The conceptualization and implementation of human resource management practices require highly competent human resource professionals who possess holistic understanding of business, society and government. The employment market globally is however facing the ironic reality of a huge demand as well as an acute shortage of competent human resource professionals. XIMAHR – The HR Association of XUB successfully conducted the annual HR business conclave ‘Kshitij’ on 6 September, 2015 which focused on the topic ‘Emerging trends in Recruitment’. It addressedrecruitment related issues and potential areas by promoting a discussion forum for interaction between HR leaders and HR students who will step into industry in next couple of years.
The discussion panel consisted of four eminent personalities:
- Miss Jayati Dwivedi (Head of Recruitment at British Telecom),
- Mr. Pradeep Deshpande (General Manager – Talent Acquisition at Schneider Electric),
- Mr. Simanta Mohanty (Executive Chief Consultant of group working for the implementation of Rashtriya Uchchatar Siksha Abhiyan) and
- Mr.PriyaRanjan Prasad (Chief operating Officer and Senior Vice President at Essar Steel India Limited).
- The moderator for the event was Professor D.P. Kar of XIMB.
The illumination of the lamp marked the beginning of the conclave followed by the moderator’s address to the gathering. Prof. Kar began his speech with an interesting analogy “As blood is to the body, recruitment is to an organization.” He focused on the fact that the essence of recruitment is to get the right people in the right place at the right time. He emphasized on the three major determinants of a successful recruitment process – quality of hire, time to hire and cost to hire. He also highlighted portals, referrals and social media as important sources of recruitment and strongly advocated the urgent need to attract and retain the passive job seekers. He also emphasized the growing prominenceof HR analytics and cited it as a big challenge for the HR managers. Furthermore, Prof. Kar touched upon areas of match-making to tap the behavioral aspects of candidates for determining the fit with the organization for better employee retention.
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Miss Jayati Dwivedi
Miss Jayati Dwivedi started by focusing on the need of diversity in an organization and suggested ways to manage diversity and promote diversity by starting from recruitment. She also stressed on the point that hiring managers need to have a good understanding of local labour market, ability to develop potential performers and act quickly when presented with potential candidates. She also talked about CRM tools like Amateur (not popular in India) to keep in touch with the passive job seekers and the inevitable need to use social media for recruitment. She also mentioned that approximately 31% of the talent leaders plan to invest in their global employer value proposition (EVP) and 34% plan to upskill their in-house recruitment teams on employer branding. Finally, Miss Dwivedi touched upon the criticalities of compliance in talent acquisition in terms of background verification, hiring process, vendor management, candidate’s experience, recruitment practices, vendor payout, re-hire check, on-boarding process and documentation process.
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Mr. Deshpande
Mr. Deshpande strongly emphasized on 7 key points – employer brand, social media, communication with prospective candidates, talent pipeline, engaging of hiring managers, candidate experience and on-boarding. He invariably highlighted the fact that in today’s corporate world instead of exchanging business cards people exchange LinkedIn profiles to assert the importance of social media.He also said that social media plays a vital role in identifying the potential candidates, connecting with them, assessing them and onboarding them. He also mentioned about Spice – Schneider Platform for Information Collaboration and Efficiency which has proved to be a game-changer for Schneider Electric. It connects with 94000+ users across the globe and comprises of more than 2500+ subjects for collaboration and knowledge sharing. This platform enables sharing of information and ideas, asking doubts, circulating reports, seeking feedback, connecting, making announcements etc.
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Simanta Mohanty
Mr. Simanta Mohanty started his speech by appreciating the organizing capabilities of the Institute and the students proclaiming Kshitij as one of the ‘slickest’ events he had seen in past few years. Throughout his speech, he strongly emphasized on talent acquisition and talent management.He veritably cited the importance of marketing the jobs and organization for HR managers. He also pointed out that only 20% of CEO’s express their confidence in HR function and to change this viewpoint is the biggest challenge for HR. He also touched upon how social media like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Quora etc. can be instrumental to stalk talent, engage with them, read their blog posts and peek into their minds. To recapitulate he cited five important emerging trends of recruitment namely going beyond the resume, getting to know the person, connecting without pause, adding value at every step and ensuring that the mind and heart of business is known.
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Mr Priya Ranjan Prasad
The last speaker for the day Mr Priya Ranjan Prasad talked about configuring a process chart to identify and attract the best talents of the country. He strongly emphasized on skill enhancement and determining the start time and finish time of internal job posting and external job posting. For any organization to grow with its people, it has to help its human force to build an emotional and intellectual relation with the organization along with delivering the task in time. He also highlighted the importance of mentoring, coaching and feedback. He enlightened the audience with the 3 S’s of employee engagement – say, stay and strive. Say refers to speaking positive about the organization, stay refers to the immense desire to stay within the organization and strive refers to the willingness to walk that extra mile to deliver more than what is expected.He ended his talk by asserting that people should be hired for their integrity and loyalty during recruitment.
Thereafter, the ninth edition of HR’Xxpert, the magazine was unveiled by the honorable guests. This was followed by their felicitation as a token of gratitude on behalf of the Institute. Finally the conclave ended with the vote of thanks to the speakers and other guests. The annual HR summit ‘Kshitij’ was a grand success and it unambiguously paved the way for thought-provoking and potentially powerful game changing ideas that will mold the thinking of next generation HR managers.
