‘Kshitij 2015’, XIMB’s annual HR conclave, was held at the Institute’s campus in Bhubaneshwar on September 6. This year, the main topic of discussion was “Emerging trends in Recruitment”.
The speakers represented diverse industries, and included Pradeep Deshpande, GM Talent Acquisition, Schnieder Electric; Priya Ranjan Prasad, COO and SVP, Essar Steel India Ltd.; Simanta Mohanty, Executive Chief Consultant, Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA); and Jayati Dwivedy, Recruitment Head, British Telecom. The discussion was moderated by Prof DP Kar of XIMB.
The event started with the launch of the 9th edition of HR Xpert, the annual magazine of XIMAHR. The first speaker, Ms Jayati Dwivedy, said that recruitment has come to the forefront after the rapid growth of industry.
Describing the importance of diversity in the workforce, in terms of gender, culture and geography, she spoke about the significant role Big Data will play in the field of talent acquisition. She concluded by talking about social media channels and compliance.
Social media
Schneider Electric’s Pradeep Deshpande said: “Today, recruitment is much more than matching profiles and checking resumes.” Social media sites, especially LinkedIn, have helped recruiters tap into the huge pool of passive applicants and also understand important trends, such as attrition.
Mr Deshpande described SPICE, the internal social media collaboration platform of Schneider Electric, and explained to the students how it helped his office to understand employees better.
Simanta Mohanty, of RUSA, talked about the new hunt for ‘startup’ people in the market and offered insights on the challenges faced by the recruiters in today’s world, the chief issue being talent acquisition.
He highlighted the importance of creating a consumer experience for employees that would serve as a fulcrum for recruitment strategies. Besides tapping social media such as Linkedin and Facebook, the role of headhunters is crucial to recruiters as they need to capitalise on the collective network of the target group, he said.
Talent acquisition
Essar Steel’s Priya Ranjan Prasad, who described the Tata business excellence model, threw light on the strategy of talent acquisition of both white collar and blue collar workers. He spoke about the onboarding process and the cultural shock employees face because of changing jobs and the importance of mentoring and coaching through the whole process of recruitment.
Prasad stressed the importance of continuous engagement, that is a state of emotional and intellectual involvement with the organisation, and the process of positive and negative feedback. He concluded by describing the role of training and development in a successful HR system.
This was followed by a Q and A session with the students. The winners of the article writing contest were announced: The first prize went to Arka Chatterjee and Debangshu Bhattacharjee, and Kavyashree M Hegde came second.
Prof DP Kar gave the vote of thanks.