The Shape of Work

#76: Anupam Acharya on the ins and outs of tech-driven hiring and the 'SaaSification' of the staffing industry

August 18, 2021 Springworks Season 1 Episode 76
The Shape of Work
#76: Anupam Acharya on the ins and outs of tech-driven hiring and the 'SaaSification' of the staffing industry
Show Notes

Want to learn the ins and outs of tech-driven hiring and the 'SaaS'iness of the staffing industry?

Anupam Acharya has you covered on both accounts in this wide-ranging conversation with us. As Co-Founder & COO at Workex, a job search & staff management platform, Anupam also shares:

  • His journey from leading business operations at Delhivery to being the founder of Workex
  • Myths about tech-driven hiring
  • Objectification of information and intent capturing as the key levers for the new-age recruitment software
  • His views on hiring based on skills vs Education
  • Creative ways to keep remote workers engaged and excited

Significant aspects of tech-driven hiring:

Anupam believes that the Internet has changed the face of the recruitment industry just like e-commerce. Although it is in the transition phase, everything related to hiring and sourcing will eventually be tech-based. In contrast, one section of the industry feels that technology-driven hiring has reduced the quality of overall hiring. Anupam has a contrary opinion; He believes technology has made remote work and online hiring easy. There are two significant aspects of tech-based hiring:

  1. Automated initial screening - In India, people are looking for a job; even those already employed keep looking for better opportunities. The top-end of the application funnel is enormous. Hence initial screening becomes crucial. It helps in the evaluation of candidates by filtering for relevant certification, experience, education and more. This method significantly improves the hiring quality. Irrespective of the candidate’s skill level, tech-based automated pre-screening is necessary to improve your time to hire.
  2. Technology as the final decision maker – The staffing industry is still to reach this stage. Anupam mentions that whenever we get to that stage, the concerns will be around biased online algorithms as these algorithms are not transparent and visible to users.

The transition phase of tech-based hiring:

Anupam talks about India being a trust deficit country and how the e-commerce industry faced challenges in its initial days. Earlier, people used cash on delivery option and now, as the trust is there, they make the payment and rest assured that they will get what they ordered. The staffing industry is going through a similar transition. The Internet and social media are playing a pivotal role in creating behavioral profiles of every individual. Matching is crucial; productivity increases when you get suitable candidates and staff for your company.

New age job boards are capturing the intent in real-time. The candidates prefer chatting over getting a call because the information is objectified. There is a 100x change in the time to hire metric, reducing from five days to five hours. You need to interact with your user daily to capture their intent. Objectification and intent capturing are the two most significant leverage for any new recruitment platform. The market is enormous, and we are still scratching the tip of the iceberg.

Follow Anupam on LinkedIn

Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Yashwanth Jembige

BONUS: One of the major step of hiring is background verification. Here is a The Ultimate Background Check and Screening Guide for 2021 for  you to learn the very basics of the process