Innovation In Talent Management

As Larry Bossidy once said, “I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies”.

One of the most important assets for any organization is the Knowledge & Talent Pool that it currently holds and also its ability to retain its prized employees and attract new ones.

I scantily recollect a dialogue from a Hollywood Movie that went something like, “If you want the best, pick them RAW”

At PI Techniques that’s what they seem to be doing and I must say I am fairly impressed by their approach.

Though Campus Recruitment and Placement isn’t exactly new to the HR Managers their approach certainly is.

I’ve had an opportunity to accompany them for one of their Recruitment Drives and we visited the Gokhale Education Society, Nasik.

The response was something that I did not expect as there were 115+ MCA/MCS students waiting for us.

Tarun Kapadia (Project Manager) from Pi Techniques delivering a presentation

The Course of the day was pretty much well-defined.

They started off with a brief introduction and Summary of what PI Techniques was all about.

Since Conducting Assessments (to test their level of understanding in Logic and Database) for about 115 students was not feasible they had to be done in 2 batches with 30 mins for each batch.

Then came the difficult part of correcting these 115 papers and short listing candidates for the interview round.

Total Candidates shortlisted were 17.

A 100+ Papers to be corrected in a real short time

After a Lunch Break, the interview started and only 6 got through and were asked to come to Mumbai (all expenses paid) for a Final Interview Round.

Why am I writing about this you may ask??

A couple of reasons actually.

1. These candidates are students and are filled with new Ideas and Concepts.
2. Only 6 cleared out of 115, comes to about 5.22% so they were again hiring the best of the lot, these people will come with enthusiasm and the energy to prove themselves in the Corporate World rather than having expectations from the Company Hiring them.
3. These candidates were shortlisted by the very same people that they will be working with (Project Manager, Software Development Head & A Senior Programmer) than by some lousy HR Executive who has no skills or knowledge about the Platform they would be working with. (I have enough experience at least from the BPO industry I work with and how tech support agents are hired in different BPO’s)

We started by 10:30 am and by the time we were done it was almost 7 in the evening.

But then as Robert Half said, “Time spent on hiring is time well spent”

I think it was a unique Solution that Pi Techniques used for hiring fresh talent, but for a Company with the Tagline “Solutions That Work”, using such a concept is not surprising.

Disclaimer:

• The author of this article is in no way related to the Company Pi Techniques.
• Nor is the intent of the article is to promote or advertise the above mentioned company.

Credits:

1. Special Thanks to the Tarun Kapadia (Project Manager) and Hiten Damania (Head of Development ) for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this Campus Recruitment Drive.
2. Firdaus Minocher for inviting me for this trip.
3. Sandesh Shenoy for the pictures & his witty humor.
4. Diliesh Shetty for giving me company during the Interview Rounds when I could not make a Head or Tail of the Questions or the Answers and letting me Bore him as well 😉