2. |SEPTEMBER 201676
The TA League Annual Conference 2016 felicitated organizations that
excelled in designing talent acquisition practices to compress the hiring
cycle, improve outcomes and deliver high performing employees
By Dhruv Mukerjee & Shalini Sengupta
BEST PRACTICES
INTERVIEWSPECIALFEATURE
|SEPTEMBER 201676
3. SEPTEMBER 2016 | 77
T
alent Acquisition practices in any
organization remain in constant flux.
Businesses, driven mostly by technolog-
ical transformations or changes in their
business models find themselves in the midst of
evolving talent demands on one hand and shifting
talent pools on the other. This altering talent
landscape has warranted recruiters to design their
talent acquisition programs, processes, and func-
tions to match the overall expectations of both
the businesses and the diverse talent pool. Tasked
with the gargantuan undertaking of being respon-
sible for acquiring the right talent in to support
business demands, recruiters and talent acquisi-
tion heads are themselves in a need of constant
upgradation of their skills. To support businesses,
talent acquisition professionals are now respon-
tions havea multi-generational cohort of people
contributing towards the same cause. If not
recognized and addressed, companies might soon
face gaps in the management. While the matured
workforce is essential, it is equally important for
organizations to understandthe relevance of the
millennial workforce as they come with their
own dynamic skill sets. Millennials look at things
differently and so are their sourcing methods,
which are generally more technology reliant. So
if companies, in the coming future, are able to
leverage the synthesis of this multi-generational
workforce, they would be able to drive business
growth.
The changing business models compel
recruiters to focus on developing three sets of
goals – immediate, medium, and long-term, in
parallel to making dynamic and robust recruit-
ment strategies. By mapping the changing land-
scape and evolving candidate preference in the
future while addressing the current talent needs
of the company, talent acquisition heads can effec-
tively contribute towards their business priorities.
Since every organization has different approach
and culture, the strategies will also vary according
to their recruitment needs.
With rapidly evolving talent market, organiza-
tions need to understand that if they don’t adapt
to the changing business environment, they won’t
succeed. Thus there is a need for most of the orga-
nizations to go back to the boardroom and chalk
out the newer plans for recruitment strategy.
These were some of the concerns that the 4th
edition of the TA League Annual Conference
2016 sought to address. And in order to recognize
companies that have excelled in differentelements
that constitute talent acquisition,5 organizations
were recognized for their various best practices.
The TA League Awards 2016 saw more than 200
applications, out of which five were adjudged
winners, one each across five different categories.
The shortlisted 15 finalists in the five categories
presented their company’s Best Practices as a
case for selection to the 6-member jury on the eve
of the Awards ceremony, followed by the Q&A
session. After intense deliberation and debate,
the jury members finally decided on the winners
within each category.
This special feature presents a brief snapshot
of best winning practices of winning organiza-
tions.
The changing business models
compel recruiters to focus
on developing three sets of
goals – immediate, medium,
and long-term, in parallel to
making dynamic and robust
recruitment strategies
sible for sourcing new talent pools while also
ensuring that they are able to engage and retain
the top talent in organizations. And to execute
this, they need to stay ahead of the curve.
The new-age technology tools have broken
down silos and blurred out recruitment bound-
aries, which in turn has amplified the need to
re-skill recruiters as it is now the essential mecha-
nism to help them stay updated and access and
engage talent. It will be an interesting journey
for organizations to see how they are going about
it. While technology has become a game changer,
organizations also feel the need to actively seek
and understand how millennials work and how
can they be effectively engaged. The workforce
demography has reached a point where organiza-
SPECIALFEATURE
SEPTEMBER 2016 | 77
4. |SEPTEMBER 201680
F
or Flipkart, building a relationship
with talent is what defined its Employer
Branding.
Business Challenge
For an organisation like Flipkart, which has
rapidly grown from a mere online bookstore to
one of the largest e-commerce website in India,
the core challenge was two pronged. For creating
a robust employer brand, the company had to first
articulate the factors that established Flipkart
as an ideal employer in the e-commerce startup
space. Articulating the exact reasons for being a
strong employer brand became a challenge as the
company sought to convert its employer brand into
a much larger and expansive talent brand, which
had a consistent meaning for all stakeholders.
This, in turn, posed another challenge for
Flipkart’s social followership
has gone up by 200 per cent
since the launch of their
social activities
recruiters were then trained on how to make
social hiring a working reality for the company,
which started from creating a complete social
profile, actively participating and leading in both
social and offline events, engaging through blogs
and creating robust engagement channels with
the talent pool. The other initiatives that were
undertaken to support this were private one-on-
one conversations between recruiters and a few
selected candidates, identifying bright candidates,
carving opportunities for them, establishing
unique employee referral programs using social
media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn and
twitter to get referrals, and participating in key
industry events to ensure that the employer brand
was distinctly visible.
Impact
The social media strategy implemented by Flipkart
helped in achieving tangible results in terms of
improved employer brand perception as better
hiring, which went up from 4 per cent to 18 per
cent through digital channels. This was the result
of the recruiters being able to ‘sell’ the company
to attract the right talent; even on the channels
dominated mostly by passive talent. It also helped
in building active engagement through employees
and regular social updates, strengthening the
company’s talent brand perception. Flipkart’s
social followership has gone up by 200 per cent
since the launch of their social activities. There
has been a significant shift in talent flow for
specific skill sets in tech and campus hiring. The
company’s Talent Brand Index, a key company
measure to assess brand perception, also increased
by 5 per cent.
recruiters as it required them to adopt methods
that were oriented towards building a strong
relationship with their talent pool and relinquish
the traditional hiring methodologies i.e. head-
hunters, job boards etc. With an aim to establish
itself as a Talent Brand, the company sought
to revamp the way recruiters looked at talent
acquisition and branding activities.
Solution
In order to establish itself as a strong ‘talent
brand’ and forge strong bonds with their talent
pool, Flipkart decided that their recruiters
should learn to treat prospective candidates as
consumers. This translated into implementing
the idea of ‘Making Recruiters as Salesforce’. To
achieve this, the first step was to articulate the
employer brand experience in order establish a
clear understanding of it within recruiters. The
USING RECRUITERS AS
SALESFORCE
In today’s hiring ecosystem, Flipkart realized that it is not about building
a strong recruiting brand but about treating candidates as ‘buyers’ and
recruiters as ‘salesforce’
Best in Employer Branding - Flipkart
SPECIALFEATURE
