We Want To Build Talent First And Buy Later: Nandini Piramal

What has been your strategy to find right talent?

Our primary focus is not to find but build talent. We improve our talent by developing the people we have and when we recruit,we try to improve our quality of recruitment. We’ve invested a lot in training and development both for what we call our high potential, so for high potential at all levels we have a program where we take both it’s a mixture of online and in-person assessments by an external company. But it’s not just classroom training - it’s coaching, it’s projects, it’s cross functional projects-- in person and virtual. We try to do it holistically.

How are you identifying high potential candidates?

Candidates are first nominated by their managers and then we undertake mix of of online assessment and in-person assessment. In an online assessment we take logical reasoning test. Then, we do one day assessment where we put them in situations and we have four observers throughout the day that will see you in different phases . We do these assessments in India, United Kingdom the United States. Hence, globally, we measure people through same tools.

What is your appraisal process? Many companies are dismissing the annual apparaisal cycle and are adopting informal appraisals.

After putting all of the efforts into your employees including the expected flexibilities, numerous training and development opportunities it becomes important to measure the output more frequently. of course, reviews are more of a frequent thing now, unlike appraisal processes used to happen once in a year. Now the feedback over from the managers about the employees are more frequent. To make it even better, we are teaching managers how to be better coaches and mentors.

How are you developing gender diversified organisation?

We have to encourage people to hire women, what we find is if we hire women they tend to be promoted in approximately the same percentage that we hire them. We have begun flagging it and we are now more aware of the gender diversity. We are pushing people to hire more women.

You are mother and an entrepreneur -- how do you strike a balance between your personal and professional life?

Personally, I feel balancing is easy if you have a good support at home. I think that’s a big benefit of being in India where mothers and grand mothers are attached to grand children. I believe, if possible, mothers should never quit their jobs. Their children, especially daughters, must always know that their mother is working and she is an ambitious, independent woman.

Do you think in the coming global business conglomerate. How do you embark on finding specific skill sets?

When it comes about dealing with sales in realty, you have to deal with customers who you buying a house and might visit the project at least 10 times before finalising. Hence, we need to do business specific programs. That’s actually how we try and develop people that we have.

After identifying the high potentials, how you ensure their growth?

We work with those high potentials to see that they are getting expanded roles or cross functional roles. After assesing them, training and developing them, we start knowing those candidates really well. We get to understand that what they want in their career , how their role can be expanded, if they want to shifted or if they expect anything else from us. We help them manage their career within the organisation.

But ofcourse, people will move out...

But people want to stay because they see growth in their job. Also, they have empowerment. These are the two things employees really stay for. That’s what we try and give them, atleast the high potentials.

How you do induct new comers and inculcate new potentials?

For the new potentials and new hires, we conduct online assessments on psychometrics according to what we call our success factors. We are doing these assesments atleast for middle or senior management level. We do psychometric test on behaviours. And also do a psychometric test on logical reasoning. These assesments helps managers assess key amongst candidates on what is better. We also are training on hiring people on what is called as behaviour event interview. So, these are the behaviours that we’ve defined are important to us. And they basically flow from our values. Our values are knowledge, action care and impact -- therefore, these are the behaviours that are important to us.

Can you define behaviour event interview?

The idea is that understand what the candidate did in the past when he or she faced a situation. Our idea is based on a theory that your past actions are best prediction of your future. If I ask a candidate what your resume is, I’ll get to know a story but if I ask, what happened in that situation and how did you respond, I will get a better understanding o f his or her personality. I will get indication of what that candidate would do in the future. So, it’s another way of really understanding the person’s behaviour.