Collection Of

Badri Ravi’s Blogs

On

Talent Management

Badri Ravi

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Contents

RECRUITMENT 2020 .................................................................................. 2

ZMOT, KEY TO SUCCESSFUL TALENT ACQUISITION .................................. 7

IF STEVE JOBS WERE TO RUN A RECRUITMENT FIRM! ............................. 9

THREE QUESTIONS THAT EMPLOYERS NEED TO ASK THEMSELVES TO

WIN WAR FOR TALENT ............................................................................ 14

SUCCESSFUL RPO PARTNERSHIP BY ORGANIZATIONAL GOAL

ALIGNMENT............................................................................................. 15

REWARDS WITHOUT KILLING INTRINSIC MOTIVATION .......................... 18

WHAT IS YOUR OFFICE WALL SAYING? ................................................... 20

LEADERSHIP: ALIGNING INTENTIONS...................................................... 23

IS YOUR RECRUITMENT STRATEGY ASSUMING TALENT IS IN

ABUNDANCE? .......................................................................................... 24

CHALLENGES OF TODAY’S RPOS ............................................................. 25

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RECRUITMENT 2020

Imagine, you are a recruiter and its April 2020. Your company decided to shut

down the city office and decided to equip your home instead with

infrastructure for you to work. Your new infrastructure consists of a Google

glass and a hand motion sensor that you fixed to your wall. You are excited

about the new gadgets and you put them on. The glasses greet you, “Hello

Good Morning! Today we have a new assignment to recruit a technology

analyst for Amazon. You will be

awarded 30 points for selecting this

work”. You think for a moment and

say to yourself, I am game for

something more niche! You reject

the assignment and scan for more

open positions. You suddenly spot

another interesting, Data Scientist

for Adobee Gamification analytics

division; it has 75 points on it! You

immediately block the position and

the system says “Congratulations, the position is blocked for you for the next

120 minutes” You see a video icon at the Job description, you click on it and

you see a message from the hiring manager. The video explains the success

parameters for the opportunity and you feel good about finding the right

person.

You remember the old days when you had to map talent landscape and

source for people on job boards, social media and database; today everyone

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on the planet is in the company

database that directly is linked to all

social media platforms that has not only

work data but also personal

preferences, demonstrated skills and

details of personality traits. Although

these details are available the only hitch is that the government regulations

don’t allow you to contact someone directly unless you have approval from

them.

You order your computer through your hand motion to show you the talent

landscape for the opportunity. The glasses suddenly glow up and in 3D show

you people arranged in shape of a sphere representing people with desired

skill sets and experience. Adobee wishes to find people within 75 miles of

Bangalore so that a weekly visit to office would be possible. You throw this

constraint on the sphere of people and the sphere shrinks to show only right

people. Based on the video you watched from the hiring manager, you

identify two personal preferences and throw both preferences on the

sphere. The sphere shrinks quite dramatically but is still quite large.

You wonder how to sequence the list in order of preference; You suddenly

remember what Ashok, your information manager, told you about the social

analytics feature that the company has invested in. You order the computer

to run the analytics. The computer turns the sphere into a pyramid! The top

section of the pyramid has people with 90% suitability and subsequent tiers

have 80%, 70%, 60% and 50% respectively. Curious to know how the system

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figured this out, you hit the help section and look for answers. You learn that

the computer considers the following:

Match digital preferences of Current top 30 percentile employees in

the Gamification analytics division of Adobee and that of talent pool

Testimonials written in LinkedIn and a few other media sites by

people who the adobee system recognizes as top performers.

People who have performed well in companies and colleges where

adobee top employees have done theirs

Digital content such as technical blogs, response in stack overflow

etc. by people that is shared or cited or highlighted by Adobee top

employees

And many such criteria that the HR data scientists have proven to be

effective in determining top talent. The system is still in its beta stage and

reads the caution note. You love the concept and tap the 90 percentage

probably fit candidates.

The system suddenly beeps. It awards you 10 points for selecting the new

technology in your recruitment process. Happy about the bonus, you

proceed with reading selected people’s consolidated report that the system

generated from all social media sources. You understand how these people

work and what motivates them, what demotivates them and what benefits

offered by the employer would strike a chord with them. You find that a few

in the list have self-selected themselves to be contacted for jobs and you also

see their current assignment and the date on which their current contract

ends. You order the computer to record your video message to these

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candidates and you also ask specific questions. The computer finds that the

questions you have asked isn’t available in question bank and offers you

bonus 3 points.

These active job seekers get a ping on their Google glass. One of them, Joe,

is working and decides to put the message to his reminder stating play the

video after finishing work. The Google glass noticing that Joe is shutting down

his laptop, informs that the bus he wanted to take to his house is arriving and

that if he starts now then he could take the bus without any waiting. Joe

takes the suggestion and starts walking towards the bus. Upon boarding he

finds a seat at the end and grabs it. Immediately the glass glows and opens

the message from you. The video plays and you suggest how the position fits

Joe’s preferences and career aspirations. Joe thinks about it and decides to

find a little more about the company. He decides to look for friends who work

in the firms. The Google glass finds that Peter, Joe’s school friend works here

but also suggests that Peter is playing tennis now and that he should better

be contacted in 20 minutes, about the time when Joe gets back home. Joe

decides to wait and in the meantime checks reviews about culture, work

styles, company strategy, financials, salary surveys and other details about

the company. He checks his reporting manager’s profiles and check common

connections. Upon reaching home, Joe calls Peter for inquiring. Peter gives a

good feedback and thus Joe decides to apply. He opens your message again

and looks for further steps. He responds to your questions and the Google

glass records the video and sends it back to you!

Meanwhile you received a bunch of other responses and you screen each

one of them and finally decide to just submit Joe’s video and resume in a

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report that has various scores the computer computed to determine fit and

your thoughts on how Joe’s aspirations match the opportunity. You forward

the report to the hiring manager and the hiring manager is impressed with

your find. He decided to give you a Badge, Quick Feet!

This is cool! You say, and ring your best friend and colleague Nick! Nick too

is excited and congratulates you. Nick says, the government has further

introduced more regulations to ensure better privacy for candidates and

companies are investing on technology to manage these regulations. You

start thinking about the cost of implementing it. But then you suddenly

remember that you need to get back to recruiting and you say bye to Nick.

At the pace the world is transforming itself, it’s very hard to predict the

future. However here are my pick:

In technology era, it’s fair to assume that major changes would come

from Information Technology and today’s nascent technology; Social

Technology, Mobility, and Analytics would be the stables in future.

Interface gadgets such as Google glass is shaping the way we

interact with computers. These will take centre stage in order to

improve productivity while interacting with computers.

By 2020, Regulations and penalty on compliance miss in Human

Resources would become as stringent as they are for banks today.

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ZMOT, KEY TO SUCCESSFUL TALENT ACQUISITION

Talent acquisition has become synonymous with selling. Corporate and

product brands have been paralleled with employer brand and decision

journey of both a job seeker and a purchaser has been paralleled. This blog

intends to bring the concept of ZMOT to Talent Acquisition and enumerate

the benefits of adopting the new science to ensure companies with war for

talent.

What is ZMOT?

A decade ago, marketers advertised their brands in mass media and

instigated the people to check out their brand and products in the stores.

The first experience of the product at store was called the first moment of

truth. At this point the buyer tries to check if the product lives up to the

promise made in the advertisement. Once the buyer purchases the product,

while using it, he again scrutinises the product to check if the product lives

up to the promise made in the advertisement. This is called the second

moment of truth.

Drawing parallels, in talent acquisition, when a candidate gets the offer

letter, it’s the first moment of truth. Candidate at this point will try to check

if the work offered will live up to the promise made by the recruiter and the

hiring manager. Once he joins the company, he experiences the company

first hand and will again scrutinize the company to check if the company lives

up to the promise. This would become the second moment of truth.

ZMOT stands for Zero Moment of Truth and Google introduced this term to

explain the phenomenon in this decade where people before they go to

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stores, check the product out in digital platforms. And having experienced

the product online (ZMOT) then they go to store and experience the first

moment of truth.

This phenomenon is true with candidates as well where they check the

company and the job opportunity online before they get offer. ZMOT study

conducted on job seekers revealed that on an average, a candidate will check

with 14.5 sources before deciding on First Moment of Truth, an offer.

Therefore we could say that companies lose their candidates even before

they identify right candidate, resulting in loosing of War for Talent.

In order to prevent this from happening, companies need to ensure they

communicate positive aspects of working for the company, the company

EVP, proactively on channels that talent trust; Facebook, LinkedIn, Career

Page. But this isn’t sufficient. People trust people and thus companies need

to create platform where their employees could connect with target talent

and communicate good things about the company and it’s EVP.

In conclusion, companies need to recognise the presence of ZMOT and take

positive steps to build communication channel and content to ensure its

target talent pool hears good things about the company and its accurate EVP

from all sources. Doing so would allow it to build good employer brand and

win war for talent.

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IF STEVE JOBS WERE TO RUN A RECRUITMENT FIRM!

The above chart shows book value of Apple, Manpower, Korn / Ferry

International, Heidrick & Struggles, Spencer Stuart. The difference in 2002-

2005 was comparable but from 2005 Apple took a trajectory that none other

can dream of. From the graph it’s clear that staffing industry has been

struggling to maintain its growth and a major overhaul should happen for the

industry to survive.

In this blog, I would apply principles of Steve Jobs to simulate how Steve

would have turned around the staffing industry if he were running a Staffing

company. This perhaps would give a clue how companies could plan their

overhaul. The below photo best summarizes the principles of Steve:

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Point 1: GO FOR PERFECT: Staffing companies are clearly struggling to

maintain the quality of hire metrics. In a survey conducted by Jobvite,

companies ranked 3rd party recruiters and search firms as 6 out of 9 in order

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of quality of hire. Clearly, staffing firms must focus on improving quality of

hire rather than just focusing on submission and leaving the ounce of

selecting the best person among several submitted profiles on the client.

Point 2: TAP THE EXPERTS: Staffing firms have always struggled to hire the

best talent at all levels. Firms should mitigate this risk by providing high

quality internal training, which is sorely missed because for obvious reasons

such firms are inclined towards hiring trained people from market rather

than training themselves which causes a vicious cycle where everyone is

hoping the other would train and everyone ends up with a wrong hire! Steve

Jobs would have created an organisation which would command high loyalty

and therefore without fear of many loosing trained resources the company

could have invested heavily on training. Also Steve would have attracted best

talent at the top management who could have attracted better middle

management.

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Point 3: BE RUTHLESS: With increasing channels of hiring for corporate such

as social media and other online efficiency boosting tools, competition for

filling a position is becoming intense. Under such business scenario, only the

expert survives. Therefore companies would be forced to look at their

market and their core strengths and choose to focus on their strengths. Not

being ruthless would mean that certain verticals of the company continue to

bleed revenue rendering the whole company inefficient. Steve Jobs would

have first focused on a particular talent cluster and established clear

leadership and then moved to different segments rather than broadly

focusing on any industry.

Point 4: SHUN FOCUS GROUP: Staffing firms must build strong R&D and

business consulting arm that is able to foresee challenges that companies

would experience in their talent supply chain and help mitigating such risks.

Several India staffing firms completely depend on clients for direction

instead of being the beacon.

Point 5: NEVER STOP STUDYING: Corporate are quick to adopt social media

to strengthen their talent supply chain. Freelance recruiters too were quick

to adopt, at least the LinkedIn. However staffing firms in India have not

implemented processes and methods to leverage on their size to effectively

use social media. Here are websites of top firms which DON’T even have link

to Facebook on their webpage!

a. Adecco India

b. Manpower India

c. Head Hunters

d. Mafoi (present but poor implementation)

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e. ABS Consultants (Great scope of improvement)

Point 6: SIMPLIFY: Two decades ago, job sites brought in dramatic shift in

how companies found talent and how people found jobs. However since

then, no significant improvement has occurred in terms of recruitment

methods, TAT from submission to hire, experience of candidate from first

contact to on-boarding or any other parameter. There has been little bit of

improvement here and there but no significant step. Perhaps a great

candidate experience management could be the way forward. GTM-People

matters Talent friendliness Award is one good step in the right direction.

Steve, while reducing TAT between a candidate thinking of a change to

getting hired, would have also focused on providing delightful experience

thus ensuring candidates cherish their time. Perhaps this would have left

Jobs to focus on companies willing to pay that much, but that still would be

a big enough market.

Point 7 (Keep your secrets), 8 (Keep teams Small), 9 (Use more carrot than

stick), 10(Prototype to the extreme): I feel these are not as relevant in

service industry as in high technology driven product companies. If you

believe they do, then please share your thoughts.

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THREE QUESTIONS THAT EMPLOYERS NEED TO ASK

THEMSELVES TO WIN WAR FOR TALENT

1. Are companies engaging with these quasi active job seekers?

Talent today is no more split between Active job seeker and passive job

seeker. A large population of talent is in the grey area in between.

In my experience “NO”. Although LinkedIn has allowed companies to do this

to some extent, companies have by and large not identified this trend and

not done much to engage with quasi job seekers. Job descriptions today still

assume that the reader will apply if he finds himself suitable. How old!

2. Are companies creating platforms for co-creating enough content

online for talent?

Companies have completely missed out on the importance of it

Today target talent is researching companies online. Creating

content consistently that will be looked up by this target talent is a

very important step in talent attraction

Companies cannot do this all alone. They need employees, target

talent, analyst and every stakeholder to create content for the

company. Companies are not focusing on this ecosystem. They

should create systems to co-create.

3. Are companies creating an ecosystem where employees are able to

create positive buzz on Social Media?

A few companies have done well on this parameter, creating social media

policy and encouraging employees to spread positive buzz. Companies have

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adopted technology to allow their employees to share news about jobs and

happenings with their friends. Adoption of these technologies and methods

is still not widespread and there is more that companies could do.

SUCCESSFUL RPO PARTNERSHIP BY ORGANIZATIONAL

GOAL ALIGNMENT

RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) engagements often fail because

they fail to synchronize with business goals. While the whole organization

aligns its strategy to changing business goals, RPO partners are often

dwelling in transactions and seldom attempt to understand impact of

changing business goals on their engagement leading to them being seem as

a disengaged partner who needs constant direction and hand holding. For a

RPO partner to engage on strategic level, it’s imperative to have in-depth

understanding of its process and set their process levers aligned to business

needs. This is only possible when RPO delivery metrics are aligned to

business metrics which in turn are aligned to business goals and a manager

constantly engages with all stakeholders to ensure everyone complies to

changes needs. This effort will have in coupling recruitment performance to

business performance. This blog deals with how we reached a seamless

integration of goals to achieve a highly strategic engagement with our client.

Understand Parameters You Control: Often RPO partners work on number

of resume that needs to be pushed on top of recruitment funnel to ensure

open positions close. But companies often have much more leverage than

the number of resumes sourced. On a broad level, these could be your

recruiter quality, Recruiter numbers, Screening capabilities, Scheduling

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capacities, Sourcing methodologies, Partners and so on! On a more work

level there are several leverage points such as number of work days in a

week.

Calibrate Parameters to Business Outcomes: One must monitor each of

these parameters and measure their impact on recruitment performance

such as recruitment cost, TAT, quality of hire, early attrition etc. Effect of the

recruitment performance should be calibrated against business performance

parameters. These business parameters may be business attrition, Training

performance, performance ratings. The business parameters are extremely

company dependent and should be discovered for every company.

The company may already have understanding on how business parameters

affect business strategy and thus the business goals.

Constant Management of Alignment: Some RPO partners do the above

points however they fail to systematize the constant attempt of aligning RPO

activities to changing business goals. Consistent communication and regular

meetings with business leaders allow understanding of changing business

needs and goals and these should be backed by actionable that are measured

and demonstrated to leaders as a feedback. This constant tweaking rationale

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should be communicated to the team in order to ensure the changes are

seen as a requirement to ensure client observes the RPO engagement as a

competitive advantage.

Top Three Benefits of Strategic Alignments:

1. The company as a whole becomes more agile and stays competitive

which is need of the market in today’s rapidly changing business

environment

2. The RPO partners often are directed by several client SPOCs. This

sometimes results in changing actions that are not aligned. Goal

level alignment results in actions in right direction.

3. Often continues improvement hits road blocks when it comes to

changing process at client end. However when changes have

definite positive results on client objectives, change is better

accepted.

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REWARDS WITHOUT KILLING INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

A group of kids were given paint and brush to make paintings and the Kids

expressed their creativity with full enthusiasm. Later the same group was

told that they would be given rewards for painting. This time kids painted as

they did last time… this time with more vigour but slightly better results. The

same group of kids were on another day given paint and brush and were

asked to paint with NO Rewards. Guess what happened this time? Several

children decided not to paint! They found it just NOT worth the effort

anymore! {Ref: Book Drive by author Pink; Watch his video:

http://bit.ly/TARqG5 }

What caused the kids to paint the first time? It was the inner joy of doing the

activity which the psychologists call as “Intrinsic Motivation”. When external

rewards were stacked, the intrinsic motivation died and kids chose to do it

for external motivation, the reward!

An old joke captures this phenomenon as well as any study could. It is the

story of an elderly man who endured the insults of a crowd of ten-year-olds

each day as they passed his house on their way home from school. One

afternoon, after listening to another round of jeers about how stupid and

ugly and bald he was, the man came up with a plan. He met the children on

his lawn the following Monday and announced that anyone who came back

the next day and yelled rude comments about him would receive a dollar.

Amazed and excited, they showed up even earlier on Tuesday, hollering

epithets for all they were worth. True to his word, the old man ambled out

and paid everyone. “Do the same tomorrow,” he told them, “and you’ll get

twenty-five cents for your trouble.” The kids thought it was still pretty good

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and turned out again on Wednesday to taunt him. At the first catcall, he

walked over with a roll of quarters and again paid his hecklers. “From now

on,” he announced, “I can give you only a penny for doing this.” The kids

looked at each other in disbelief. “A penny?” they repeated scornfully.

“Forget it!” And they never came back again! (Story Courtesy Vyas Umesh)

This man on the left was working very hard to fix traffic light post that has

been hit by a truck and got

damaged. I asked him why he

was doing this and he said his

owner took contract from

government to fix these light

posts. Given he was taking all the

trouble of standing in middle of

that traffic and pollution at night

and yet doing a very precise work

with great quality I asked him why he was taking so much care to do it so

well? He could just finish it quickly and get going! Government would still pay

him! For that he said this is his work and he likes doing it right! What is it if

not INTRINSIC MOTIVATION!

How do you get most people to take such great personal care in doing work

RIGHT? Rewarding for each great work would ensure the owner would not

make profits! Not providing rewards would ensure only those few

intrinsically motivated people do a great work. Stick or punishments could

be implemented to ensure people achieve minimum expectation but not

excellence.

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Is there any way to get people to do their best? Of course YES!

Reward is not always CASH: Recognition has always played a role in

improving intrinsic motivation and deriving compliance. The British awarded

“sir” in order to capitalize on this human behaviour, didn’t they!

Random Awards: Cash award need not be given for every great work.

Random work of excellence could be given high award creating an

expectation for great work once in a while. This anticipation alone could

motivate people for long.

Flexibility: providing a little flexibility to person who has demonstrated great

work allows holding person more accountable to achieve excellence. No

flexibility breeds mediocre doesn’t it?

Sweepstakes: Allowing people to participate in sweepstakes only on

achieving certain level of quality consistently allows in creating a motivation

to achieve excellence and avoids flip side of pressurizing people.

End of reward? No, for achieving minimum expected quality, one must

device some sort of award. But reward have limitation beyond this point!

In such ways, one could device rewards in that does not kill intrinsic

motivation and at the same time garners more compliance and desired

behaviour.

WHAT IS YOUR OFFICE WALL SAYING?

What do you see when you look at the walls in your office? Plain white paint?

A few posters of founders? Or perhaps some notice boards and white

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boards? These represents wasted opportunity to boost productivity of your

employees.

In an experiment conducted by two Dutch researchers, a bunch of students

of a college were divided into two groups. Both groups were given a test in

separate rooms. However one group was asked to talk about “what it would

mean to be a professor” before taking the test while the other was asked to

talk about “football hooliganism“. Could you guess which team average

marks was higher? Well, the team that spoke about ”what it would mean to

be a professor“! Wondering why two teams of similar intellect scored

differently on the same test? It’s because the first team was PRIMED to be

SMART, since it is this word that is associated with professors. Since the first

group students were primed positive feeling they did better than they would

otherwise have and the second group was negatively primed, the first scored

55.6 whereas the second scored 42.6 (Malcolm Gladwell’s book blink Pg 56)

Power poses are powerful. Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist at Harvard

Business School, explains that when we are happy and confident, we express

these power poses automatically and when we are unhappy and scared we

tumble on our own body language. If we could train ourselves to express

power pose when we start to feel sad and down, we could actually reverse

our feelings! Simply put, when we are sad we cry and when we are elated we

dance. So when you begin to feel sad, if you could make yourself put music

on and start dancing, you would soon start feeling better. Initial few minutes

of dance could feel phony since it’s out of sync with the feelings but soon our

action dominates our brain chemicals called feelings. Watch this video:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ks-

_Mh1QhMc

So what could be done to office walls based on these two points that are well

researched and proven?

Simple, Load the wall with POSITIVE WORDS AND POWER POSES!

Suddenly the employees would start exhibiting similar characteristics! And

the HR team may have to continually put new ones to ensure people read,

or use Gamification techniques to get employees to pay attention to new

wall items but all this WILL result in positive employees delivering better

value to company.

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LEADERSHIP: ALIGNING INTENTIONS

There are many articles and quotes that elaborates difference between a

manager and a leader. The most concise and accurate in my view are

presented by Dwight Eisenhower and Peter F. Drucker.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want

done because he wants to do it – Dwight Eisenhower

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things –

Peter F. Drucker

Fusing both these ideas and finding something core to human could bring

out who a leader is and who a manager is. Concisely put, leader is he, who

aligns intentions of his team to achieve a purpose. Managers essentially

helps aligned teams achieve desired result by providing input required by the

team. However if the team has different intentions then the manager would

either fail or become a situational leader, thus aligning intention of the team.

Having zeroed in on the core fundamental activity of a leader, the next

question is how could one align intention of a bunch a people, creating teams

out of them? Well these simple practices could help:

State your intentions from start and communicate it continually

Hold your intentions with high integrity (walk your talk) and

demonstrate it whenever possible

Inspire the team with content that justifies your intentions

Get clear commitment from the team on their alignment

Be prepared to remove people who do not align even after several

effort

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IS YOUR RECRUITMENT STRATEGY ASSUMING TALENT

IS IN ABUNDANCE?

Recruitment strategy of several companies can be summed up as “Get loads

of people to apply for jobs and start rejecting the worst and select the rest”

This strategy worked in the past when talent was in abundance and economy

was just inching towards knowledge economy that it is today. Even retention

strategies were mostly “My way or highway”!

However today we are in full-fledged knowledge economy and top talent is

a source of competitive advantage. Advent of social media and Glassdoor

have ensured that talent has access to all kinds of information that they

never had in the past. These developments are resulting in several

companies settle for the second rung of talent, leaving them less

competitive!

So what is the option? Companies don’t have to completely do away with

this strategy. All they need to do is identify talent pool that is most scarce;

R&D or any other more specific skill that is very difficult to find and design a

separate recruitment strategy for them. As Mali Mahalingam said during his

speech in People Matters Social Recruitment Summit “recruitment funnel

needs to be replaced by recruitment tunnel”. Social media ought to be

leveraged by recruiters to connect from one employee to one target

candidate to another to ensure scarce talent can be attracted by way of

connections. Retention strategy should be defined differently too for such

group to ensure there is only limited replacement recruitment. To achieve

this end, companies need to do a lot of homework such as building EVP,

communicating and living it. But it is essential to stay competitive.

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CHALLENGES OF TODAY’S RPOS

Having served as Marketing Manager in RPO companies, I have always been

closely listening to my clients. Some appreciated our work and others didn’t.

But top three challenges they all would fret about are these:

1. Pumping in resumes: Recruiters at RPO companies are under

pressure to fill positions. This pressure is directly felt by the

recruiters and sometimes they pump resumes to hiring managers

without scrutinizing them strictly. This results in hiring managers

wasting their precious time rejecting resumes that shouldn’t have

come to them in the first place. This frustration builds over time and

creates a general feeling among hiring managers that the RPO team

isn’t capable. Creating such an impression can only lead to the RPO

team losing their contract over time because of noise in the

business.

2. SLAs that don’t align to Business Success: I find this happen so often

that RPOs have grown to ignore any concerns raised in this direction.

RPOs today continue to sign on simple straightforward SLAs and

grading their performance top class by benchmarking themselves

with competitor RPO companies. Clients generally stay puzzled why

they are still reeling under the pressure of War for Talent. Slowing

hiring manager start feeling that their RPO partners are not truly

their partners in success and the partnerships begins on its journey

downwards until the SLAs show the result.

3. Being Strategic Partner: Companies typically rely on their

recruitment teams to provide them intelligence on talent. When

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recruitment is outsources, this intelligence stops to flow and this

over time bothers the hiring managers. Recruiters who were earlier

working as talent advisor, are no more available for advice and RPO

partner is more focused on their process, SLA and filling jobs rather

than helping hiring managers in manpower planning etc

How Do We Fix These?

Although the problem seems complicated, the solution is quite simple, Go

above and beyond.

Going above and beyond in submission quality would mean ensuring

recruiters get face time with business to truly understand the unsaid in job

description. Training recruiters on importance of ensuring tight scrutiny of

profile before submission, holding recruiters accountable by strict audits and

management truly demonstrating their concern on the parameter…when

management truly cares about something, it percolates down.

Going above and beyond in SLAs would mean holding meetings with client’s

training departments to ensure they are happy with the incoming talent,

ensuring hiring manager satisfaction is measured and hiring manager is

involved in challenges faced in talent acquisition, ensuring there are

quarterly meetings with finance to check cost and productivity targets are

being met. Repercussion of RPO’s work is measured by various departments

and expectations should be managed across.

Going above and beyond in being a talent advisor is to join the hiring

managers in their annual planning meets, providing them market

intelligence, benchmarks, showing them positive impact of the SLAs on

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business output and being available for a quick chat whenever required. To

achieve this end, RPOs need to go beyond SLAs, beyond contracts, beyond

what’s said… to the place where client feels the RPO and its effort and its

contribution in business success.