‘Focus your assessment on the passion for the mission’

In this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, we welcome Shailaja Pittie, Senior Executive Recruiter and Talent Advisory at Google. She is responsible for identifying, attracting and engaging & hiring the best leaders to build the future of Google Cloud.

Some of her more notable Google roles include: Global Staffing Lead Geo, Head of Talent, and Engineering recruiter. She started off her career as an entrepreneur but found her love for the HR space along the way. 

Shailaja is extremely passionate about building teams, functions, and organizations.

Episode highlights: 

• Common mistakes made by recruiters while hiring executives
• Recruitment and hiring process to get the desired candidates
• How to manage candidate relationships
• Guide to hire an executive leadership team for first-time founders
• Pitfalls to avoid while hiring executive talent

Common mistakes made by recruiters while hiring executives

Talent management is involved in the development of succession plans. They have insights into critical talent gaps that are in the company. They know about the bench strength and what is the up and coming internal talent. On the other hand, executive recruiting has an external approach. They are the experts on market intelligence, and they have the best competitor knowledge. When there is good synergy and knowledge sharing, companies can hire better where internal talent and external talent is taken into account when hiring. 

Advice for young people

One is not to be afraid of taking risks. Invest in getting different experiences, even if it is laterally. If someone aspires to be an executive recruiter, it is important they have the ability to interact with senior leaders, the ability to influence without authority, the ability to engage talent in the market and to have good business acumen.

Follow Shailaja on LinkedIn

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Abhash Kumar


About Springworks:
Springworks is a fully-distributed HR technology organization that is building tools and products to simplify recruitment, on-boarding, employee engagement, and retention. The product stack from Springworks includes:
SpringVerify — B2B verification platform
EngageWith — employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches company culture
Trivia — a suite of real-time, fun, and interactive games platforms for remote/hybrid team-building
SpringRole — verified professional-profile platform backed by blockchain, and
SpringRecruit — a forever-free applicant tracking systemSpringworks prides itself on being an organization focused on employee well-being and workplace culture leading to a 4.8 rating on Glassdoor for the 200+ employee strength company.

Our guest on this episode is Meetika Malhotra, Talent Acquisition Group at Tata Consultancy Services. 

The study of subjects like psychology and sociology in college strengthened Meetika's conviction of pursuing a career in human behaviour and pushed her to intern with big firms with large HR departments.

Having been a part of the HR fraternity for more than 5 years now, Meetika has worked across various HR functions. Her actual journey in HR started in 2015 when she joined nearbuy.com (then Groupon India) as a part of their HR team. 

Meetika has also established HR initiatives like 'HR Meet Ups' where she invites HR personnel from similar firms to brainstorm ideas and solutions to homogenous HR problems.

Episode Highlights

1. HR Areas that can use a tech-friendly approach 

Documentation is not digitized yet, especially in startups. There is a lot of scope for digitization in the talent acquisition team. The scheduling process can be digitized for selecting interview slots and updating changes in real-time. The feedback process can be digitized as many startups still use feedback forms. 

2. Importance of background verification in the recruitment process 

With background verification, employees might feel that the organizations they are coming into don’t trust them. Recruiters should understand that background verification helps organizations help their employees as they get an idea of their strengths and weaknesses from their previous employers.

3. Flexibility, dynamic approaches, and adaptability from an individual and organizational perspective 

A rigid company is susceptible to destruction. Being a large organization, if TCS did not adapt to the lockdown challenge, it would have been destroyed, according to Meetika. However, within a short time, they adapted to the situation by providing internet, systems, and other facilities to employees working from home.

Follow Meetika on LinkedIn

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Yashwanth Jembige

About Springworks:
Springworks is a fully-distributed HR technology organization that is building tools and products to simplify recruitment, on-boarding, employee engagement, and retention. The product stack from Springworks includes:
SpringVerify — B2B verification platform
EngageWith — employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches company culture
Trivia — a suite of real-time, fun, and interactive games platforms for remote/hybrid team-building
SpringRole — verified professional-profile platform backed by blockchain, and
SpringRecruit — a forever-free applicant tracking systemSpringworks prides itself on being an organization focused on employee well-being and workplace culture leading to a 4.8 rating on Glassdoor for the 200+ employee strength company.

'Treat others as they wish to be treated'

Our next guest took a 180 in her career journey. She is a scientist by training and double majored in Molecular and Cell Biology, and Media Studies, at UC Berkeley. She currently runs her own company which envisions a world where people feel safe and empowered to pursue their goals. We welcome Meghana Srinivas, Founder and CEO of TrustIn. 

TrustIn enables a safe workplace with a cutting-edge, contextual solution for seamless POSH implementation.

Meghana thrives to solve complex problems that impact people in a positive manner. She also believes that co-creating a more equitable world is our moral responsibility and not just a worthwhile dream.

She has more than six years of experience in teaching, training, and coaching. Moreover, she has developed and implemented multiple interventions to improve life and learning outcomes. 

Meghana led a program at The CoWrks Foundry, a business accelerator for early-stage tech companies. She also managed multiple programs, projects, and people in the social impact space at major nonprofits including Teach For India.

Episode highlights:

• Advice to employees struggling with self-objectifying issues in the professional space
• How to manage diversity and equality in the workplace?
• Best practices to address workplace discrimination
• How PoSH can help facilitate a safe workplace in the WFH setup

1. How should employees deal with self-objectifying issues in the workspace?

While talking about how they handled work during the pandemic, Meghana clarified that one should be able to draw work and space boundaries to be able to work without stressing out. She emphasized the need to identify differences between asynchronous and synchronous working modes.

2. Managing diversity and equality in the workplace

Meghana thinks that employees must feel safe and included in their workplace. Setting up grievance forums and committees to look at sexual harassment, bullying, and other types of workplace discrimination is a must, according to her. Setting up a strong culture that promotes effective communication is the key to avoiding workplace discrimination.

3. Best practices to address workplace discrimination

For cases of sexual harassment, an internal committee consisting of employees of the organization can be constituted to investigate the matter. However, they should be headed by a person who is well versed in the PoSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) laws. Ideally, ⅔ of the members should be women, and the head of the committee should be the senior-most woman of the organization. It is because she will have the social capital to handle such cases. For other cases, ethics or grievance committees can be set up. The investigation, nature of the impact on the victim, documentation, etc., can be carried out in a similar manner.

4. How PoSH can promote safety in the work-from-home setup?

Meghana feels that employees should be provided with multiple modes to report sexual harassment cases even when they are working from their homes.

5. Opportunities for women in top management roles in corporate India

Meghana thinks that diversity starts off very well at the grassroots levels with organizations. However, there is a sharp drop-off at the management levels. Corporates are giving opt-in and opt-out options to their employees in a hybrid working model, but they should also see to it that the employees who are working from home should not feel left out. 

Follow Meghana on LinkedIn

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Ishika Jani

What's better than only one podcast guest? Two!

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, we have Harsh Singh, Founder and Gautam Sethi, Co-founder of QuilinX.

It’s not every day you get both people management lessons and a window into the future world of the workforce all in a single conversation.

As they say, two heads are better than one. It is easier for two people who help each other to solve a problem than it is for one person to solve a problem alone. Harsh and Gautam's startup, QuilinX is a true example of it. 

Harsh brings 20 years of global experience in enabling organizational excellence through technology, people, process and leadership, while Gautam spent 15 years in the HR fraternity and always wanted to build something through technology that is future-ready. That's where Harsh and Gautam's visions aligned and helped them come together to build QuilinX.

Episode Highlights:

Skills that recruiters look for in new employees

According to Gautam, mindset+attitude is the key, apart from the orientation of a person. Leadership is necessary at all levels, and therefore, they look at people who can take responsibility and ownership of their work. From a technical perspective, Harsh says that having the technical skills and ability to work fast is the key.

Leadership and importance of taking feedbacks

Harsh believes that managers should take feedback from the employees in an informal setting to make them feel comfortable.

Changes & Evolution in HR

Gautam feels that digitization was the sole reason behind evolution in HR. It reduced the documentation hassles and provided time at their hands to focus on other things. It gave rise to partnerships with HR and businesses. Now HR is more into building work culture and hiring and retaining talent.

Follow Harsh & Gautam on LinkedIn 

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Rohan Mankad

About Springworks:
Springworks is a fully-distributed HR technology organisation that is building tools and products to simplify recruitment, on-boarding, employee engagement and retention.

The product stack from Springworks includes:
SpringVerify — B2B verification platform
EngageWith — employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches company culture
Trivia — a suite of real-time, fun and interactive games platform for remote/hybrid team-building
SpringRole — verified professional-profile platform backed by blockchain, and
SpringRecruit — a forever-free applicant tracking system

Springworks prides itself on being an organisation focused on employee well-being and workplace culture leading to a 4.8 rating on Glassdoor for the 200+ employee strength company.

“Hire people who believe in your company values but yet make sure the hiring decision is prejudice-free.”

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Amrit Jaidka Arora, Head Human Resource at Digit Insurance - an online general insurance company that offers various non-life insurance products covering your car, bike, travel, home, and mobile.

With an experience of over 10 years in the HR space and having worked with giants like Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Co. Ltd. and Hindustan Times, Amrit covers a lot of interesting aspects in this episode.

Episode Highlights:

• Empowering employees: Meaning, benefits, and ways to do it.
• What’s more important: Performance vs Cultural fit?
• How to foster an environment of equality in the workplace?

1. Remote Onboarding: Challenges and Employee Experience

Virtual onboarding needs a lot of effort as it becomes hard to extend the company culture experience to the remote employees. Talking about the company's journey and telling them real stories of employees can be one way of introducing company culture to the new employees. Digit Insurance uses an AI chatbot that enables the new joinees to engage with their seniors and take feedback from their regular work.

2. Impact of organizational culture on performance of employees

Culture is how employees behave when seniors are not around. It helps companies navigate through a crisis, and therefore values of the company should be genuine. At Digit, they give Guardians of Digit awards to employees that exemplify the organization's values. According to Amrit, a winning culture allows employees to outperform their peers. Therefore, it can be the critical difference between performing and non-performing companies. 

3. Hiring employees who are culturally fit for your organization

While it is essential to hire culturally fit employees, it is also essential to bring diverse experiences to enrich the work culture. Looking for culture fit improves retention, whereas diverse culture leads to creativity and innovation. Therefore, according to Amrit, recruiters have to balance performance and culture.

Follow Amrit Arora on LinkedIn

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Junius Dsilva

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Mahesh Gourishetty, Head HR at Five-Star Business Finance Limited, a non-banking finance company providing financial solutions for the business, housing and personal needs of India's unbanked population.

With more than 18 years of experience working in the HR fraternity, Mahesh has plenty of expertise to share in this conversation. 

The changing role of HR Business Partner

The whole existence of an HR Business Partner began with bringing in new talent into your company. The initial expectations were to hire people with the right quality of talent. It then slowly evolved to develop and retain these people because you already know how the business works. It then moved on to going more in-depth into the industry, coming in with suggestions and input and implementing them in the company. There has been good growth in HR Business Development, and technology plays a huge role.

Why is the HR of the future about being an expert at leading people & technology together, not one versus the other?

The way technology has come into play makes it easier for HR to recruit people and for their responsibilities to expand. HR must be tech-savvy and take the responsibility of people management and technology.

What skills do future HR leaders need to possess in this changing nature of work?

The current generation of HR graduates is much more competent regarding the exposure given to them. They need to have the skill of being adaptable. To be reasonable between being logical and emotional. You need to have the skill of managing the requirements of the company and the employees. The ability to explain new jargon to the employees and communicate in a way everybody understands things. The ability to prioritise and resilience are other skills that a future HR leader needs to have.

Follow Mahesh on LinkedIn

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Yashwanth Jembige

About Springworks:
Springworks is a fully-distributed HR technology organisation that is building tools and products to simplify recruitment, on-boarding, employee engagement and retention.

The product stack from Springworks includes:
SpringVerify — B2B verification platform
EngageWith — employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches company culture
Trivia — a suite of real-time, fun and interactive games platform for remote/hybrid team-building
SpringRole — verified professional-profile platform backed by blockchain, and
SpringRecruit — a forever-free applicant tracking system

Springworks prides itself on being an organisation focused on employee well-being and workplace culture leading to a 4.8 rating on Glassdoor for the 200+ employee strength company.

"Training is the single most important investment in people that an organization can make."

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, we welcome Arun Harihar Rao, Director Knowledge Services at Zipgrid. He leads Zipgrid’s knowledge management efforts to ensure that the agency’s workforce has access to the critical knowledge needed for mission success. He is also a certified ‘Leadership Coach’.

Zipgrid delivers knowledge-based services by creating a professionally managed eco-system that is uniquely designed & customized for housing societies to function more efficiently & enjoy superior community living experiences. 

With a total work experience of over two decades ranging from Marketing Manager, Training Manager, Vice President of Operations to founding his own company, Arun surely has done it all and it’s no surprise this episode covers a lot of ground.

Episode highlights: 

• Hiring trends in the community management sector
• How to attract talent to the community industry
• How to leverage employer branding to increase brand visibility
• Future of community management
• Importance of employee training process

The community management industry's recruiting patterns:

Large complexes and residential areas in metro cities and tier-two cities also necessitate a large workforce and resources to manage. A lot of blue-collar work needs to be done, like many security guards, facility management, housekeeping staff, etc., to make sure the community runs smoothly. The finances of all these things are to be managed effectively and adequately. So, this industry comes into play to check the compliance of bylaws and manage the blue-collars.

Attracting talent to the community industry:

Potential candidates have many options to consider, but employers also face challenges when it comes to finding the right talent. The community industry is entirely new, and candidates are unaware of such types of management, like residential housing management. Employers like Zipgrid ensure they get the right training and skills to go forward. People lack managerial and soft skills. For example, Zipgrid organises Pathshalas, providing prospective managers with on-the-job training for the future.

How can employer branding be used to improve brand visibility? 

Employers should increase their employer branding to increase their brand visibility. The community must add value to its employees. Use domain expertise in society management to increase employee and customer attraction. Prospective employees are very active on social media platforms. Therefore, leveraging a brand for its good employers is essential.

The future of the community industry

Community managers serve as brand ambassadors as well as customer ambassadors. They cultivate customer relationships by ensuring that current consumers are happy and engaged. The importance of the user experience has never been greater. Simple accommodation markets, such as paper towels or toothpaste, may not produce the enthusiasm or energy required for successful community outreach. The importance of brand association cannot be overstated. In the future,

The importance of employee training

Employees leave the company at a higher rate in the early phases. Employees remain longer because they enjoy what they do, feel appreciated, and see their performance improve. Training is the most critical investment a company or industry can make. Your industry determines the type of training you receive.

Follow Arun on LinkedIn.

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Rohan Mankad

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, our guest is Cynthia Burkhardt, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Kimberly-Clark. Cynthia is not just recognized as a thought leader in the TA space but is also a global HR award winner. She has held top positions in giants like Adecco, Johnson & Johnson, and Philips. 

With over 20 years of experience working in the HR space, Cynthia has plenty of expertise to share in this conversation:

• Most common hiring mistakes made by recruiters
• How recruiters can work with hiring managers
• Key elements of recruitment marketing
• Best HR tools & practices
• Top advice from the expert herself

Episode Highlights:

• Narrow down the search: 

It is essential to narrow down the search during the hiring process to save time and effort.  

When recruiting for a particular role, you need to search for suitable candidates. Interviewing countless people will not only waste the company's time but will be inefficient as well.

• Prevent 'one size fits all' philosophy: 

To enhance the company's impact, you need to set different standards for different roles.

A graphic designer cannot perform the role of a software developer. Hence, you need to hire different people for different positions.

• Organize your talent acquisition properly: 

You cannot be everywhere and handle everything. Hence, you need to place your HR in the right place.

For example, you cannot find pulses in a hardware store. Similarly, you need to look in specific places for particular candidates.

• Form an internal talent intelligence team: 

The internal talent intelligence team consists of employees who look out for the labor market and continuously analyze the macroeconomics of the world. 

Follow Cynthia on LinkedIn

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Abhash Kumar

About Springworks:
Springworks is a fully-distributed HR technology organisation that is building tools and products to simplify recruitment, on-boarding, employee engagement and retention.

The product stack from Springworks includes:
SpringVerify — B2B verification platform
EngageWith — employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches company culture
Trivia — a suite of real-time, fun and interactive games platform for remote/hybrid team-building
SpringRole — verified professional-profile platform backed by blockchain, and
SpringRecruit — a forever-free applicant tracking system

Springworks prides itself on being an organisation focused on employee well-being and workplace culture leading to a 4.8 rating on Glassdoor for the 200+ employee strength company.

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

On this episode of The Shape of Work podcast, we welcome Stephen Bates, founder of Certain Change Ltd - a company that makes sure that skilled & talented business people work at their highest level.

Stephen has been an entrepreneur for almost two decades. He truly understands the entrepreneurial DNA & what goes inside the mind of an entrepreneur. He breaks down his most passionate opinions on topics like leadership & management. 

Episode highlights: 

• Stephen’s professional journey
• Common leadership mistakes
• How to align individual, team, and organizational goals for success
• How often should you have one-on-one with employees
• Top qualities of leaders in the third bucket

What is the importance of making the right career choices? 

Stephen Bates is a confident and experienced person, who shared about his early life and career. He started as a physiotherapist, and later, he was inspired to start his own company after a few years of industry experience.
He elaborates upon the need to direct individuals towards their right career paths because it is essential for the proper utilisation of their abilities. 
In this podcast, he has advised that young professionals must make well-researched and timely  decisions in relation to their career prospects and future plans in this highly competitive society.
 
What are the significant leadership qualities required in an organisation? 

According to Stephen Bates, the leader must take into account the views of every member of their organisation’s team. He discussed qualities such as devotion and friendliness, and constant feedback-giving processes as essential attributes of an ideal managerial position such as Founders, CEOs (Chief Executive Officers), CFOs (Chief Financial Officers), etc.
 
What are the common leadership mistakes while managing a team?

Bates elaborated that we must understand common leadership mistakes with knowledge of some instances. These leadership mistakes made by the HR and Management of the organisation take a toll on productivity, engagement, the mental health of the employees, and Corporate Social Responsibility. During the podcast, he gave examples of his initial struggles that shaped his future career choices.
 
What are the ways to align the organisation’s goals with those of the team?

He talked about aligning the business goals with the interests of the members of the organisation. This can be achieved by giving them more shares and stakes when they contribute towards the progress of organisational goals.
 
What are the keys to organisational success in the future?

Stephen Bates highlighted the importance of internal consultations and group discussions to increase the profitability and productivity of the company. 
In the end, he talked about the importance of a leader having one-to-one interactions and constant feedback sessions with the team members. These will ensure that the team can share their personal issues and organisational problems in an efficient manner in the future.

Follow Stephen on LinkedIn.

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Abhash Kumar