<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/56905833.cms" /> 2016 has been a watershed year for the startup ecosystem in India. As fierce competition gripped the startup scene, many ventures were forced to shut shop and some others saw investor purses drying up. It is abundantly clear that pressure to be efficient – cost and time wise - is up several notches. And, among the many key factors to be looked into, recruiting the right talent is one of the most prominent ones. Startups, now more than ever, cannot afford to have bad hires. Identifying and recruiting the ‘right fit’ is emerging as one of the biggest challenges. 
 
Startups have been perpetually competing with large corporations to get the best talent on board, but the war for talent has grown more severe in the past months. Most young startups today are faced with scarce resources and funding. In this scenario, setting up an elaborate recruitment mechanism not just becomes impossible but HR as a function invariably takes a backseat. But before we discuss how start-ups can set up an efficient recruitment process, it is important to understand why it is critical for startups to hire right. 
 
Start-ups cannot afford a bad hire. Start-ups require candidates that are able to perform roles that go beyond the typical job description and are also the right cultural fit. This makes the task of hiring the right candidate ever more complex. In addition, HR managers at times need to fill positions ‘quickly’ which increases the odds of a bad hire. With limited funds at their disposal, fierce competition and struggle for growth, a hiring mistake can prove to be very costly in a startup. Besides the monetary loss, the loss of time spent in recruitment and productivity by bringing on board the wrong candidate is an additional setback. 
 
Start-ups do not have the luxury to invest in training. Unlike large organizations that hire and train large number of new joinees, startups are looking for people who are ‘job-ready’ and can learn quickly on-the-job. However, the low employability of job seekers poses a bigger problem for startups here. According to the National Employability Report 2016, only 3.84% of the country’s tech talent is employable for a start-up technology role while 8% of them aspire to join a start-up as compared to a large organization. This increases the challenge manifold for HR managers as they not only need to find the right talent but also address the perception issues to make them chose a start-up over a well-established organization. 
 
These issues have created a major roadblock for start-ups from an HR standpoint and propelled the need to invest in and revamp their recruitment mechanisms to identify and attract the right talent. The question now arises on how start-ups can address these issues. 
 
The answer lies in leveraging technology to build the right set of assessments that can accurately and objectively assess skills and better predict a candidate’s job performance. The assessments can offer dramatic insights into the skill set of candidates for over hundreds of job roles and competencies. The scientific assessment tools already available today can play a significant in talent filtering and in helping start-ups hire the right people for the right job. 
 
Some of the key advantages that scientific assessments offer are - 
 
1. Access to quality talent – Traditional test cases and recruitment mechanisms have proven to miss candidates that could have been good performers. In the fiercely competitive ecosystem, losing out on such talent and hiring the ‘next best’ candidate can make a huge difference to a startup’s success. Scientific assessments in this case offer an objective and in-depth analysis of the candidate’s skills and can help HR managers make a much more informed decision with the scores acting as a strong indicator of his/her employability. 
 
2. Reach – Most startups do not have adequate resources or infrastructure to find quality talent across the country. Unlike large organizations that can organize nationwide recruitment drives to scout for talent, start-ups are unable to do so due to lack of time and resources. Scientific assessments and tools herein can help startups access quality talent across the country without much effort. This also allows HR managers to move beyond tier I cities and get access to equally qualified and competitive talent that goes unnoticed in other parts of the country. 
 
3. Efficiency in hiring - Scientific assessments can help start-ups hire in a standardised, scalable and cost-effective manner which can significantly improve recruitment efficiency. Given the volume of applicants for each role, HR managers end up wasting a lot of time in scanning resumes and scheduling interviews for candidates who may or may not be the right fit. Scientific assessments in this can help create a fast and reliable mechanism. Organizations that are already relying on these assessments have been able to cut down recruitment time and cost by as much as 70% while increasing their reach manifold. 
 
Leveraging assessment technologies can address some of the major challenges that startups today face in recruiting the right talent. With talent fast becoming the key differentiator, a well-oiled HR machinery is now indispensable for startups. As the race for reaching the billion dollar or ‘unicorn’ club continues, startups who are adopting and investing in newer technologies will be able to successfully hire and retain the right talent and be a step ahead of competition.<meta content="cms.next" name="cmsei" />

Startups need better recruiting results now more than ever. But how?

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/56016649.cms" />In an ideal workplace scenario, every employer wants to hire the ‘right’ candidate. With success in today’s market hinged on having the right talent on board, organizations cannot afford to hire average or low performers. Getting the right talent on-board, and also in a cost and time-effective manner is a task that is getting more complex with steady rise in the number of applications for each job and the sophisticated nature of the competencies required for various job roles. 
 
A typical recruitment process today post sourcing revolves around shortlisting a candidate through his/her resume, interaction with a couple of line managers and pre-hiring checks. These interactions, however, do not guarantee any quantifiable indicators of the skills and competencies of a candidate or his/her ability to do a specific job. Without effective benchmarks or parameters to assess the many applicants entering workforce every year, identifying the right talent can never get easy. 
 
Artificial Intelligence or AI (read Machine learning) is now increasingly helping automate and simplify the recruitment process by helping organisations save cost, time and resources that would have been otherwise spent in a typical recruitment process. So, can a machine automatically evaluate coding skills, English skills, sports and soft skills? Yes, they can. AI driven assessment mechanisms can create significant value by offering objective and accurate predictions about a candidate’s suitability, job performance, personality and more. 
 
In fact, there are sophisticated evaluation tools available today which offer automatic evaluation of computer programming skills, communication skills, interpersonal as well as spoken English skills which are often overlooked, but are critical in several fields. <a href="http://research.aspiringminds.com/publications/">Aspiring Minds Research</a> has regularly published in global publications the effectiveness of such tools. 
 
While assessments is one aspect of job matching getting revolutionized by machine learning, other aspects such as resume parsing and matching, job matching for job boards and automated interviews are other aspects seeing dramatic value creation with this new age technology. The job recommendation engine of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/">Linkedin.com</a> or on <a href="https://www.myamcat.com/">myAMCAT.com</a> are examples where AI is being tested to help people find the right jobs for them! 
 
Interestingly, assessment is not the only aspect where organisations can benefit from Data Analytics but it can also cater to the other aspects of the recruitment cycle such as retention. The vast amount of unstructured data like resignation patterns, common features of exiting employees, job satisfaction levels etc. can generate powerful insights and can help build a more robust recruitment ecosystem in today’s increasingly competitive landscape. 
 
AI and Predictive Analytics can help employers understand the workforce better and offer a much better experience both during screening and recruitment as well as post hiring. While these issues were earlier unquantifiable and unstructured, adopting technology can change the way organisations can benefit from this data. 
 
So, while learning and assessment is a relatively new domain which is seeing the AI invasion, structuring the vast amount of data can benefit not just organisations but also the talent ecosystem on the whole. Investing in the next level of innovative assessment technologies should be a priority for enterprises as the data-driven insights will be key for organisations to identify and retain the right talent to build sustainable businesses. 
 
(Image Credits: Thinkstock) 
 
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Artificial Intelligence to lead the way for Smart Recruitment?

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/55433349.cms" /> My wallet has no legal money today; I can say the same for my friends, family and colleagues but we all have a smile on our face! The historic move by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Prime+Minister+Narendra+Modi&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Prime Minister Narendra Modi</a> this week, announcing <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=demonetization+&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">demonetization </a>of Rs 500 and 1000 currency notes is a significant step to check black money and corruption, twin issues that have been crippling many new and young or prospective businesses in India including upcoming and established start-ups. 
 
Many of our businesses find themselves struggling to operate in markets riddled with lack of hard and soft infrastructure, cash and back money riddled markets and sectors virtually closed for legit business. All that is set to change and I am confident it’s for the good! 
 
The 3 cheers I am expecting to come about... 
 
The financial infrastructure we have longed for 
 
For the last decade various new age businesses, start-ups have been struggling with abysmal financial infrastructure based largely on cash. While some of us have been working to get the financial infrastructure in place (read mobile wallets, payment gateways, and others), many more are creating alternate mechanisms to operate in the current financial mechanisms (read Cash on Delivery, cash backs on card payments, etc) making our businesses unviable. 
 
So far it was a few of us who were promoting an electronic, plastic, cashless economy, this move is set to align the government, most businesses – big or small; new or traditional to promote the same! Cheers! 
 
Fair play across sectors! 
 
India is a country struggling with fundamental in-efficiencies and lack of infrastructure – both hard such as organized retail, construction, logistic, housing, telecommunication, etc and soft infrastructure – credit systems, free market trading, waste management, health services, financial products, education, etc. Many of these sectors, ecosystems have been largely in-accessible to the “common” entrepreneur primarily because of the extensive funding and/or dealings in these sectors with illegitimate cash. Now I look forward to a level playing field in many of these sectors, businesses where entrepreneurs will bring in innovation, high quality of service and eventually disruption! Cheers! 
 
Less cash, less black money, more transparency! 
 
While they might have the best products or solutions for the need, often you hear entrepreneurs say, ‘we don’t compete for this kind of business’. The kind of business where we find our capabilities in delivering innovation, value and exemplary service are not enough to legitimately win business. Or the kinds of business which survive on stealing on taxes! I am hoping this is going to start to change too. We will see more transparency in the economy, in its dealings and hence more young businesses to compete fairly, to grow and flourish. Cheers! 
 
Three cheers to our Prime Minister for a bold, far reaching and game-changing action. The move will launch business opportunities for genuine trade to flourish and re-energize the young and dynamic startup ecosystem. 
 
 Himanshu Aggarwal is the Co-founder &amp; CEO of Aspiring Minds. 
(image: IndiaTimes) 
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Demonetization has come as a boon for startups. Here’s how

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/52091189.cms" />A <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=hiring&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">hiring</a> manager typically selects a candidate based on the information gathered through his/her resume and the interaction during interviews. Given the subjective nature of these methods, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=interviewing&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">interviewer</a> typically does not gather sufficient information for an intelligent match leading to a rather costly error in judgment. 
 
Coupled with the growing number of applicants for each role and the myriad of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=skills&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">skills</a> required, hiring needs to be much more of a science than an art, to accurately assess a candidate’s potential and hire the right talent. 
 
In a typical <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=recruitment&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">recruitment</a> scenario, the absence of data driven insights generally leads to two types of errors - 
 
1. Type 1 error: The organization ends up hiring a candidate who will eventually not perform well. 
2. Type 2 error: The organization rejects a candidate who could have been a good performer. 
 
Whether you’re hiring poor talent or missing out on potential star performers, the hiring misses in both cases have an adverse impact on an organization’s productivity, coupled with additional costs of training or replacement. 
 
While it might be stretching the argument too far, I can’t help but sight the example of Brian Acton, founder of Whatsapp, who has proved to be probably one of the most costly hiring errors ever. 
 
He was rejected a job at <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=facebook&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Facebook</a> only to be later bought on board with the $19 billion acquisition! However, not all recruiting errors may be as expensive. 
 
So how can companies reduce Type 1 and Type 2 errors? 
 
Hiring involves assessing many aspects all of which cannot be accurately measured by a human interviewer. 
 
To gauge a candidate’s potential objectively, he/she needs to be assessed for not just functional skills but also aptitude, behavioral and cognitive skills. 
 
While some of these can be measured effectively through artificial intelligence and machine learning based assessment tools, there are certain aspects wherein a human interviewer can assess better. Hence, the idea is to build hiring practices that can combine a data driven approach to the power of human evaluation. 
 
The <a href="http://research.aspiringminds.com/">scientific assessment tools</a> available today are able to objectively evaluate a candidate’s potential to help companies identify high performers who would have been missed during a traditional recruitment process. Evaluation for software programming skills, spoken English skills and several other soft skills/competencies for roles like sales, customer service etc. can now be assessed minus the human bias to successfully predict on the job performance. 
 
Let us take an example of recruitment for sales personnel to shed more light on the complexities of the hiring process without adequate data. Hiring a sales professional requires an effective evaluation of soft skills but the intrinsic competencies of sales people cannot be judged simply by a resume or just any general aptitude test available in the market. 
 
Also, with the process of hiring a sales force being fairly unstandardized, companies often struggle to understand what is required to hire the ‘right’ salesperson. The result! 1 out of 3 sales personnel in most organizations fail and only 1 out of 3 actually perform up to potential. A selection error in this case is a loss of both cost and opportunity for the organization. 
 
Situational Judgment Tests or SJTs which measure a candidate on various soft skills and practical intelligence can bring forth objective insights in hiring sales professionals. For example, <a href="http://www.aspiringminds.com/">Aspiring Minds’ Sales SJT</a> is designed to test candidates on real life scenarios and how they would react under varying circumstances. 
 
Instead of relying purely on a candidate’s knowledge, SJTs helps measure skills/competencies that are crucial for job success with situations which measure a combination of cognitive, behavior and domain understanding. This makes recruitment for salespersons less susceptible to hiring errors as discussed above. 
 
Hiring will continue to be complex but the right combination of data science and human evaluation can go a long way in identifying the right talent. We see the need for recruitment mechanisms to evolve towards leveraging the power of data and science for organizations to build a productive workforce – simply put to avoid a bad hire and reduce the chances of missing a potential high performer who might get recruited by your competitor! 
 
(Himanshu Aggarwal is co-founder and CEO of Aspiring Minds) 
 
(Image: Thinkstock) 
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Hiring right candidates is more of a science and here’s how you can nail it

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/50901207.cms" />The growing gap between demand for workers and supply of jobseekers is a paradox seen across the world today. Corporations complain about lack of employable talent and job seekers complain of lack of jobs in the market. The reason for this lies in what economists refer to as ‘information void’ or ‘information asymmetry’. 
 
The paradox seems to get more complex in the entry level scenario. In this context, the most common argument we hear is that we need as many new jobs each year as the number of students entering the job market. At the same time, we need to ensure that the students passing out of college are employable or job ready i.e. they have the knowledge, abilities and skills to perform well in the jobs in the industry. While there are concerted efforts directed towards training and skilling of the young workforce, there are two fundamental challenges that make these efforts misaligned. 
 
Inefficient entry level hiring: There can be two instances here - 
 
Firstly, even if a candidate is employable for a given job, he/she does not end up getting it. This is often the case with a student from a tier 2 or 3 college who remains invisible to recruiters despite being job ready. The Aspiring Minds <a href="http://www.aspiringminds.com/sites/default/files/National%20Employability%20Report%20-%20Engineers%2C%20Annual%20Report%202014.pdf">National Employability Report (NER) 2014</a> highlights that an applicant from a tier 3 campus has 25% lower odds of getting a job. 
 
For instance, Ankit Pansari, a B.E. in Electronics and Communication from Chhattisgarh was unable to find a job for over a year. He was struggling with walk-in interviews when he decided to give the <a href="https://www.myamcat.com/">AMCAT</a> test. With the help of a good score, he got the opportunity to showcase his skill set to potential employers and eventually got hired by Mindtree. The scores here acted as an objective assessment of his skills thereby allowing him to get past barriers like tier of city or college. 
 
The second instance is where candidates who are unfit for a particular job role still get employed for that role. Though uncommon, this occurs mainly because recruiters are not able to distinguish between a good and not–so–good applicant. 
 
For an experienced candidate, the employer can look at the employment history, past work or the kind of companies he/she was associated with to distinguish a good applicant from the rest. However, the resume of a fresher does not have relevant professional history and is not the best benchmark for judging employability. The skill indicators here include college grades/GPAs, college name, project work done etc. The validity of these parameters, in predicting skills or performance at job, is however, in question. 
 
Skill information gap: Fresh graduates entering the job market have very little information about the skills they need to get hired or be successful in a job of their choice. They also do not have any feedback around their employability and ways to improve job readiness. 
 
Another reason for this widening information gap is the lack of feedback from recruiters. It is a norm observed for most jobs that employers do not share reasons for rejection which leaves the students as well training organizations unclear about the kind of training to be imparted. It is also evident that educational institutions have no standardized or scientific way to get this information and in the absence of this information, students end up making wrong choices. 
 
The fast changing job market powered by rapid growth of technology and new business models has created demand for new roles and profiles which the current curriculum of educational institutions is unable to train for. 
 
There is an immediate need to plug these voids and the key lies in creating an ecosystem based on standardized assessment of employability skills. Standardized assessments will add objectivity to the entry level recruitment ecosystem by creating scientific and reliable benchmarks of employability thereby benefitting all major stake holders – job seekers, educational institutions and organizations and the nation at large. 
 
(Himanshu Aggarwal is co-founder and CEO, <a href="http://www.aspiringminds.com/">Aspiring Minds</a>, a global leader in job-skills credentialing and matching) 
 
(Image: Indiatimes) 
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Why getting the first job is harder

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/50638794.cms" />We are aware of poor job readiness. As we explore the web of issues starting from mis-aligned curriculum, poor teaching quality, and lacking formative (K12) capabilities, lack of exposure continues to be a very important area. 
 
A continuous feedback or rather criticism from companies that hire young talent is the sheer lack of exposure in our young graduates. This lack of exposure not only affects the growth of the individual’s career but increases early attrition and, more importantly, desists companies from hiring fresh talent. 
 
The criticism is two-fold. Firstly, students do not know what kind of work or responsibilities a particular job entails. They are not aware of what work they would be required to do, how a typical day would look like and hence what skills they would need to have to do well in the job. 
 
Of course, they have no clue if they would enjoy the work. 
 
Secondly, they have no understanding of a real work environment and how they need to manage themselves in the same. This entails basic things like reaching office on time, interaction with colleagues and effective management of time and work. 
 
This lack of exposure to both job roles and the work environment compound the already existing employability/job readiness issues. 
 
To deal with such issues, internships or a temporary position is a great way to give students the required exposure. Internships not only help them in understanding what can be expected of them when they start working full time but also allows them to learn and build their skill set for the same. 
 
Internships also become the crucial link between the academia and the industry by giving exposure of a job or sector to students. Till the time students take up internships, their understanding of the corporate world is restricted to what they are taught in classrooms. 
 
Internships improve their understanding of the role/sector and guide them towards making the right career move in the future. It is a general consensus amongst students that internships help them develop essential on-the-job skills and are an important test of their ability to do well within that particular sector/role. 
 
Our educational ecosystem has neglected internships for a long period of time. Despite internships being a part of every course curriculum, providing access to right kind of internships has been fairly difficult. 
 
While majority of the corporate world and industry is open to the idea of internships, educational institutions and students find it very hard to locate the relevant opportunities. 
 
Interestingly, companies find it hard to find good, dedicated interns. Unlike regular hiring, where there is a dedicated recruitment team, most organizations don’t have a structured infrastructure to help them find interns. While to some extent that is good as it allows various groups and departments within the company to experiment with their internship talent, it does make it hard to find interns. 
 
Technology platforms for effective matching of supply and demand have started coming handy for students and companies alike. An aspiring B.Tech graduate who interned with global brands like Viber and Dell through Letsintern.com considers his internship period to be both ‘enriching and exhilarating’. He discovered his interest in marketing and also got a clear understanding of his skill set and what he needs to work on. A platform like <a href="http://www.letsintern.com/">Letsintern.com</a> today gets over 5000 internships, many of which pay handsomely across 100s of job roles and locations. 
While internships help students become career-ready, they are fast becoming an effective mechanism of talent identification. Employers are able to assess the skill sets of candidates and understand their fitment within the organization. Globally, leading organisations with some of the best talent are making full time offers to interns as unlike a short interview, internships are a more efficient way to spot talent. Closer home too, this trend has picked up pace with internships finding its place in the recruitment mechanism of several organisations in identifying young talent. 
 
Internships need to be effectively leveraged in our job market as they are an essential component in solving the employability problem. The significant value that they add to students, institutions and corporations mandates that internships should be brought to the center stage and help in building a merit driven job market. 
 
(Himanshu Aggarwal is co-founder and CEO, Aspiring Minds, a global leader in job-skills credentialing and matching) 
 
(Image: Thinkstock) 
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