186 Views
0 Comments
Not all life-changing decisions in your life would necessarily come dramatically. Mine came during a small stint in a kin’s foundry. I was a student of manufacturing engineering back then. All I did was suggest a small change in the way they were casting in the foundry. This little modification saved them lakhs of rupees per month.
This real-world assignment gave me a vital insight: theories need to be constantly challenged, tested and tried in application, especially in India. But wait, eventually, I realised even that wasn’t so vital. The actual challenge was something else. The gap that broadened the pit between great companies and great talent was due to the age-old mechanism of hiring students from colleges.
The central flaw in ‘bulk hiring’
During my first ever job with a noted corporate firm Mahindra, I felt this gap acutely. I was hired for one reason, but being used for another reason. There was a central flaw in the whole concept of ‘bulk hiring’. If you haven’t watched ‘Honest engineering placements’ video from AIB, you probably should. It will open your eyes to some bitter realities, such as:
- MNCs coming for campus placement have obsolete mechanisms of hiring
- There’s no system to gauge the right talent for the right department
- New recruits soon get frustrated and leave jobs
I am the sort of person who sees opportunity in the midst of crisis. I was very sure if we devised a system where talented youth from colleges were given the right profile, they would enjoy their jobs leading to a better work-life balance. Take for instance, a company like Infosys hires 1000's of college students but they actually do not have a real mechanism to judge whether the true interest of a candidate lies in say .NET or java etc. Not a single question or a test to determined that. Every other fresher’s resume is like a Xerox copy of others. I also feel it’s insane how anyone could judge a person’s career path, that too at the start of his/her career within a few minutes of mechanical interviews/tests. If you have ever interviewed fresh candidates for hiring and seen how they perform, you will know exactly what I am talking about.
What are you looking for as a company?
In my second role, as a Mahindra start-up, I realized that some of the interns could really out-perform some of the good employees I had. I was willing to pay them good stipend and would have loved to hire them. In my first start-up Jagbros Pvt. Ltd - which was into ambient advertising and marketing, I realized two major things:
1. As a small company, you are looking for diverse skill set and talents for the hundreds of tasks at hand. That could be from a simple logo/stationary design, to initial web or mobile apps, market research to sales and marketing activities, from technical research to architecture design etc. etc. The challenge is you cannot afford a professional at the moment. You are basically looking for talent in a diverse skill set in lowest cost.
2. As a small company, you want to hire the best people without losing credibility. I can bet any start-up’s top-most priority is to get a team and everyone is clueless about the same. How can you really find and reach out to the best talent without sounding so desperate (read –urgently hiring)? Trust me spending weeks in searching, scanning, coordinating with thousands of resumes can still leave you with no results and a bad resource as an option to hire.
In India, the whole process of early stage recruitment is often highly frustrating and inefficient. But who was going to change this? I decided I would, along with my team and I founded Youth4Work. Here’s why we started up in this segment:
- Students in Indian colleges and universities have potential
- Companies need to re-orient themselves to hire based on talent not degrees
Assessed professional profile
I realized that one of the many ways to bridge this gap was to encourage the concept of ‘Assessed professional profile’ – a mechanism of Youth4Work. We had found a solution to a pain point. And Youth4Work got its first task to do – hunt talent and get them assessed most objectively, listing talents, orientation, long-term goals, communication, interests and so on. There’s much more that we are doing. We are not only bridging the gap now but have also created actionable ways to get people talking, interacting and discussing. My dream is that this kind of realistic assessment becomes a culture and spreads beyond our startup. What say?
This real-world assignment gave me a vital insight: theories need to be constantly challenged, tested and tried in application, especially in India. But wait, eventually, I realised even that wasn’t so vital. The actual challenge was something else. The gap that broadened the pit between great companies and great talent was due to the age-old mechanism of hiring students from colleges.
The central flaw in ‘bulk hiring’
During my first ever job with a noted corporate firm Mahindra, I felt this gap acutely. I was hired for one reason, but being used for another reason. There was a central flaw in the whole concept of ‘bulk hiring’. If you haven’t watched ‘Honest engineering placements’ video from AIB, you probably should. It will open your eyes to some bitter realities, such as:
- MNCs coming for campus placement have obsolete mechanisms of hiring
- There’s no system to gauge the right talent for the right department
- New recruits soon get frustrated and leave jobs
I am the sort of person who sees opportunity in the midst of crisis. I was very sure if we devised a system where talented youth from colleges were given the right profile, they would enjoy their jobs leading to a better work-life balance. Take for instance, a company like Infosys hires 1000's of college students but they actually do not have a real mechanism to judge whether the true interest of a candidate lies in say .NET or java etc. Not a single question or a test to determined that. Every other fresher’s resume is like a Xerox copy of others. I also feel it’s insane how anyone could judge a person’s career path, that too at the start of his/her career within a few minutes of mechanical interviews/tests. If you have ever interviewed fresh candidates for hiring and seen how they perform, you will know exactly what I am talking about.
What are you looking for as a company?
In my second role, as a Mahindra start-up, I realized that some of the interns could really out-perform some of the good employees I had. I was willing to pay them good stipend and would have loved to hire them. In my first start-up Jagbros Pvt. Ltd - which was into ambient advertising and marketing, I realized two major things:
1. As a small company, you are looking for diverse skill set and talents for the hundreds of tasks at hand. That could be from a simple logo/stationary design, to initial web or mobile apps, market research to sales and marketing activities, from technical research to architecture design etc. etc. The challenge is you cannot afford a professional at the moment. You are basically looking for talent in a diverse skill set in lowest cost.
2. As a small company, you want to hire the best people without losing credibility. I can bet any start-up’s top-most priority is to get a team and everyone is clueless about the same. How can you really find and reach out to the best talent without sounding so desperate (read –urgently hiring)? Trust me spending weeks in searching, scanning, coordinating with thousands of resumes can still leave you with no results and a bad resource as an option to hire.
In India, the whole process of early stage recruitment is often highly frustrating and inefficient. But who was going to change this? I decided I would, along with my team and I founded Youth4Work. Here’s why we started up in this segment:
- Students in Indian colleges and universities have potential
- Companies need to re-orient themselves to hire based on talent not degrees
Assessed professional profile
I realized that one of the many ways to bridge this gap was to encourage the concept of ‘Assessed professional profile’ – a mechanism of Youth4Work. We had found a solution to a pain point. And Youth4Work got its first task to do – hunt talent and get them assessed most objectively, listing talents, orientation, long-term goals, communication, interests and so on. There’s much more that we are doing. We are not only bridging the gap now but have also created actionable ways to get people talking, interacting and discussing. My dream is that this kind of realistic assessment becomes a culture and spreads beyond our startup. What say?
-
- Social Share
for this Blog
- Social Share
-
Comment
Porfolio And Blogs
Rachit Jain follows various companies, these companies and employers can view Rachit's resume.
Rachit-Jain's Blogs/Portfolios
