‘Marketing Changes Faster Than Lady Gaga’s Outfits’

The CEOs and Marketers vision over hiring valuable talent is transforming with time as introduction of new technology and techniques dominate the marketing landscape. The HR Talent Acquisition Summit hosted by BW People gathered a combination of both HR and marketing heads, the two key departments that work very closely in an organization.

With a lively moderator, Pankaj Dutt, Managing Partner, Alexander Hughes, the session saw interaction among top HR leaders and marketing heads on the theme of Hiring Valuable Talent.

Satyen Vyas, CEO, Symphony SUMMIT initiated the discussion by saying, “There is plenty of talent available but the challenge is to find the right one. Don’t look for people when you need them. Instead, look for them when you don’t need them. Meet them and keep your search on all the time. Acquiring and retaining are two different things when it comes to customers and also when it comes to employees, retaining remains a big challenge.”

Followed by Kushal Agarwal, Co-founder, XOXO who represented the start-up culture said, “The chaos in the start-up environment was exciting. Earlier, it was under the name of employee engagement. But it is a mess now. People walk in and ask for job description these days.”

Shantanu Das, CHRO of Amway India talking about the employee engagement in direct sales said, “The entire game of direct selling has changed for us. Initial step is to engage your own people and then is to engage an entire sales force of about 200,000 people who have become entrepreneurs and are promoting and selling our products. The senior leadership should spend time in doing this. Engagement of the entire sales force is the fulcrum of our business."

Suchita Vishnoi, Director of Marketing, Salesforce spoke about the influence of technology in this process of recruitment and said, “Technology is impacting all of us. It is best to embrace it. New employees who walk into an organization and the existing employees should adapt with it and make the best of it.”

“About 5 years back, most of the jobs present today didn’t even exist. Recruitment happens when millennial and students find you as an interesting company. About 1 per cent of all the branding that we do goes into attracting talent. In that way, we actually face more competition from startups,” said Kisha Gupta, Global Head of Academic relations, Infosys Limited.

Vivian Gomes, VP, marketing and inside sales, CSS Corps speaking his viewpoint from a marketer’s standpoint said, “If you want to do marketing, you better learn to change as marketing changes faster than Lady Gaga’s outfits. In marketing, people need to break those shackles of sameness and bring in freshness.”

Billa Bhandari, COO, Geneva Graduate School of Governance sharing his insight said, “You should understand what governance is. Lots of companies have such wonderful policies. People don’t understand the risk of governance in this part of the country.”

Shraddhanjali Rao, Head of Human Resources, SAP India speaking her mind about the role of a leader in the present scenario said, “You can’t have a CEO to be a voice person. You won’t be attractive then. Technology is changing and we can’t control that. What we can control is the quality of people getting into an organization. This should be done by every leader across the organization. Not just the CEO.”

Being the last panelist on this panel, Shridhar Marri, CEO, Senseforth said, “We do not have JDs in our organization. Because these are not just jobs but purposes. Before people were on the lookout for job stability but now they want more engagement. A very large chunk of people are disengaged now. People want to come to work for a purpose these days.”