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VOLUME-V I ISSUE 8 I AUGUST 2015 www.content.timesjobs.com

INSIDEP 4 Hiring trends across sectorsP 6 How Gen Z causes disruption

A TimesJobs.com study on building a robust recruitment and engagement strategy for the next gen workforce

GENERATION

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What are employers doing different to hire and engage this emerging workforce and what sets it apart from previous generations? A TimesJobs survey finds out

WHAT EMPLOYERS THINK n Job portals top hiring tool

Nearly 39 per cent organisations, think online job portals are the most effective hiring tool for Gen Z. This is followed by professional networking sites such as LinkedIn and TechGig, as mentioned by 32 per cent of surveyed organisations.

Getting ready for Gen Z

Online job portals 39%Professional networking sites 32%Social media platforms 16%Mobile platforms 11%Gamification 2%

Apeksha Kaushik, TimesJobs.com

BORN after 1990, Generation Z is becoming the future of the work world. They have a clear advantage over other workforce generations because they are more updated and realistic. They are driven by facts and not by the mere feeling of optimism. They are also more adaptable to new

technology and are innovators/entrepreneurs at heart. So, while many companies are still trying to make sense of Generation

Y (born after 1982), Generation Z is posing a new challenge to them. A recent study by TimesJobs.com provides an insightful picture of what employers can do to hire, engage, motivate and retain this newest workforce generation.

The ‘TimesJobs Hiring & Engaging Gen Z’ survey 2015 suggests that employees of this generation of digital natives feel at home when they are online. It is thus crucial for HR managers and recruiters to bump up their online presence.

On the work front, nothing matters to Gen Zers more than appreciation and respect for their contribution. They like to have flexibilities in terms of working from home and even to shift their work hours. They also pay greater emphasis on work-life balance and its effect on their performance and productivity is higher than any other workplace-related factor, including money or perks.

VOLUME-V I ISSUE 8 I AUGUST 2015www.content.timesjobs.com

n Flexi timings for engagement

Flexible work timings is what matters most to Gen Z employees at the workplace, said 48 per cent organisations in the TimesJobs.com survey. Physical workplace attributes (the ambience) is also highly valued by Gen Z workforce, feel 36 per cent of the surveyed employers.

n Growth & learning for retention

None of the surveyed organisations believe money can help motivate Gen Z to work harder and stay with them in the long run. It is in fact growth & learning opportunities that will help retain Gen Z workforce, said nearly 41 per cent employers in the TimesJobs.com survey.

For nearly 25 per cent organisations, challenging/meaningful work is the biggest motivator for Gen Z employees to continue working for the same employer.

n Work-life balance mattersWork-life balance matters to Gen Z

most while choosing an employer, said 52 per cent organisations in the survey. Nearly 19 per cent employers think organisational culture matters to them the most. About 11 per cent each think money or brand entices Gen Zers, who are frequent visitors to employer rating platforms.

n Communicating face-to-face Gen Z prefers face-to-face

communication over technology, finds the TimesJobs.com study. Nearly half of India Inc employers feel that Gen Z who literally grew up with technology, finds face-to-face communication the most effective way of workplace communication. Nearly 24 per cent feel e-mail is their preferred mode of official communication while 21 said Gen Z employees prefer instant messaging for daily workplace communication, according to the survey.

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WHAT GEN Z THINKS n Solid vision in leaders

Nearly 25 per cent of the Gen Z workers want their leaders to have a solid vision, according to the TimesJobs.com survey. Nearly 23 per cent wants them to be flexible while 22 per cent wants their leaders to be good mentors. Good communication skills matters to 13 per cent of Gen Z employees while 12 per cent like their leaders to be honest, reveals the survey.

n Messaging distractsNearly half of the surveyed Gen

Z employees said social media is the biggest work distraction followed by instant messaging (21%), according to the survey. Nearly 18 per cent of Gen Z employees are most distracted by e-commerce websites.

n Like multi-taskingWhen asked if they like to

multitask, nearly 86 per cent of Gen Z responded in the affirmative. This shows that Gen Z employers are inclined to work in a fast-paced environment.

n Won’t stick around When asked about the number of companies they expect to work for during their lives, nearly 36 per cent of the Gen Z workforce said they expect to switch more than five employers in their work life, reveals the TimesJobs.com survey. Nearly 30 per cent expect to change around 4-5 companies in their work life.

Flexible timings 48%Physical workplace attributes (the ambience) 36%Telecommuting 9%Compressed work week 7%

Growth & learning 41%Challenging/meaningful work 25%Recognition 23%Good boss 11%

Work-life balance 52%Culture & atmosphere 19%Money 11%Brand 11%Location (proximity to home) 7%

Face-to-face 50%E-mail 24%Instant messaging 21%Video conferencing 5%

Over 20 years of experience

10-20 years of experience

5-10 years experience

2-5 years experience


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The Indian job market is buoyant again. After seeing a slump for five straight months, talent demand across sectors jumped by 8 per cent in July 2015, shows RecruiteX, the TimesJobs.com recruitment index

LOCATION Bengaluru top job hub

EXPERIENCE Senior talent in demand

INDUSTRY Logistics and pharma saw increased hiring

PROFILES Hiring up for domain-specific profiles

16% Bengaluru

13% Pune

11% Mumbai 5%

Delhi 23%

Lucknow

13%12%

10%10%

14% Logistics &

Warehousing

12% Healthcare/

Pharmaceuticals

10% IT/Telecom

16% Media & Entertainment

14% BFSI &

Manufacturing

18% 17%

10% 9%6%

Logistics/supply chain management/

procurement

Entertainment /media/

journalism

Sales/ BD

Marketing & advertising

IT/ telecom

HIRING UP by 8% in July after five months of slump

11% Jan 2015

8% Jul 2015

-1% Feb

-4% Mar 2015

0% Apr 2015

-12% May 2015

-2% Jun 2015

RecruiteX data for July 2015. Trends based on month-over-month analysis.

LATEST RECRUITMENT TRENDS

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TimesJobs.com Bureau

YOUNG techies entering the workforce today have a DNA different from previous generations. They are passionate, driven and

need a compelling reason to stay with a specific employer.

To understand the ingredients that technology companies are experimenting with to create an employer brand that young talented techies want to be associated with, TechGig.com invited technology leaders from Altimetrik, Dell, Happiest Minds, MetricStream, Mindtree and Mphasis Next Labs in Bengaluru recently.Becoming business technologists During the panel discussion, Madhusudhan KM, CTO, Mindtree, highlighted the changing expectations of young techies. “The tech workforce today is coming prepared and knows how exactly their customers would interact with the system. They want to first understand the real business impact of the project they are working on.”

Adding to this, Gopalakrishna Bylahalli, SVP and CTO, Happiest Minds, said, “The expectations of technologists is changing. Now they want to be more aligned to the business than to just a specific set of technologies.”

To enable the right nurturing environment for such aspiring techies, Gopalakrishna said employers need to change their traditional approach to engaging techies.

“Techies may be experts in say one or two languages but they should not be bound to a particular team. They should be given a free hand to explore different technologies or learn specific technologies they want to aspire to know,” he said.

Though all the panelists said in one voice that there is no one formula to engage young techies, there are certain key factors which are resulting in Gen Y stickiness to an employer.

Choose mentoring over managing Madhavan Satagopan, CTO, Altimetrik,

suggested doing away with the hierarchy pyramid and replacing mangers with mentors. “What we did was eliminate the titles ‘lead’ and ‘manager’ and introduced the title mentor. The moment you have a mentor structure, the connotation of reporting hierarchy goes away,” he said.

“The younger generation knows all the technologies, while middle level managers know the business context and customer management better. So we said: Don’t control or inhibit the younger generation. Instead coach them on how

they can channelise the unbundled energy to do something that impacts the business outcome.” Engage through hackathons

Dr Jai Ganesh, vice president and head of Mphasis Next Labs, shared that hackathons and ideathons are a thing that techies look forward to, especially within IT services companies where a major chunk of jobs may be repetitive in nature for coders.

“In IT services industry, there are many techies working on certain regular, fixed tasks, say software maintenance which requires skills only in certain legacy technologies. For such techies, activities such as hackathons offer an avenue to express themselves.” Build environment for innovation

Anil Bhat, associate vice president R&D, MetricStream, said employers need to build a failure tolerant and innovation-led work environment where employees are encouraged to think out of the box.

Manish Gupta, director-enterprise solution, Dell, said getting techies with innovative streak has become the need of the hour. “Over and above the tech skills, what is becoming more important is finding tech talent with the vision to innovate, going beyond the straightjacket JD and ability to assimilate the larger picture and deliver it,” he said.

The panel agreed that to engage tech talent, business leaders need to look beyond regular activities and bring about a change in the work culture, specifically in tech business function.

Engaging young techies: Is there a secret sauce?TechGig.com Conversations, Bengaluru


(Left to right) Dr Jai Ganesh, vice president and head of Mphasis Next Labs; Madhusudhan KM, CTO, Mindtree, Anil Bhat, associate vice president R&D, MetricStream; Nilabh Kapoor, regional head, TimesJobs, Kanchana Dwarakanath, moderator; Manish Gupta, director-enterprise solution, Dell; Madhavan Satagopan, CTO, Altimetrik and Gopalakrishna Bylahalli, SVP and CTO, Happiest Minds.

WHEN IT COMES TO ENGAGING TECH TALENT, BUSINESS LEADERS NEED TO LOOK BEYOND THE REGULAR EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT ACTIVITIES


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IREMEMBER getting stumped when a college student asked me to define the word career. I remember mumbling something about it being much more than

just the job that we do. It was only when I looked up the Oxford Dictionary that everything fell into place. Career is our journey through life. Yet when we talk about Gen Z careers, most people only mention what organisations have to do differently.

They are people born in the late nineties and are barely out of their teens. To understand a generation, it is important to understand the defining events that they have experienced. These life experiences will influence the lens with which they will view the world.

Nineties was the era of liberalisation. It was an opening of the economy in India and the rise of the IT sector. The media exploded with choices and social media became a word. New sectors such as BPO emerged and started hiring younger people. Careers were not just about being a doctor or an engineer. Mobile phones became the dominant mode of communication and television channels exploded.

Urbanisation increased and the joint family was not the default norm. Rising rates of divorce made single parent families fairly common. The marginalised communities found greater tolerance than before. The LGBT community, people with disabilities and many more groups came into the centrestage. A more affluent India started travelling abroad and made the world their home. Experience of cultures beyond the native one started being accessible to the middle class as well.

CHOICES: Gen Z grew up with choices — plenty of them. The ability to change tracks and pursue their dreams is the greatest privilege this generation has

experienced. Unconventional career paths have opened up. It feels like a buffet of equally attractive options that are available. The natural response is for people to try out a spoonful of several different

career options and suddenly discover that there is no space left for more. The shortened attention span leads to a need for instant gratification. Get what you love is the philosophy that will drive careers. The older generations were taught to love what they got.

ROLE MODELS: Every generation will have its role models. In India, the aspirational jobs and role models

no longer come from the corporate honchos. Today, startups and entrepreneurs are the new role models. Generation Z has the financial cushion in

the family that their parents did not grow up with. That has resulted in Gen Z having financial surplus at very early stages of their career and being able to take more risks. YouTube and other social media stars have the kind of following that several movie stars envy.

HYPER-CONNECTED: The digital natives have always experienced all answers instantaneously at the click of a button. This generation does not need to depend on previous generations for any need – social, emotional and least of all entertainment. They learn from their peers and trust their opinions on choices to be made. Lack of information asymmetry makes them feel equal to people who may have more experience or tenure. In organisations where rules are still made by the previous generations, the senior leaders have to get used to being challenged by the mobile phone-wielding fresh hire.

As the restless and individualistic Gen Zers enter the workplace

armed with digital savvy, they will cause disruptions in organisations that have no precedent. And this generation has barely started.

Abhijit Bhaduri is the chief learning

officer of Wipro

Gen Z causes disruption in organisations that have no precedent

Guest column: Gen Z careers

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Changing recruitment and talent management trends

TimesJobs.com Boardroom Dialogue, Noida


TimesJobs.com Bureau

HIRING and managing talent in today’s fast-changing business environment is undergoing a

sea change. HR is adapting to changing preferences of new hires and candidates who are not looking for a job but a career. Then there is the challenge posed by startups.

To explore these issues further, TimesJobs held a boardroom dialogue on New Age Solutions in Recruitment & Talent Management in Noida. The participants were Vikas Dubey, global recruitment head, Infogain; Sabih Kidwai, director-HR, Schneider Electric; Manmohan Bhutani, VP-HR & Operations, American Cyber Systems; Mainak Maheshwari, director-talent, Absolutdata Analytics; Pragya Kumar, head-HR, Yatra and Ashish K Srivastava, director HR, PNB MetLife.

The leaders spoke about employee assessment, candidate competencies, employer branding, startups and HR data analytics.

Excerpts from the panel discussion:

“The challenge is to find multicultural people to match the company culture. Also, there are different levels of job assessments. HR should differentiate the traits about where employees would fit in.” - Sabih Kidwai, Schneider Electric

“In the appraisal process, we do capture the aspirations of the employees. For talent management, there should frequent assessments and conversations. There should be a feedback mechanism so that there are no surprises at the end of the year.” - Vikas Dubey, Infogain

“As HR professionals, we have been brain-washed into thinking that we should not be touching data. Data analytics is no big game. We do not need tools. We can start with simple tools, the simple equations we would have done in stats. We can do that. It is about our openness to data. HR in India is not opening up to data. ” - Mainak Maheshwari, Absolutdata Analytics

“Clients today talk about new-age competencies. Like people very high on innovation, on social skills. These are becoming part of standard JDs now. These individuals also need to be highly flexible in their attitude and approach. And teamwork is coming on top. And they should be highly focused on a functional skill.” - Manmohan Bhutani, American Cyber Systems

“There is a need to develop an innovation culture to attract talent. Also, there are two sets of tech people. Some want to be visible and recognised and take up different roles and hence join startups.” - Pragya Kumar, Yatra

“When we go to the campuses, we don’t go to the tier I campuses. We go to tier II and III and they go through rigmarole in the initial two years. So we have made a lot of investment in training. We invest in people to bring them up to speed.” - Ashish K Srivastava, PNB MetLife

(Left to right) Tarun Sinha, regional head, TimesJobs; Mainak Maheshwari, director-talent, Absolutdata Analytics; Pragya Kumar, head-HR, Yatra; Sabih Kidwai, director-HR, Schneider Electric; Kanchana Dwarakanath, moderator; Manmohan Bhutani, VP-HR & Operations, American Cyber Systems; Ashish K Srivastava, director HR, PNB MetLife, and Vikas Dubey, global recruitment head, Infogain.

How Gen Z or digital natives are different from Gen Y and X?The main difference is in the expectations of all three generations from their workplaces. While Gen Xers expected a laptop, Gen Yers bring their own device to work, work anywhere and anytime. But Gen Zers eye on-the-job excitement and are keener on career growth rather than stability. If they are not satisfied, they will not stick for long which is a real challenge for the HR department. Picture a Gen Zer in a role for a six month. Then, s/he wants to move to a different role and work environment. Internet startups, to a large extent, are able to feed their hunger for excitement and rapid role/job change. Gen Z thrives on a collection of job experiences. Hiring Gen Z Sources are pretty much the same such as job boards, job portals, social networks and HR partners. The differentiator lies in the way companies market their recruitment campaigns which should be designed and treated as one aimed for prospective customers. Internet startups have been pioneers in changing paradigms in recruitment marketing

and are using all kinds of experience to hire Gen Z. It’s all about marketing your employee value proposition.Engaging Gen Z The most effective way is to enable them to be productive from Day 1. Give them access to mobile, social collaboration tools, and other applications as soon

as they join. Companies have to create working environment where Gen Zers can collaborate and share immediately. Also, traditional HR on-boarding doesn’t work well with Gen Z. Even before they join, they expect pre-boarding learning and training courses to get acquainted with the social and cultural DNA of the organisation. HR should be able to provide learning opportunities on-the-

go and at the same time allow them to share their learning.Retaining Gen Z Gen Zers are constantly looking to enrich their experience. They look for different career opportunities/role within an organisation. If they fail to get the desired opportunities, they tend to change jobs rapidly. To effectively engage them, HR should put them in charge of their careers. This can happen by having transparent processes/systems and allowing them to control the situation. Companies have to facilitate tailor-made employee experiences.Technology and tools for Gen Z Companies should have an HR platform to deploy customised talent strategies. They should also enable social learning, have a marketing campaign for talent sourcing and enhance overall employee experience via a variety of tools.Rewards & recognition for Gen Z They look for social recognition rather than money. They want to be recognised for small achievements such as suggesting a product idea. More than cash prize, they look for Facebook likes.

(As told to Neha Singh Verma)

Disclaimer: Information provided in this newsletter shall not be reproduced, published, re-sold or otherwise distributed inany medium without the prior written permission of TimesJobs.com and a clear acknowledgement to TimesJobs.com.Contact: TJinsite, TimesJobs.com, Plot No 6, Sector 16A, Film City, Noida, 201301. Write in to [email protected]

Copyright ©2015 Times Business Solutions (A division of Times Internet Ltd). All rights reserved.

Even as HR professionals learn to handle Gen Y, Gen Z or digital natives are ready to shake up workforce dynamics. This generation is hyper-connected and entrepreneurial but lacks the corporate loyalty of their predecessor, which can make them HR’s worst nightmare. Aaron Green tells TimesJobs.com how to turn this unpredictable but tech-savvy generation into evangelical workers by using the right engagement strategies and technology tools

‘Gen Zers need collaborative work from Day 1’

Interview Aaron Green,

vice president of HCM, Oracle APAC

HR SHOULD BE ABLE TO PROVIDE LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES ON-THE-GO AND ALLOW GEN Z EMPLOYEES TO SHARE THEIR LEARNINGS

generation - timesjobscontent.timesjobs.com/docs/tjinsiteaugust2015.pdfsvp and cto, happiest minds,...

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