On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Saransh Garg, CEO & Co-Founder of Nova Benefits.

Nova Benefits is a tech platform providing the best of health & wellness benefits to employees. They help find the best deals for the company along with ease of access. All while ensuring no administrative overhead for your HR.

He has a relentlessly curious brain for a perspective that captures both the big picture and the nitty-gritty details of what it takes to start a company. We discuss with Saransh:

• His professional journey
• The story behind Nova Benefits
• Tips for hiring the right employee
• The recruiter's guide to handling candidate objections
• Tips to build an inbound recruiting strategy for talent acquisition

Creating Nova Benefits:

Saransh and his co-founder, Yash Gupta, had started ideating in January 2020. They had picked the financial services as it was their common area of interest. Eventually, they decided on insurance as not many new companies were launching in that field. 

They were debating motor VS health insurance when the pandemic occurred. During the pandemic, cars were used less, and they realized that there was going to be a huge shift in the market. It pushed them towards health insurance policies; they noticed that it had a great potential to grow and had only 10% penetration in the Indian market. This led to the birth of Nova Benefits.

They looked into their own experiences with health insurance. They realized how difficult it usually is to get everyone in a company on-boarded a health insurance plan or get a good plan. Even when companies provide a good health insurance plan to their employees, the employees tend not to know what is covered, etc. Saransh and Yash decided to go the B2B route.

Saransh’s tips for an HR personnel, picking a policy for their company: 5 things to keep in mind
The sum insured is the amount covered by the policy.
Look into what is the family definition within the policy - whether it covers only the employee of his whole family (Saransh stated that adding parents tends to double the premium)
Room rent limit - the amount for the medical room that your policy covers.
Ensure there are no disease-specific rules or co-pay rules hidden that you have missed.

On Talent Acquisition:
For hiring for Nova Benefits, Saransh stated that they used Linkedin, Angel-list and also hired some recruitment agencies. 
Additionally, conducting outbound hiring for senior roles helped build muscle within the team.
Building a presence on LinkedIn is helpful; even putting a profile on blaster helps. 
Sransh said that there are at times roles for which there are many applicants. To filter the applicants in such situations, using an automated assignment can help. 
Make your entire team your angel list when hiring for entry-level positions. 
Include the manager of the relevant team. They would be the most interested in whoever is hired for the position.
Content marketing also helps get people for hire.

Client objections:
For entry to mid-level hiring: There is an issue if the assignment is too long; only then people might not be interested. 
For senior-level hiring: Saransh stated that senior hires tend not to want to do assignments; however, a call on which there is a white-boarding session or problem-solving session for hiring purposes works better. 

Follow Saransh on LinkedIn, Twitter.

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Kartik Mandaville