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PANKAJ MITTAL DIRECTOR, ARCHELONS
From Just a Talent to The Right Talent
Pankaj Mittal (Director, ARCHELONS) explains the extra in a candidate that determines employee immediate future with an organisation
Issue Date - 01/03/2013
 
Steve Jobs was more than just an entrepreneur. Albeit, the co-founder, former chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. was a visionary and left behind a mammoth challenge in the hands of his successors. Like many other thoroughbred entrepreneurs, Mr. Jobs taught every avid marketer that marketing a product is all about identifying an audience and getting on to their nerves to make them buy and preach further.

In 21st century, selling your enterprise as a medium to work is no different, if not exactly the same. Today employers are desired to be competent, thoughtful. The term talent you may say is self-explanatory, but it is not that simple when you are the boss.

Different organisations prefer to define talent differently and according to their needs and aspirations, rather than blindly following prescribed norms. In general words, talent is a pool of individuals who can make a difference to the levels of organisational performance. This difference is either through their immediate contribution or with the potential to contribute in the long-run. After all, a business is only as good as the people in it!

The entire concept of talent recruitment and further management can be misleading just the definition of talent. Technical and job related skills that meet the minimum requirements set by an organisation indeed form the crux of it. If recruitment is all that simple then why do we have frustrated employees and grumpy employers? In a market full of resumes and degrees, picking the real talent is certainly a herculean task.

I remember one of my interactions, which proved to be quite informative, with a candidate during a campus visit. A gentleman with a pleasing personality and crisp communication was sharing his aspirations with me. I generally prefer to term interviews as interactions because it stimulates one’s interest in sharing effectively – probably due to the semi-informal atmosphere one creates by saying, “Let’s talk”.

I found this gentleman promising till I asked him my most favourite question, “why this job?”. The aspirant gave me all plausible answers starting from remuneration to opportunities, however he missed out ‘expertise’ which is the most relevant and important aspect. What is that ‘extra’, apart from the usual that determines employee’s immediate future and the company’s long-term goals.

Welcome to the era of soft skills, the era of emotional intelligence quotient. Wikipedia defines it as, “the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterise relationships with other people, and that compliment a person’s hard skills”. In short, make him/her the king among pawns! A long, detailed conversation touching a bit of all the aspects like academics, hobbies, interests, family background can help.

I personally ask a lot of questions related to sports because I believe that an individual with a sportsmen spirit can prove to be a good team player, take feedback and improve. Checking how one deals with stress and pressure at workplace indicates the chances to get manipulated. Reasoning and adaptability, presentation, communication skills along with communication etiquette are other important aspects. Remember, a strained communication yields a jigsaw solved, albeit with a few pieces missing. Planning is necessary but execution is equally important.

Recently, I read an article that perfectly quoted an alarming instance that Indian employers today have trouble finding the right candidate for the right job. This is bound to intensify further until employers will not set their game with key recruitment marketing techniques. It was not before the early 1990s that the concept of strategic HR came into being. Today we are entering a new era of talent management. Effective recruitment and its management calls for an able leadership that can pick from the crowd and inspire. After all a company runs on the concept of mutuality.

Remember, your company is a hot product that you want talent to buy. A successful company is one that invests heavily on leadership development as an integral part of its functioning and works on leaders at organisational, team and individual levels. Deciding on a thoroughbred recruitment process (either outsourcing or doing itself), developing clear, well-marked job descriptions (to attract the right candidates for the job), defining an effective interview strategy (to reveal not only the ‘hard’ skills, but the ‘soft’ skills of the candidate) and then managing the talent (by selling the ‘benefits’ of your company), so as to retain them are essential for a company to survive and flourish.

We can never rest our case as far as perfection in recruitment is concerned, but building the talent and growing it is what we can always play safe with. Counselling, open policies, soft skills training are some measures we claim to have implemented in our organisations.

Rest assured that it is a booming market out there which is innovating constantly. It is high time that we too innovate, swim across the tide, and look for unchartered territory. As, a man who has not made a mistake is a man who has done nothing!
Sanghamitra Khan           

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