Challenges in Hiring Top/Senior Talent | Sanjay Chandel | SVP & HEAD – PEOPLE & CULTURE | Sterling

“Lot of hiring decisions even for sr. level positions are taken basis gut and cultural fit, which may be incredibly important but many a times we miss the trick which is to balance art and science of assessing talent. HR historically has been good on the art side of hiring but science piece is generally lacking. We haven’t really leveraged the power of big data to assess fitment and probability of success in the role. Of course, there are attributes like passion for the role which is critical for success but difficult to quantify. Also, while hiring Companies need to be laser focused on what is important to them not only from current fitment perspective but also from future evolution scope. Also, outside hires typically take 2-3 years to perform the same job as well as internal hires and internal hires take 5-7 years to earn same salary as outside hires, so it is almost always a good idea to look to right candidates internally before going outside. Many a times, our focus is on convincing ‘passive’ candidates to join and we think there is something wrong with the ‘active’ candidates. We need to challenge this assumption as well. It’s important to hire sr. leaders who are open to learn and not extremely entrenched in their previous experiences. Pace of change is incredibly fast and even sr. leaders need to be able to constantly evolve and learn new things.”