Not long back, come the placement season, campuses used to be flush with companies raring to hire the best talent. Very often, more than 10-20 companies used to visit the same campus targeting the same set of 100 students. This often led to intense competition amongst companies as who could attract the most & the best. Many of us HR Heads discussed the futility of such competition, and the need for an efficient & effective method.
Today, companies that form part of large groups have learnt to consolidate their efforts to target campuses as a group rather than as individual companies. Many companies have found it more productive, efficient and cost effective to consolidate their requirements and conduct 'pooled campus recruitment' with similar minded companies.
The rapid growth and expansion of businesses is driving an ever increasing need to ensure required talent supply. The 'War for Talent' has never been so intensive - competitive markets, changing customer requirements and volatile technologies that become obsolete by the time it is deployed, necessitate companies to be innovative to keep up their profit levels.
The need to have contemporary skills, mindset and perspective; supply of leadership for tomorrow are leading more & more companies to induct a diverse, young & energetic work force. While the economy does determine the off-take of campus students, many companies have built it into their strategy to hire a certain number of freshers, thus there is a specific need every year for campus recruitments.
India Inc has witnessed 21% growth in fresher recruitment in the July-September quarter. Industries like energy, infrastructure, consulting, media, IT and retail has grown up by over 20% in Q2, FY 11-12. The slowdown in the US and European countries has not impacted us much, Indian market are showing more growth. Some IT companies have planned for gross hiring of 60,000 in FY12 and has already made over 35,000 campus offers for FY13.
The need for finding the right talent for the right job in a faster and cost effective manner is intensifying by the day. Infusion of fresh talent directly from campuses supports the youthfulness of the organization, builds the leadership pipeline and unleashes creativity. Young talents are adaptable, flexible and can be molded to the requirement of the organization.
Market and technology dynamics have forced the educational institutes to review and revise their curriculums more often than before. With India being regarded as a good source of qualified English speaking talent world over, several multinationals have setup their back-office and customer-facing establishments in the country, creating more and more demand for talent. Accordingly, the numbers of colleges and the specializations & super specializations they offer have risen to meet his growing need. Besides coping with this rising demand, they have an additional challenge to not only place their students in jobs but in jobs of their interest and natural inclination, so as to distinguish themselves from other peer colleges. The student community is impacted too. The students in this era are faced with a fundamentally different problem than that of finding a job, which their previous generations confronted. The ptions are too many to choose from. Not only in the nature of job but also the way it is to be executed - shift timings, work from home, connecting with / commuting to geographies in different time zones, to name a few. It is like a lot is happening everywhere and they are unable to keep track of all that is happening.
Pooled campus recruitment
The concept of Pooled Campus Recruitment (PCR) that has evolved recently does the much needed task of providing a common platform for companies, institutions and students to come together to put forward their needs and get them met. Simply put, it is a mechanism of recruitment where potential job seeking students from several colleges from a particular locality gather at one place, which a company visits to hire employees.
It also includes consolidated efforts of group companies to go to campuses as group rather than individual companies. The benefits offered by Pooled Campus Recruitment (PCR) are numerous -
- Get access to authentic candidates with genuine degrees / qualifications
- Opportunity for interacting with the best talent pool under one roof
- Ease of finding the right candidate matching a specific criteria
- Centralized quick processing
- Cost effectiveness and
- Significant reduction in efforts pertaining to logistics / co-ordination
Experiential learnings and benefits
Experience with the pooled campus hiring in my professional career has been excellent. It enables to cover a large number of campuses effectively and efficiently. In my experience, this has not only strengthened the group image but also enables to place offers to a variety of students from different fields and backgrounds as per the individual companies' requirements within the group. This is a win-win situation, for both the campuses and also for the organizations. There are three elements critical to the success of campus recruitment strategy.
1. Employer branding
2. Process of selection, on boarding, induction, training and career growth
3. Industry-institute relations
Employer branding is not only built by branding communication but more relevantly, how the alumni, professors and the student community perceive the company.
Students rarely look at compensation and position alone, the role offered, industry and most critically the opportunity to learn and grow is what drives the students choice of company. Although companies today face loads of challenges in terms of recruiting the right candidate, it also faces hurdles in retaining their pool of top performers. Such challenges can be met through structured induction of new joinees and introduction to the group's vision, mission and values, orientation towards the organization's goals and objectives, effective on-boarding process, identification of training needs and imparting training to employees from time to time, thereby leading to their professional and personal growth. Many companies run 'Young Leaders Program' and the like which treat their employees as a different cadre. Companies have introduced buddy and mentors to handhold these young leaders.
Consistent branding and relationship with the campuses helps in building long and fruitful alliances. Companies can increase their visibility and can be more approachable by campuses; by participating in various seminars, curricular forums and also by offering students summer trainings / internships. Students undergoing summer trainings would have the feeling of the organizations culture which could possibly convert a trainee into an employee. Also, the leadership team of the organizations can visit the campuses and share their insights with the students. This would not necessarily be around the time of placements but all around the year. Such interactions would give a true image about the organizations work culture to the students or the prospective employees.
I believe that when all these three elements are deployed creatively, consistently and collaboratively, they create a truly robust employer brand identity. In the contest of group company hiring or pooled campus hiring, great synergies develop and result in extraordinary experience for the campus recruits. Thus, bringing in higher productivity and retention amongst them. Even those who leave the company or are not selected continue as our brand ambassadors.
Pooled campus recruitment agencies
An upcoming trend in PCR is the entry of players offering end-to-end solution, right from short listing the apt candidates matching recruiter's criteria up to performing preboarding joining formalities. These players are independent third party organizations that are neither a part of the company nor of the college. Their sole job is to connect colleges and companies. They offer to shoulder the responsibility of recruitment alongside the college's placement cell and the company's hiring department.
It is the goal that had for long been begging achievement - the marriage of the institute with the industry. For the organizations, they serve to increase campus reach, both for small and medium sized firms looking to recruit from a few colleges as well as large firms aspiring to recruit from a wide array of colleges. Their services are particularly of help when the recruitment requirement is large in numbers and the need is immediate - they are well equipped to handle quick bulk hiring and can significantly improve the operational efficiency of recruitment process. They achieve this through regular follow ups with candidates / colleges on behalf of the company till the prospects join.
For the educational institutions, they help not only in enhancing the campus placements in terms of quantity or numbers but also in terms of quality, where a student gets to know about various options available to him and can then choose the most suitable profile meeting his professional and personal needs. The reach of these organizations is much greater than that of any college's placement cell because their operations and offices span throughout the country. They are also better trained to present the colleges and their students in a more attractive and favorable manner.
Leveraging technology to drive effeciency in PCR
Most of these companies run on a technological platform where the complete workflow is automated and is executed on system. The usual advantages of using such platform are :
- 24x7 availability of a large searchable database of authenticated students and companies
- Hosting of student video profiles and company corporate presentations
- Zero duplicity of student / company profiles
- Standardized student and company profiles capturing key relevant parameters
- Secure environment protected by logins / passwords
- Facility for colleges and companies to disable profile display to those they want to avoid by means of public / private flag setting
- Companies can shortlist students from colleges across the country online based on their business criteria
- Students / colleges can learn about and choose companies from across the country online based on their suitability
- Simple and direct communication between recruiter and student
- Collaboration through the integrated email and SMS facility from within the system
- Single place access to all information regarding the hiring process to the recruiting company's senior management and college's placement cell heads, thus reducing confusion and miscommunication
Transparency in the entire hiring process
Ability to generate customized MIS, analytics and visual charts on recruitment process that could be directly fed into the company's or college's internal systems
On-line upload and sharing of joining kit / training modules for selected candidates by companies
Going on-line has several benefits for the colleges - making announcements, increasing student mutual interaction through message boards, conducting online tests, sharing company specific preparatory material targeted towards making it thru the interview process of the student's dream company, blocking students who have been placed so that those remaining may get a chance for being picked up etc
The future
Based on the current need for PCR and trends in the area, the future looks exciting. There are several areas which could be addressed for generating value both for the college and the company. With the transactional activities being handled in a breeze, thanks to IT, more time and energy could now be focused on transformational and futuristic strategy building endeavors.
Colleges' perspective
Going beyond the usual apparent talent attributes: The colleges can play a more vital role in identifying and projecting to companies those dimensions of their professional and personal individuality that are beyond the usual parameters - educational qualification, academic and extracurricular accomplishments etc which are easily evident from their profiles. Filling the need for future preparedness: The colleges must develop an eye for finding candidates who meet the companies' future growth and expansion needs - those candidates who can survive tough times and deliver under unfavorable circumstances.
Grooming students for the real world: The faculty must be encouraged to be in constant touch with the industry by means of short term contract jobs, participation in industry-academia forums, seminars etc. This way they can know the real requirements of the real world and groom their students accordingly. Involving companies in deciding curriculum: The institutes shall constantly seek industry feedback on the curriculum and revise it from time to time so that the training effort on the company's end may be minimized and the candidate can start performing his role right from day one in the company.
Companies' perspective
Becoming preferential employers: They may encourage the institutes to train their students even better by becoming premium / preferred employers through guaranteeing them for recruiting a set minimum number of students every year. In response, the college may invite a premium recruiter first before calling anybody else for hiring so that the premium employer gets to choose among the best of the candidates. Continuous learning programs: By becoming front line recruiters, the companies may get into arrangements with the colleges for providing continual training programs for candidates on the latest technologies and frameworks, even after they have left the college and joined the company. This way the college can also build a very strong alumnus who's always available for any guidance or help. And at the same time the burden on the learning and development department of the company may be reduced. Real industry experience: Companies can provide a full day company visit to potential candidates for increasing the likelihood of the best candidates joining them. Such an arrangement also gives a firsthand experience to the candidate of the organizational work culture and professional expectations.
Going forward
In coming times, it is expected that more innovative contracts and business models would come up that would not only strengthen the institute-industry relationship in the long run but also aid in placing the right candidates into the right jobs. I am sure that, going ahead, companies who are part of groups will combine & visit campuses as group. Other companies will align with like-minded companies to bring in efficiencies of scale, scope and diversity.
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