. Which explains why in India video resume — as a concept — emerged unscathed from the first episode.

In the recruitment industry, it is considered to be ‘the next big thing’ in streamlining the job candidate screening process, while reducing time and cost for employers. An online video interview uplink service, opening up the new emerging trend in job searches to the millions of workforce available in the country, will be a revolution in the Indian headhunting scene.

With increased broadband penetration, the emergence of social networking sites and the comfort level with the short-form video, WIMB decided it was time to start offering video resume options. Our system is architectured in a way that even the current broadband facility available in the companies and cybercafés is enough to start the process of hiring.

We are aware that we are way ahead of our times by introducing such innovative technology, but we are sure that emerging India will soon have the facility to make this dream come true.

In what ways do you think campus placement offices can associate with portals?

Each year, with over 3 million fresh graduates from 13,000-plus colleges across India, the process of selection is a rather time-consuming and costly exercise.

Since there is no standardised comparison of grading across universities, each company gets into a test and evaluation process. So, due to this inefficient system, an average fresher ends up writing numerous tests before getting a job. What chance does a fresh graduate with an average score coming out of an average institution have amidst the million resumes processed in such companies?

Focus on evaluating fresh graduates is not there and presenting them with a suitable profile to companies across the industry sectors is yet to be facilitated.

In this process, there is a widening gap between employer practices that respond to the key values of productivity and efficiency, and student expectations that the recruitment process should engage them in a personalised manner consistent with their unique potential. As a result, it is critical that college placement staff and recruiters understand both current employer practices and emerging trends.

There is no one to act as a go-between companies and candidates. Today, portals can play the role of a catalyst to campus placement offices to reach the corporates. Portals can be the medium to build a career platform for the fresher. Portals can bring the talent available in the tier-2 and tier-3 cities closer.

http://InterviewsInsights.blogspot.com

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Using the Web to find talent