ZUBIN MODY HR HEAD, INDUSIND BANK Hiring: Then & NOW Zubin Mody (HR Head, IndusInd Bank) says recruitment strategy has evolved with the business needs Issue Date - 01/03/2013 |
 Q. What are the latest industry trends when it comes to recruitment and selection? How have you seen the pattern changing with time?A. Hiring process (recruitment and selection) is the backbone of business performance of any organisation, and hiring critical resources in a cost efficient and timely manner gives an organisation competitive advantage at the market place. Some of the latest trends in recruitment and selection are: 1 Increased leveraging of social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to source talent and build relationships with a wider pool of candidates. 2 Intensive usage of low-cost informal sources of recruitment, as employee referrals. 3 Increased scale of hiring necessitating outsourcing of recruitment processes to external service providers. 4 Poaching of talent from competitors by offering higher job responsibility and compensation. 5 Competency assessment-based selection techniques to assess perceived future value creation by a candidate. Q. What exactly do you look in candidates apart from the skills that they have? A. Apart from the functional skills, we look for a host of factors as: 1 Strategic suitability with the organisation’s vision, values, culture and business direction. 2 Integrity, professionalism and discipline in business conduct. 3 Entrepreneurship and innovation in handling business complexity. 4 Willingness to learn and grow to assume more complex and enhanced future job responsibilities. Q. Why is selection and recruitment a challenge today for HR? A. Today organisations work in a fast-paced and competitive environment and only quality resources with relevant work experience and result orientation can anchor the business success. |
 Hiring processes (recruitment and selection) continue to be a challenge, as HR function has to contend with a market environment characterised by:n Scarce talent pool (in relation to growth pursued by competing companies in an industry). 1 Rising compensation. 2 Increasing attrition due to poaching of quality talent. 3 Increased cost of acquiring talent. Q. Is there any different way to access a candidate who comes across as someone with strong morals and ethics? A. Apart from conventional selection tools of interviews and written tests, we also conduct reference checks and background verifications on selected candidates. As most of the candidates are from peer banks, it is easy to get market feedback on the candidates to ascertain their integrity. Hiring from employee referrals also helps to source candidates with strong ethical values, as internal employees would not refer candidates who would be a misfit. Q. How has your recruitment strategy evolved with time? A. Our recruitment strategy has evolved with the business needs. Basically our hiring focuses on recruiting for critical leadership positions and mass hiring for front-line sales and operations positions. Our recruitment approach is aligned with the business imperatives and has indeed helped us in quality and cost-efficient hiring. Q. What exactly do you do to handle a biased approach during an interview? A. is possible that there can be a bias towards a candidate referred by an internal employee. But multilevel interviews and selection based on rating obtained during interviews from HR, line managers and departmental and functional heads remove the possibility of a candidate getting selected because of the bias of a single interviewer. |
