In this episode of The Shape of Work, our interviewee, Rishwa Shah, who is a Talent Acquisition Specialist at System Soft Technologies based out of Tampa, Florida talks about how she found her calling to be an HR professional coming from a family of Chartered Accountants.
Rishwa takes care of her organization’s talent acquisition strategy from sourcing to attracting, selecting and hiring top talent. She is also building the campus recruiting programme at her organization and is enthusiastic about diversity and inclusion.
Rishwa describes virtual work as a positive move as it has increased the radius for talent acquisition. At the same time, she also recognizes some of the disadvantages like increased ghosting by candidates.
She discusses how Employer Branding is done in the US and shares her experience aligning their hiring strategy with the organization's business goals.
Remote work is increasing the talent pool and benefiting employers
Rishwa expresses that she loves working remotely. Remote work has broadened the talent pool for the organization, she says. When it comes to attracting talent, remote positions remove the geographic boundaries from the available talent pool. As a result, companies can connect and engage with potential new hires based on their qualifications and suitability for roles regardless of where they live. On the other hand, she also agrees that remote work has its fair share of disadvantages such as candidates' ghosting and no-shows have definitely increased with instances of candidates agreeing for an interview, but then not showing up later.
The art of aligning recruitment strategy with the business strategy
Rishwa shares her thumb rule which is to always try and plan recruitment according to business needs and strategy.
She rephrases one of her professors here,
“HR can only sustain or HR can only be as effective if their strategies align with business, because ultimately, everything is directed towards the business.”
To prioritise hiring based on the business’ needs is something that HR should strategically plan for. Secondly, they need to know and understand the hiring manager’s requirements. They need to know what the position is about, what is the urgency of that position, and try to connect the answers with the business strategy.
Mitigate ghosting or no- shows through employer branding
Rishwa explains how the best way to prevent cancellations and no-shows is to truly invest time in building a good rapport with a candidate, selling the job opportunity to the candidate, and gaining a firm buy-in from them regarding their interest in working at the company.
She shares that an organization’s employer brand is a necessity for any company and affects a lot of no-shows. But with everything being online, interview are being ptaken lightly by the candidates.
She shares:
“I've worked at Deloitte, which I feel has a stronger employer brand. But I've also had a lot of candidates not showing up, even when we weren’t remote. But right now, I think that's just happening a lot more.
Find Rishwa Shah on LinkedIn
Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Junius Dsilva