Talent Acquisition
Talent Acquisition
Talent Acquisition
Education in India
“Talent acquisition, transformation and management are critical anchors for the
growth of the industry”— Nandan Neilkeni
Management Education should focus on turning out graduates with the relevant skills to succeed in
a global market place.
Introduction:
In this information age people‘s knowledge, skills and their relationship capabilities have become
critical assets for organizations. In this context, it has become vital for every organization to attract
and retain the best available talent.
In the present days where technology has made spectacular progress and revolutionizes the work in
every field, particularly in the corporate world, it is not the physical assets which are gaining
importance but talent has emerged as the forerunner in determining the worth of the organizations.
As such, sourcing for best talent continues to hold prominence for the organizations. Worldwide
organizations are subjected to heavy pressure due to the declining supply of talent. According to a
recent report, over a decade, the demand for talented people exceeds the supply of skilled workers
at all levels and in all industries.
Talent acquisition:
Talent acquisition is a combination of resources, process and intellectual property combined with
the organization‘s recruitment practices adopted in tackling the so called ―War for Talent‖. Its sub-
process are to: Find, attract and engage highly talented individuals into the organization. It also
manages all candidate channels for improving the talent flow into organizations.
Proactive Supplier
Media Recruitment Management
Profile
Careers Campaign
website branding & Employees
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ATS
a Internal
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e Your Talent
Suitable for Other
s Unsolicited Pool Roles
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Recent Trends in Talent Acquisition:
According to the talent acquisition strategies Benchmark report by Aberdeen Group, a market
research-based organization found that 59% of best in class companies reported that their overall
performance was increased after implementation of their talent acquisition strategy compared to
41% of industry average and 33% of laggard companies. The report also offered the following
recommendations:
Alignment of Talent Acquisition strategy with the overall corporate strategic plan.
Measuring workforce performance on the basis of quality of hire over cost per hire
and time per hire.
Recognizing what works in one company may not fit all organizations.
Elimination of traditional paper methods and using latest technological
developments.
Focusing on long-term plans.
Managing workforce wholly.
Maintaining a good network of connections with other companies and motivating the
employees to interact with them. By this kind of interaction internal talent will develop
more rapidly.
Cooperating with managers for developing profiles of high performers. This can be done by
defining the ‗critical success factors‘ like competencies, nature of activities of high
performers and their work methods. Also these will help in development of tests to identify
potential candidates.
Finding out the choice of firms in which these high performers like to work. This can be
done by advertisements towards attracting them, focusing on Competitive Intelligence (CI).
The information can also be collected through competitors, vendors, suppliers and also
through employee referral program.
Maintaining a database of candidates list selected through the above methods, which can
also be shared with others.
Developing a talent review process for identifying and developing potential talent within the
organization. This can be done by conducting periodical performance review of the
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employees, providing feedback to the employees regarding the report by highlighting on
their strengths and weakness.
Creation of strategies for development of talent through training, career paths, mentoring
and coaching.
Assigning the top performers with new challenges, responsibilities and the tasks which they
are keen on performing.
Encouraging less performing employees for improving their performance by guiding on the
areas in which they need improvement.
Encouraging employees for further education to improve their talents and skills.
Searching for new talent while improving the performance of the existing ones.
Searching for new employees using outside industry contacts by scouting for talented people
and attracting them to work for your industry.
Giving employees new challenges and opportunities to explore themselves and help them
grow with the organization.
Encouraging blogging and networking across different sites to attract the potential talent.
Whatever may be the strategies adopted by companies, but all of them have belief in the concept of
―Catch Them Young‖, i.e., attracting the talent directly on completion of their education. This
concept is fast catching up in many MNCs as young people will prove to be a good talent and they
can be molded as per the company‘s requirements in the initial stage of employment itself.
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Defining strategic talent acquisition.
Evaluating the HR strategies, policies and practices that support and aid Company‘s
strategy.
Continuous learning of current trends and practices in attracting and retaining talent.
Talent is a whole set of intuition, reasoning, insights, experiences related to customers, products,
processes, markets, competition and so on that enable effective action. Talent Acquisition is a
systematic, organized, explicit and deliberate ongoing process of creating, disseminating, applying,
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renewing and updating the knowledge for achieving organizational objectives Talent Acquisition
has three basic elements:
1. Generation of new Talent
2. Dissemination of the Talent
3. Application of the Talent
-faculty/research staff
search endeavor
Talent Distribution:
The major problems in talent distribution in Indian B-Schools are as follows:
-Schools
-Schools
-Schools-Industry collaboration
Talent Implementation:
The major problems in talent implementation in Indian B-Schools are as follows:
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of integration of latest research in teaching curriculum
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:
Indian B-Schools are not recognized as centers of Talent creation. For creating new Talent, the B-
Schools should take certain concrete steps as discussed here.
This is another area of concern in research in Indian B-Schools. Most of the research, particularly
Ph. D. find little quality work or credibility or utility in the industry.
Focus on Action Research & not on research for the sake of research and
collaborate for Research:
Research is a resource intensive activity. It is surprising when companies and governments are
going for cooperation in research there is not much cooperation among B-Schools should use other
ways of knowledge creation like networking or adaptations which can help a lot in saving the
resources, reinventing the wheel and reducing the time involved .
Globalization of Research:
It is surprising to know those while corporate are going global, the research in B-Schools in India
has been limited to the particular B-Schools. The B-Schools have not globalized their research
activities.
The linkages between industry and B-Schools are weak. Industry still looks at B-Schools as
recruiting grounds not as repository of state of art knowledge and relevant experience. Two factors,
one on demand and the other on the supply side are responsible for the current status: On the
demand side, the culture of seeking external advice to solve internal problems, except for purely
technical problems is not yet developed in India. The ownership and management structure of many
Indian firms may be partly responsible for that. On the supply side, B-Schools in general have not
developed the level of expertise required to find out optimal solutions to real life business problems
B-Schools need to take research more seriously and bridge this gap in the industry perception of
quality of research being conducted by B-Schools.
Curriculum research:
The B-Schools have not updated the curriculum with the changes in the environment and industry.
The B-Schools are time and again criticized for teaching what they want to teach instead what the
industry wants. It‘s interesting to note that business and countries are going for globalization but not
the B-Schools or their curriculum. In order to have a better global exposure, to suit the requirements
of industry under globalization there is a pressing need for globalization of management education
.The education must be global in its outlook and content must be multidisciplinary. It is surprising
when companies are going for customer centric models; management education is not being
customer-driven. Ironically, there have not been studies in India on what the customer wants from
management education. Schools need to provide more options and flexibility in curriculum. More
recently, business schools have been criticized for not doing enough to set an ethical tone. To some,
the quantitative seems to have driven out the moral, and the scientific appears to have overwhelmed
the human. Business schools do not need to do a great deal more to help prevent future Enron‘s;
they need only to stop doing a lot that they currently do. They do not need to create new courses;
they need to stop teaching some old ones.
This is one of the most crucial areas that need attention. Though there is some progress on
developing teaching material in Indian context, still there is need for developing more and updated
teaching material on Indian context.
Identifying Benchmarks :
The B-Schools need to identify the global benchmarks and compete on that basis. Indian
Management education has to concentrate on benchmarking because this means accepting that
somebody is better than you and striving to be better than or even surpassing those standards.
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Research on Admission criterion :
There is need to carry out research on what attributes to be tested while taking the MBA entrance
exams.
Improving Talent Dissemination: The Talent distribution can be improved
through :
Collaboration with Different Functional Areas: There are functional silos within B-
Schools. To start with the B-Schools need to break down these barriers and focus should be
on multifunctional approach or courses or programs.
Collaboration with other B-schools in India and Abroad: Globalization and Liberalization
of B-Schools should be the norms to get and distribute the knowledge of B-Schools.
Talent mapping: The B-School need to go for Talent mapping so that the employees know
whom to look for what type of Talent within the B-School.
Taking concrete action on the research findings: Though there have been a number of
committees that suggested improvements in management education, there have been no
significant changes in management education except in some top ranking B-Schools.So
there is a pressing need for taking actions on the findings of various committees. We as a
nation are full of idea but lacking in actions. Now the time has come to implement the
ideas or suggestions of various national and international committees in management.
Talent acquisition has been a challenge for most organizations since the good old days of
―personnel.‖ Yet how many companies have actually improved the ways in which they attract,
identify and select the best candidate for the job? Despite tremendous advancements in both the
technology and philosophy of recruitment, many of us seem to be stuck in first gear.
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To develop talent acquisition management institutes should train their students in the below
mentioned way:
More than 30 years of scientific research produced Gallup‘s selection philosophy: a person‘s
greatest talents - the ways in which he or she most naturally thinks, feels, and behaves as a unique
individual - are strongly predictive of future performance. An organization that selects and develops
people on the basis of their talents is likely to gain a strong competitive advantage. The
management schools should take steps to develop the individual student strength.
5. To identify the need for transformation of the talent landscape unfolding in real
time:
The world is changing rapidly, and there‘s this massive talent shift away from the traditional career
focused on who your employer is, toward a more entrepreneurial kind of career where the
individual is focused on growing their own talent, developing their own path.
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6.To identify and take advantage of the benefits of an integrated resource
fulfillment approach to workforce management:
The talent and skills needed to stay ahead of the competition; a strategic mix of employees and
contract talent allows to create just the right workforce to reach their business goals. With the
growing acceptance of workforce management as a priority organization-wide and the wealth of
tools and services available to help streamline the associated processes, we could anticipate seeing
significant increases in efficiency and ultimately bottom-line savings.
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15. Learn By Doing :
Students can be involved themselves in problem solving activities of direct interest and relevance to
practice school centers .Practice School Centers have been set up at organizations such as
GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare R&D, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, ONGC Energy
Centre, National Council of Applied Economic Research, Frost and Sullivan, HP Global, Hyundai
Motor India, etc.
The following are the main areas the management education should focus on to enhance talent
acquisition skills :
Step1: Get Commitment, Clarify Roles and Goals, and Build Accountabilities:
Securing –and sustaining –management commitment is the essential first step. Each key group of
stakeholders in the organization-top managers, middle managers, first-line managers and workers –
has a role to play in the TA effort.
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Step 1: Get commitment,
clarify roles and goals and
build accountabilities
Step 10:
Evaluate Step 2: Clarify what work people do,
results what people successfully do the work
and who possesses special knowledge
and special social relationships.
Step 9: Systematically retain
People and transfer
Knowledge and social Step 3: Evaluate present
relationships performance
Step 7: Inventory
Step 5: Formulate future
existing talent
talent requirement and align
with strategic objectives.
Step 2: Clarify what work people do, what people successfully do the work, and who
possess special Knowledge and special social Relationship:
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do the work. NGTA goes beyond traditional TA by identifying the people who possess
special Knowledge, such as institutional memory or special proprietary knowledge of the
business.
Effective performance management programs should measure the performance in the present job
and the behaviors linked to the essentials of job success.
Step 4: Recruit and Select Appropriate people from inside and outside the organization
Step 5: Formulate future talent requirements and align with strategic objectives
Talent requirements do not remain static. As organizational leaders pursue their strategic plans,
talent requirements must be revised to ensure that people are being considered for promotion based
on future, rather than merely present, talent requirements.
Step 6: Assess Individual potential for promotion and Individual values and Ethics
Good performers at one level will not necessarily perform well at higher levels of responsibility
because different competencies are required. Common approaches to assessing potential include
manager nominations, multi-rater assessments, psychological tests, assessment centers, realistic job
tryouts, and work samples.
Large organizations have so many people and each individual may possess unique talents and may
even be a high professional in his or her own right. The success of an organization depends on how
quickly and effectively it can marshal its talent in a crisis. Hence Organizational leaders should thus
establish competency inventories, based on the problems faced by the organization, to catalog and
find talent quicker.
The Individual Development Plans (IDPs) should narrow gaps between what competencies people
must possess to be qualified for promotion and what competencies they presently possess. Many
organizations have established Learning Management Systems that makes it easy for individuals to
pinpoint appropriate methods to build their competencies.
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Step 9: Systematically retain people and Transfer Knowledge and Social Relationships:
Systematic retention programs should be geared to keep the best people. Steps should be taken to
transfer the special knowledge of high professionals (HiPros) -sometimes called as in-house experts
who possess specializes competencies involving unique problems confronting the organization.
Organizations should also take steps to transfer the social network established by the employees.
The NGTA programs should be evaluated by metrics established from the initial goals identified for
the program.
There are three basic ways to start a Next Generation Talent Acquisition Program.
The first approach is to focus at first on replacement planning. While often confused with
succession planning or even TA, a replacement planning program identifies back-ups for key people
or key positions in the event of sudden, catastrophic loss or even temporary times away from the
job. While many organizations have already prepared replacement charts to identify permanent or
acting replacement in the event of a sudden loss- such as the plane carrying the CEO or even the
entire senior executive team crashing- not all organizations have done so. It is a good place to start
because the result can be secured quickly. Replacement charts also raise many questions among
managers and those questions will usually lead in due course to a more robust NGTA program.
The second approach is to focus at first on top-down TA. It usually begins with an
assessment of the senior executive team. An advantage of that approach is that it leads senior
managers to become familiar with and help shape, the TA program. But the disadvantage is that, to
roll out the program to lower levels of the organization, the tight infrastructure (such as a robust
human resource management system and credible HR professionals) must be in place to support
that implementation.
The third approach is to focus at first on a trouble spot in the organization. Pilot test a TA
program there. That approach can work very well because it relies for support on the manager of the
pilot-test group rather than a CEO who may be removed from daily operations. If success is attained
in the pilot test, then snowballing the program to other groups become more likely.
Few business authorities question that talent management is a key global challenge. Developed
economics are expecting waves of retiring baby boomers. Developing economics face fierce
completion for talent – often spanning national borders – as well as pending retirements and talent
needed to fuel explosive expansion.
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Traditional talent management, limited merely to attracting, developing and retaining talented
people, is not enough. Today‘s organizations need NGTA. A model governing that approach
consists of 10-key steps:
What work people do, what people successfully do the work and who posses special social
relationships.
Recruit and select appropriate people from inside and outside the organization.
Evaluate results.
There are three places to launch a NGTA program. The first approach is to start with simple
replacement planning and gradually ease into a more robust effort. The second approach is o start
from the top down. The third approach is to start in a trouble spot.
CONCLUSION
In this Global Talent Economy, Institutions of Higher learning in general and Indian Business
Schools in particular, have a huge responsibility of creating new Talent and Talent workers. The B-
Schools are being criticized on various aspects and they are increasingly facing a lot of challenges
and opportunities in the Global Talent Economy. The big issue is-how to compete in this changed
scenario and take advantage of emerging opportunities. If the B-Schools can continuously create
new Talent related to curriculum, customer needs, environmental changes, pedagogy etc;
disseminate it continuously and effectively; and implement it properly then they can face the
coming challenges of competitiveness in the global knowledge arena and play a big role in making
India a global economic superpower.
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