Raymond has more than 9 years of experience in Recruitment and handling administrative tasks in Philippines and in Malaysia BPO industry. With degree in Commerce, major in Business Administration, he has also been Talent Acquisition Manager for more than 5 years. He is a subject matter expert on the company’s end-to-end Recruitment solution design a COPC (Customer Operational Performance Centre) Certified High Performance Management Techniques.

We are entering the dawn of a new age talent acquisition where disruption is needed to explore and prioritize hiring as people matter. We need to start preparing now since, by 2025, 75% of the workforce will be millennial, businesses needs to evolve align with the demographics of talent being hired. We have to evolve in a way where the business gets more structured in terms of the quality of people being hired. The expectations of what we do now will be different than five years later. Mr. Raymond in an exclusive interview with SCIKEY shared his thoughts on how at Concentrix, Malaysia, TA teams are preparing themselves to hire the upcoming millennial workforce of 2025:

– Tell us about how your Talent Acquisition function is evolving, considering business objectives?

Our primary focus is on being technologically advanced since millennials have adapted themselves to it. They actively use the power of social media, and we too, are making use of it to attract talent as one of our hiring strategies. Next is the launch of AI so that it is more helpful in our recruitment.

– How are you using AI in hiring strategies?
There is a chatbot that is equipped with a set of questions to determine things about the candidate. One of them is the confidence level of the candidate in presenting themselves or the way they communicate in English since we are into the customer service part of the business. Second is how quick they are on their feet in responding to the questions, and third is the content of the answers given. Going forward, we are looking at these chatbots doing interpretations directly.

– Do you think the TA team needs to evolve and adapt themselves to making the chatbots more intelligent?
“TA teams should be augmented on Virtual Reality, to provide the candidate even more true to life virtual experiences while assessing them.” In terms of face to face interviews, it is more objective in a way because you can see the candidate in person. We need to create a standard set of questions that need to be job-specific. This is one of the gaps I see and utilizing technology here to bridge this gap would be useful. We need to understand the behaviour of the millennials towards work.

– How do you see the recruiter adapting to AI? 
At the moment, we are not ready for this change. Nevertheless, we have to proactively keep assessing talent gaps and talent pools since new job roles and skills are taking place in markets around the globe. We have begun looking for candidates beyond the traditional talent pool and working on making ourselves stand apart from others in our field. Some of the reasons for candidates to be attracted to us could be a positive candidate experience, and we are overcoming geographical boundaries etc. One of the primary reasons for the lack of talent in the APAC region is the lack of senior management levels in organizations. They face a shortage across technology and salesforce, which are harder to fill. This is because they find it challenging to adapt to the changes.

– What are the strategies you plan on implementing to create a productive workforce by 2025?
For talent acquisition, we are focusing on being more social with the candidates. The primary thing a candidate focuses on while applying for a job today is the ease with which they can apply. We, therefore, focus on the social media aspect by displaying what it would be like working at our organization, what is the environment, people and the culture. We keep posting fun videos from our current employees to attract upcoming or potential candidates. We are also leveraging on employee referrals as our primary source of hiring since it is cheap and effective. This leads to the employees being incentivized not just financially but using other creative sources. We sponsor one of their trips or provide them with language lessons for those in different countries. We call it the Employee Referral Program and the Applicant Referral Program since we have them both.

– What are the other attributes apart from being socially adept that you are looking for in employees?
It is not only about identifying the talent but also about exploring their potential on how well they perform in upskill training. We try to test if the candidate has a passion for learning. It is more about the attitude than the aptitude of learning. We make sure to examine their Emotional Quotient more than their Intelligence Quotient. This can help us understand if they will go the extra mile to complete the job or will be an efficient leader in the future.

– Have you tried SCIKEY MindMatch assessment with the candidates? 
I have seen MindMatch feature find very useful it is with the audience, but we haven’t tried it as yet with the candidates. We will do soon.

– What are the expectations of business owners or department owners from talent sourcing and TA teams?
The fundamental expectation is to see how the candidate can help achieve two targets- on time hiring and quality. There is a correlation between the two.

So, we must strike a balance between the two. The expectation is to hire them at the right skill and the right time at the same time maintaining the balance. We also look at reducing the hiring timeline since business owners do not have time to spare. At times business owners are looking at high calibre candidates with minimal incentives to offer which does not strike a chord. There is a lot of elements that we have worked on to improve ourselves.

About SCIKEY:

SCIKEY Talent Commerce Platform is a Managed Talent Marketplace that enables employers globally, to build manage productive teams. With its online platform powered by AI platform-enabled services, Intelligent Automation and patented “SCIKEY MindMatch” algorithm; it simplifies how businesses contract or employ the best quality talent anywhere, while focusing on leveraging the talent mindset (psyche) as their prime competitive advantage.

SCIKEY’s mission is to provide the best cost, plenty of choices unmatched convenience to the employers across the globe, in employing or contracting the best quality talent On Premise, Offshore as well as in a Remote engagement.