Employees need to reskill themselves constantly: CEO Shine.com

Q.How did you start all of this up and where do you feelSHINE.com  is right now?

 Zairus: Traditionally classifieds used to form a large part in revenue and profits for newspapers. And if you look at classifies they were matrimonial, the essentials jobs, second-hand legal sales and that kind of stuff. Therefore, HT started looking at this entire piece they realized that jobs are going to very important. Because that's what is key to all of us and we are always looking for a job and that's never going to be out of fashion. They felt this was a segment they could get. But when they were getting into the segment they realized that it's not traditional print to web situation because the way it classifies work is dramatically different. So, it's not just the saying that making HindustanTimes.com and making the job posting on the air like they used to have in a newspaper and that's how they started shine.
So shine was started 10 years ago and it was always incubated, that's one of the biggest reasons why we are where we are today because the company realized that it is completely different ball game to be space that we're taking and the company was incubated separately. So, it's the business run within HT but it is completely separately recognizing a business in terms of hiring employee’s policies and the kind of people we hire and business that we're in. So that's what it is. We were the fourth guys to launch in the market and when I came about four and a half years ago.

Q.What are the kind of challenges you are facing in today's time when there's a huge gap between skills that the industry requires and the kind of education that the institution are providing?

Zairus: The skill they have is between two places. The first skill is because of our formal education is very academic oriented and it's not at all vocational. By vocational I am not talking about the gray collar and not this. But the IT graduated who are coming from the colleges, how employable they are and their studies that suggest that fractional of them are employable. This is challenges which are very traditional its been up with us since last 15-20 years. However, the second challenge is which is historically come out when I joined the workforce. I learned about the new skills even though, I am coming from a very good institution but the skills are changing after every 2-3 years. Every day we see a new skill in a person. For example, Android 2-3 years ago it was a very hard skill but today is it very easy to use.
So people have to constantly re-skill themselves. Not only the new recruits but also the once who are working has to re-skill themselves. So SHINE.COM actually stands for career enhancement, and careers has two aspect, one is opportunity which is job and the second is capability which is your own skilling that is if I got a job and I don't know anything about it so that means I have to enhance my knowledge and my skills. There is another thing about shine.com that it helps to educate you and it is known as skilllearning.comin which candidates help themselves to upskill their skills. 

Q.What are the type of marketing initiatives  SHINE.COM is planning to set up for 2020?

 Zairus: Sometimes having resources are the most negative thing because that's when your brain stops working, when resources are scarce that's when innovation comes and I don't think SHINE is trying to create a market presence for it's self and I think those days of creating big budget is market campaign are really over. In the connected world in the internet its so if I want to do a marketing campaign and my product doesn't deliver and people come out and do not give a positive response then it's waste of money and able to create a connected world i am taking about and to provide it to my candidates and able to truly differentiate or provide value to my candidates then you actually don't require money. So we continue to make investments but to make it happen it require a lot of investments and therefore we are investing quite heavily into the product and also in the skills of candidates.

Q.What are the internal employ policies at Shine? How do you keep your employees happy?

Zairus:   The first thing is to make our employees understand that what are we trying to do, and every employee in the company understands our vision and understand what’s going to make it happen. To make them understand our strategy and what we want to do. Second thing is to bring younger workforce and that is obviously challenging but I see everything in its positive manner. It is amazing so when we are talking about millenials and how difficult it is to engage them, I actually say and again come back how easy its to engage them as long as you being authentic.
For example, this Independence day we had a couple of engagement of activities and had a painting competition. I was surprised that I thought only a couple of people participating and ask someday to show you the kind of stuff that happened. We generally celebrate all the festivals and the days in the office. I think the big different between our company and the other company has that the others talk to their employees on a low level but we talk to them at the same point. My employees come up to me about their problems or they want to give me advice. They just walk up and share and I like that kind of thing in my office.

Q.Do you use any other way to communicate with your employees other any email?

Zairus: If I want to talk to my employee and I am in office I walk to them and talk to them but the end result is still the same. Their involvement and engagement are far higher than email. Then for efficiency purpose we have whatsapp functional groups.

Q. What is the growth members we are looking at by 2020? 

Zairus: We are a small company at this time and I can't answer to that question since it will take a lot of time to grow in the market.

Q.What is the kind of software's your company uses for hiring?

Zairus: We use a lot of SHINE.COM for our hiring and it works for a middle-level candidate that's where we do that. Within SHINE there are a lot of data analysis tools that help man match and can be better so that's essentially what we do. A lot of times we have launched new products and new launch them internally and see whether our teams adopt it or not and uses them etc. I would say that of the features we sent into our team is 50-50 chance. A lot of times it doesn't work out and tends to reallocate our projects.