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Chatbots Will Change The Dynamics Of Recruitment

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Recruitment and employability continue to drive the dynamics of a rapidly developing country like India and talent management solutions provider, KellyOCG (Outsourcing & Consulting Group) seems to understand the essentials and essence of the country’s evolving market needs. 

KellyOCG is the global advisor of talent supply chain strategies that enable companies to achieve their business goals by aligning talent strategy to business strategy across all internal and external worker categories.  

In an exclusive interaction with CXOToday, Francis Padamadan, Country Director, KellyOCG India, talks of how Kelly focuses on providing Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) and Managed Services Provider (MSP) solutions in India. 

CXOToday: Do you agree that Indian population is largely employment starved? If yes, what are the major reasons?

Padamadan: The International Labour Organization or ILO has predicted that the unemployment rates will go down from 3.5 per cent in 2016 to 3.4 per cent in 2017 in India. The number of unemployed in the country in 2016 stood at 1.7 crores. So, it would not be right to say that Indian population is employment starved. However, an area of concern is that most of the jobs are in the unorganized sector. Also, the number of jobs created is dipping every year even as every month, ten lakh Indians become age-eligible to join the workforce. In our understanding, global economic crisis, lack of large-scale manufacturing and in public investments are the major reasons for the jobless growth we are witnessing.

 CXOToday: How do perceive the Indian job market given its population and education system and how do your solutions help here?

PadamadanThe Indian job market is making a shift from ITO (IT Outsourcing) to analytics due to numerous quality educational institutes producing students who are good in mathematics, statistics, and technology. This is attracting MNCs who are setting up their R&D or Global In-house Centers (GICs) in India. In fact, more than 60 per cent of Fortune 500 MNCs particularly in IT – ITeS, banking verticals have already set-up their GICs in India due to talent availability. However, they are facing sourcing challenges in a competitive market in which Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is emerging as the solution. In RPO, enterprises outsource all or part of their recruitment processes to third party vendors like us. It is a big market opportunity for us and is growing at more than 30 per cent every year.

Further, the inclusion of technology particularly Robotic Process Automation or RPA, chatbots will change the dynamics of recruitment and staffing over the next few years. We are also looking to tap into these market opportunities.

 CXOToday: Can you throw light on the latest employment trends in key sectors?

 Padamadan: Candidates are realizing the potential of Gig Economy and as such India is now among the top five nations in terms of flexi worker base and the market is growing at 10 per cent every year. India’s flexi workforce is currently 13 lakhs and is expected to grow to 90 lakhs by 2025. Importantly, 82 per cent of total flexi workforce in India is under the age of 30.

In 2017, the IT sector has seen a 15 to 18 per cent reduction in hiring when compared to 2016 and a decrease in salaries (2 percent to 3 percent) for traditional roles in application development, testing, and maintenance. Fintech has proved to be an exciting prospect from hiring perspective as 2017 saw a 20 per cent increase in job creation when compared to last year. Hospitality is another industry that is witnessing a double-digit growth at 2017 of 15 per cent as compared to eight per cent in 2016. Another important trend is the rise of GICs which now employ a cumulative workforce of eight lakh and contribute USD 23 billion in exports as per Nasscom.

CXOToday: How has been the market response to your service offerings of RPO and MSP?

PadamadanWe have been successfully running several RPO and MSP programs for clients in India as part of global mandates over the last few years. With the rise in the number of GICs, we are gearing up for local greenfield opportunities in RPO and technology deployments.

CXOToday: Please feel free to share anything which you feel will be informative/interesting to the readers.

Padamadan: There is an increasing focus on enhancing candidate experience and satisfaction leading to deployment of digital and AI in recruiting. In such a scenario, candidates should be ready to interact with chatbots and leverage tools like live digital interviewing. Enterprises which have not yet embraced digital processes and automation in talent acquisition should do so quickly to differentiate their employer brand in a highly competitive job market

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