In an interaction with HR leader, Shibna Ramla, HR Head India Operations, KRAFTON Inc, expounds on why enterprises are increasing investments on development of technologies for offline and online recruitment for businesses aligning with a plethora of factors, which provide the solutions of modern-day businesses, and how to overcome problems of employee inclusion using proper recruiting process.
- Please state your experience in the gaming sector for recruitment.
I have an experience of 14 years in HR but the level of improvement that I have seen in the last two-three years in HR is massive. 2021 was a year of transition for most companies. Companies got to be agile to attract and retain talent. This can only be done through thought leadership & digital adoption. Thanks to technology, recruitment will continue to remain virtual. Gaming is a very niche skill market in India. We focus on hiring the best of talent from industry through a strong employer branding. Candidates today just don’t look for pay & incentives, but beyond that they research on company culture, balance sheets, vision & roadmap. They want a better company that provides a balance between work & life, provide learning and growth opportunities, and contribute to their physical and mental wellbeing.So, the companies that focusses on these will succeed in hiring and retaining the best of talent. HR digitalization, transformation & analytics via adoption and use of social media, cloud & mobile devices will play a key role in achieving this and creating and enhancing employee experience.These employees in turn would act as brand ambassador for the company. Another emerging trend in HR is crowd sourcing. Though it’s an old practice but it was mostly run-in silos has become more relevant in today’s world where everything is connected. We are still evolving but have started to encourage content, ideas & resources from large pool of people.
As they say Change is inevitable, HR functions needs to be more agile to adapt and adopt the market trends to stay ahead of the curve.
2. What are the qualities or interpersonal skills that you look for while hiring?
Apart from the usual experience, education and job hops I focus mostly on adaptability, communication, teamwork, problem solving and critical thinking skills. We give assessments and real time case studies to test logical reasoning & ask scenario-based questions to the candidate to evaluate both hard and soft skills. For example, probing on how they tackled a difficult situation or sudden change in their organization helps to understand candidate adaptability, leadership, and problem-solving skills. Similarly, it is important to understand the candidate’s aspiration and what motivates them which helps to analyze if they can fit and excel in a particular role.
3. What are the things that you want to change in the recruitment process and what are the technologies you want to establish for hassle-free recruitment?
Being in a niche industry where skills are scarce it is currently a candidate driven market. Job seekers have multiple options, and they usually have an upper hand. This makes the candidate experience during the interview process very important to attract top talent. At the same time due to technology and social media we get very large no. of applications for each opening. While there are tools to screen the resume, but there is still lot of manual intervention required. I feel there is an opportunity here to make it more robust via machine learning so that the screening accuracy is high. Having a structured interview process, communicating, and updating the candidate about interview results, interview feedback and taking survey on their interview experience should be followed diligently. We should adapt automation, AI & VR for quick and efficient recruiting. An efficient AI & ML based applicant tracking system (ATS) and Candidate Relationship Management tool (CRM) will make a huge difference in recruitment and help to cut down on major time-consuming manual tasks.
