Recruitment & HR Tech - The Current Indian Scenario
Having completed his MS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Chicago, Omprakash boasts of a 19-year long career during which he has handle key responsibilities across companies such as Inbox 360, Syndera Corporation, Insync Software, Shutterfly, DemandTec and Machine Zone, prior to joining Fountain in 2018.
There has been a lot of chatter among Indian customers about how the Covid pandemic was a curse to many industries, but a boon to few. Currently, India has close to a 500 million people strong workforce, among which over 300 million of them own a smartphone. This shows that we have a very mobile-savvy workforce. That’s the current situation from the supply side. On the other hand, on the demand side of recruitment through the Covid, hiring has gone through the roof. Now, the biggest challenge we have at hand is how to connect the employers and the job aspirants. I believe that technology is the solution for this.
Hassle-Free Experience through Technology
If you look at recruitment, there are a lot of steps; right from finding the applicants to screening them, sending them to offer letters, onboarding them and getting them onto a payroll. If you consider all the manual activities people do today, they will easily take-up their entire working hours, leaving them no time for anything else. Thus, we are big about automation and automate anything and everything that can be automated. This brings in a lot of efficiency to the recruiters and simultaneously improves the applicant’s experience.
For example, recruiters might sometimes fail to notice any particular answer or column that the applicant has not filled. And when this is noticed, they will have to manually notify the applicant via email, call or message. When integrated with automation technologies, if the application/test isn’t completed within the set timeframe, a customized automated message is sent to the applicant from the recruitment system. Given the large number of applicants applying online, this automated setup is highly beneficial for the recruiters, and it even increases the conversion ratio by 30-50 percent depending upon the vertical.
Having an AI-powered virtual chatbot eases the query resolving process among recruitment firms, as it acts as a virtual recruiter to answer any queries applicants put forth during the application process. This way, applicants’ queries are not only cleared in a quick and hassle-free way, but it also increases an applicant’s trust factor and desire to be a part of such organization. Thus, it is safe to say that technology will solve almost all the pain points of recruiters today.
AI in Recruitment
With the advent of ChatGPT, there is a huge buzz around AI to empower recruiters and guide the applicants through the entire application process. Artificial Intelligence also helps in background checking of candidates and even automated ID card verification of employees, thus easing the entire HR process pre and post-recruitment. These are some of the major use cases where AI has been deployed in the recent past.
Background verification is at times the most time-consuming process in recruitment, where higher the time frame, the higher the chances of a candidate moving on. Thus, having automation at least as part of the background verification process saves a lot of time for the recruiters. For example, recruiters can fix a specific checklist depending on the job role, where a few areas being verified is mandatory and a few areas are not so important and can be neglected. Through this, when an applicant’s background verification report is uploaded into the AI enabled recruitment system, the system automatically checks for the mandatory areas with high priority and rejects the applicant automatically if even any one of the area is not satisfactorily verified. Thus, AI enables a seamless and hassle-free process experience for both recruiters and applicants.
Future of HR Tech in India
India is poised to be the fifth largest economy soon. A huge chunk of this growth is going to come from the blue/grey collar employees, as that is the area we are witnessing explosive growth. If we take gig economy, we are expected to see a 300 percent growth in the number of gig employees between now and the end of this decade. Roughly, there are around 7.7 million people in the gig economy today, which will reach 25 million by the end of this decade. This will be the same across every industry we take into consideration; hiring is going to increase exponentially across every industry in the days to come.
Also, HR tech has not penetrated blue & grey collar job recruitment as much as it has in white collar hiring. Even today, there are a massive number of applicants in the blue & grey collar segment, where every process is being done manually. Approximately only 10 percent of this application screening process happens online. We expect this to be reversed by the end of this decade, wherein 90 percent of the blue & grey collar hiring will be automated using HR tech and only 10 percent of it will be done manually. We at Fountain hope to accelerate this growth in terms of tech based hiring.
.jpg "Omprakash Muppirala, VP of Engineering & Head of Fountain, India")
There has been a lot of chatter among Indian customers about how the Covid pandemic was a curse to many industries, but a boon to few. Currently, India has close to a 500 million people strong workforce, among which over 300 million of them own a smartphone. This shows that we have a very mobile-savvy workforce. That’s the current situation from the supply side. On the other hand, on the demand side of recruitment through the Covid, hiring has gone through the roof. Now, the biggest challenge we have at hand is how to connect the employers and the job aspirants. I believe that technology is the solution for this.
Hassle-Free Experience through Technology
If you look at recruitment, there are a lot of steps; right from finding the applicants to screening them, sending them to offer letters, onboarding them and getting them onto a payroll. If you consider all the manual activities people do today, they will easily take-up their entire working hours, leaving them no time for anything else. Thus, we are big about automation and automate anything and everything that can be automated. This brings in a lot of efficiency to the recruiters and simultaneously improves the applicant’s experience.
For example, recruiters might sometimes fail to notice any particular answer or column that the applicant has not filled. And when this is noticed, they will have to manually notify the applicant via email, call or message. When integrated with automation technologies, if the application/test isn’t completed within the set timeframe, a customized automated message is sent to the applicant from the recruitment system. Given the large number of applicants applying online, this automated setup is highly beneficial for the recruiters, and it even increases the conversion ratio by 30-50 percent depending upon the vertical.
Having an AI-powered virtual chatbot eases the query resolving process among recruitment firms, as it acts as a virtual recruiter to answer any queries applicants put forth during the application process. This way, applicants’ queries are not only cleared in a quick and hassle-free way, but it also increases an applicant’s trust factor and desire to be a part of such organization. Thus, it is safe to say that technology will solve almost all the pain points of recruiters today.
AI in Recruitment
With the advent of ChatGPT, there is a huge buzz around AI to empower recruiters and guide the applicants through the entire application process. Artificial Intelligence also helps in background checking of candidates and even automated ID card verification of employees, thus easing the entire HR process pre and post-recruitment. These are some of the major use cases where AI has been deployed in the recent past.
Background verification is at times the most time-consuming process in recruitment, where higher the time frame, the higher the chances of a candidate moving on. Thus, having automation at least as part of the background verification process saves a lot of time for the recruiters. For example, recruiters can fix a specific checklist depending on the job role, where a few areas being verified is mandatory and a few areas are not so important and can be neglected. Through this, when an applicant’s background verification report is uploaded into the AI enabled recruitment system, the system automatically checks for the mandatory areas with high priority and rejects the applicant automatically if even any one of the area is not satisfactorily verified. Thus, AI enables a seamless and hassle-free process experience for both recruiters and applicants.
Future of HR Tech in India
India is poised to be the fifth largest economy soon. A huge chunk of this growth is going to come from the blue/grey collar employees, as that is the area we are witnessing explosive growth. If we take gig economy, we are expected to see a 300 percent growth in the number of gig employees between now and the end of this decade. Roughly, there are around 7.7 million people in the gig economy today, which will reach 25 million by the end of this decade. This will be the same across every industry we take into consideration; hiring is going to increase exponentially across every industry in the days to come.
Also, HR tech has not penetrated blue & grey collar job recruitment as much as it has in white collar hiring. Even today, there are a massive number of applicants in the blue & grey collar segment, where every process is being done manually. Approximately only 10 percent of this application screening process happens online. We expect this to be reversed by the end of this decade, wherein 90 percent of the blue & grey collar hiring will be automated using HR tech and only 10 percent of it will be done manually. We at Fountain hope to accelerate this growth in terms of tech based hiring.
.jpg "Sudeep Bhalerao: Astutely Balancing Empathy & Business Growth")
