This week, Mr. Sarfaraz Lakhani of Calibre Creators interviewed Mr. Amit Jain, Founder Director of PeopleSense, a Mumbai based upcoming Recruitment Consultancy Organisation in which he shares some very useful information about the recruitment process.
"I will say every, organisation looks for the right fit and quality of hires. Hiring is a long-term decision and a wrong hire can have devastating effects – poor performance, perhaps resulting in termination, especially within a short time frame of appointment, is not good for either parties, de-motivation of other employees, of not being able to find and retain the right talent, etc. - Mr. Amit Jain, Founder Director, PeopleSense"
Amit has handled cross functional responsibilities which includes Business Development, training and co-ordinating various HR Assignments which includes Statutory Compliances, Psychometric Assessments, Organisation Structuring, Competency Mapping, Assessment/Development Centres, and Behavioural Event Interviewing, etc. during his employment with Thomas Assessments and Ma FoiRandstad.
He is the founder of PeopleSense Management Consultants Pvt Ltd., which has given him a larger and broader platform of learning, as he looks into the entire gamut of business, which includes almost all functional knowledge with strategical and operational inputs.
Amit has given PeopleSense a direction from stand-alone name to a systematic organization, which drives it in looking ahead.
Today, PeopleSense is strong and standing on Recruitment Services for Hospital, Pharmaceutical Companies, Packaging Industry, Medical Device Manufacturers, IT/ITES, Real Estate, Energy and Mining Industries with teams of experts and qualified people.
CC.1. Amit, you have been associated with the healthcare industry for a long time and must have interacted with many top industry leaders. What are the common concerns related to human resources faced by hospitals?
Amit: Healthcare Industry, especially Hospital Industry has its own dynamics and is very different from other industries. While interacting with leaders in the industry, major concerns pertaining to Human Resource are different for Clinical and Leadership role. I will touch upon only recruitment front, as that’s our expertise and we deal with Hospitals for the same.
High attrition rate, especially among the clinical category staff, is a major challenge for many hospitals. Due to lower number of medical graduates passing out every year and those pursuing higher studies overseas, demand is always more than supply of Doctors. Generally for Hospitals in Tier 2 and Tier 3, this is all the more challenging. These days another challenge is high remuneration sought by Doctors of a select few specialities.
For Leadership or functional roles, quality of people has always been in scarcity. Average job tenure has come down, and most of the clients demand for people at Leadership who may stay with them for long tenure.
CC.2. What categories of professionals do you cater to the healthcare sector?
Amit: PeopleSense has teams of experts for recruiting for across function and levels for Hospitals. We have a dedicated team recruiting for Doctors requisition, Non-Clinical Team for recruiting Functional and Leadership roles, and Para-Medical Team recruiting Para Medical for Vacancies. We are currently supporting more than 80 Hospitals & Medical Institutes across India as of today and counting.
CC.3. Most important question, why do employees leave their organisations? Please list the common top 3 problems, if not more?
Amit: There are various aspects for any employee to make any tactical move and the top few of them are mentioned below:-
a. Immediate Supervisor plays very critical role in employee separation. It has been very well recognised that employees do not leave organisations. They leave mostly because of bad bosses.
b. Higher Compensation from Competition for the right talent.
c. Excessive work pressure and organisational culture which is not in alignment with the employee
d. Many a times we have come across candidates at senior leadership level, where the Management doesn’t support their actions, and therefore they look for right opportunity. Friction and resistance is not conducive for the employee as well as the organisation.
CC.4. Is mobility high within the healthcare organisations and why is it so?
Amit: Healthcare is a growing Industry in India and a lot of new projects are coming up on a regular basis and many mergers and acquisitions are happening across the Country. Generally, in any growing industry the demand is always high and mobility is likely to occur. Two of the major concerns is career growth (financial as well as going up the organisational hierarchy) and stability which they think can find only in the corporate set-ups, hence the movement towards larger set-ups.
CC.5. Has the industry seen increase in the levels of compensation or has it remained stable over a period of last three to five years? Is that one of the reasons for cross-mobility?
Amit: As I mentioned in previous response, this is a growing industry. Demand is always more than supply in many roles and that has increased the compensation levels as well which is good for employees. Being a highly technical industry and facing a huge shortage of trained manpower, organisations are willing to offer higher compensation to the right talent.
CC.6. In your experience, what is the average tenure of candidates in organisations?
Amit: From our experience, we see that for leadership and functional roles, the average tenure is around 3-5 years, whereas in clinical roles, the average is around 2-4 years. Recruiting Organisations like stability and therefore prefer candidates who have been associated with their organisation for a longer tenure. It also is to make sure that the candidate has gained considerable skills during his previous stint which can be applied in the new organisation.
CC.7. What specific demands or requirements do employers make while seeking candidates?
Amit: a. Loyalty – High average tenure
b. The right academic qualifications and work experience
c. Registrations with respective trade councils
d. Meeting their compensation range
e. Good Behaviour and high achievers
f. Many employers seek local candidates
g. Many Employers look out for couples, especially for Doctor’s positions
CC.8. Do they set very high expectations from candidates and are organisations like you able to match them?
Amit: I will say every, organisation looks for the right fit and quality of hires. Hiring is a long-term decision and a wrong hire can have devastating effects – poor performance, perhaps resulting in termination, especially within a short time frame of appointment, is not good for either parties, de-motivation of other employees, of not being able to find and retain the right talent, etc.
CC.9. What is the minimum years of experience that employers seek from candidates?
Amit: This is role dependent question and it varies for every position. However, organisations seek a minimum of three years relevant experience so that they do not have to make efforts to train the new employee and therefore can quickly get on the job.
CC.10. Is it easy to fulfil the requirements given by your clients?
Amit: If it was easy it would not have come to us. Certainly, there are various parameters which play key role in convincing a candidate for organisation or the role.
• Generally for organisations which are recognized brand or well-funded – Candidates wish to work for such organisations.
• Some organisations having reputed and popular senior doctors and therefore, junior doctors wish to work with such leaders for the sake of learning and growth.
• There are some organisations for whom it is always a challenge to source quality profiles. Qualified professionals are not willing to move to Tier II or Tier III cities and townships mainly because of lower compensation levels, lack of amenities, lacking urban infrastructure, lack of recreational facilities and most importantly because of lack of good educational institutions for their children. As a result, quality of healthcare delivery also gets affected in those places.
Since PeopleSense has its own network, the sourcing skills of our research team and with the support of lot of industry people help, we are able to connect with right candidates, thus finding relevant and good candidates.
CC.11. How do you filter candidates based on their specific criteria?
Amit: Our research team identifies available candidates based on JD and job profile, or based the requirement provided by our client on the qualification, years of experience, compensation, designation etc. Followed by this, we have our Assessment team check if resumes available are relevant or further discussion is required with candidates to understand if they match all the criteria desired by client and then the profiles are shared with the client to enable them to choose and shortlist candidates from the options provided to them.
For Leadership and Functional roles, our assessment team filters candidates based on various parameters like Cultural Fitment, role fitment and capacity assessment, etc. This is done through various proven techniques.
CC.12. What would be your recommendations to employers who seek human resources?
Amit: It is very important to give clarity of the role to Recruitment Agency. A detailed JD and job profile is very important as also the context they are recruiting for which helps in profiling the right candidates for an exact fit. When the requirement is unclear, there is a lot of exchange of communication to get the complete information as to the position requirements and that is not beneficial anyone in the chain.
It is very important to have a good agency as your recruitment partner who understands the industry well. An agency with a strong database will be able to quickly cater to the requirements and offer a wide choice too. As I mentioned earlier, lack of clarity about the position profile leads to delay as wrong profiles may be given as option. Despite our quick responses, organisations take their own time to screen candidates, schedule interviews and final decision making.
Since your consultancy understands the industry well, it will source good profiles only if there is ample clarity. Many a times, requirement for same position is given to multiple consultants and then it becomes a race to outdo the other. As a result, detailed assessment becomes second priority and the race to quick submission of profiles takes importance.
CC.13. What is the average time taken by hospitals to complete the recruitment process, right from the time a position falls vacant?
Amit: Sarfaraz, that is a very good question and a critical one at that. Once the need arises, it is either internally worked or outsourced to a consultancy. We at PeopleSense, monitor the Turn Around Time (TAT) for submission of profiles and we have set an internal benchmark of 72 hours to respond to client, provided there is complete clarity of the position requirement. Completion of the entire process depends on availability of various interviewers (Decision Makers). Once the process is completed and selection happens, employee joining depends on their notice period which ranges from 30 days to 90 days. We have seen clients taking a long time to move their decision to the next step due to which candidates follow-up with us vigorously and then we have to do the same with clients.
CC.14. How different is PeopleSense from other Manpower Organisations?
Amit: Industries where we recruit for, below are few points which differentiates us from the others:-
a. We have dedicated teams recruiting for the Hospital Industry and that makes us the expert of industry.
b. Knowledge about basic documentation and registration, which we take care of in our assessment itself, that saves time of our client.
c. We have mapped many roles in the industry and our research team is continuously working on it, update it and therefore we have the primary data with passive and quality profiles with us, which is not available on many portals or agencies who do not have expertise in recruitment for the Hospital Industry.
d. We proactively do referencing and candidate engagement activities, to be able to meet TAT for every assignment.
e. Our network of the industry helps us in sourcing quality profiles.
f. We actively use social media as one of the supportive tool and that also helps us in getting passive profiles.
CC.15. What do you see as the future trend in recruitment in the health sector?
Amit: The healthcare industry is growing and since India is a highly populated country, the need of Healthcare is increasing day by day. A lot of Greenfield and Brownfield projects are coming in on an everyday basis. Mergers and Acquisitions are happening between groups and corporate and the industry is constantly re-organising. The industry will soon have a high requirement of quality manpower to meet its demand.
The demand for qualified people with expertise in Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Robotics related to the medical industry will see steep growth. The current demand for the same is in the medical equipment manufacturing industry but as more and more healthcare organisations adopt high-end technology, requirement of people to manage and operate will also increase and that should be very interesting to witness.
Networks in the industry will play a very vital role – The connects of the industry and getting feedback about the performance of the people in current or past roles is important, since the need of quality people will always remain. Recruitment organisations source and conduct assessment of candidates, and upon selection by organisations do reference or background check. Gradually, organisations have started asking if we can help them identify candidates on the basis of their performance in their previous roles.
CC.16. We see a lot of young professionals with Masters in Healthcare Administration (MHA) passing out every year? Are they industry ready to meet the requirements of organisations in terms of knowledge and experience to start performing from day one?
Amit: Such education definitely adds value in their performance. Yes, this makes them industry ready from day one. However, the actual exposure with the hospital prepares them and then they are able to connect between their classroom training and on-site experiences. In my opinion, the courses are yet a little cut-off from providing information about latest practices but we all understand that the process of revising the curriculum is a long-drawn process but it will gradually be there. To cover more topics, either the duration of the course will have to get extended or they will have to skip some topics and this, in my opinion, is a very difficult balancing act.
CC.17. Where do you see PeopleSense in the next 3 to 5 years?
Amit: We are a rapidly growing organisation. We entered the hospital industry about three years ago by acquiring a few clients in Mumbai and then there was no looking back. Today, we are assisting more than 80 Hospitals and Medical Colleges for their Recruitment needs across various states in India.
Out of our full team, we have a dedicated team of 8 members recruiting exclusively for Hospital sector only and that speaks volumes for our market presence.
I am sure in the next 3 to 5 years, we will be recognised as one of the key recruitment agency in Hospital Industry having presence to recruit for entire India and Abroad.
Thanks Amit for sharing these valuable insights and I am sure there is something in it for every body, right from job seekers to healthcare industry leaders, top management and professionals.
We at Calibre Creators wish you success in your organisational endeavours and look forward to your increased presence in the recruitment industry.
Best wishes.
Sarfaraz Lakhani
Calibre Creators
PeopleSense Website: http://peoplesense.in
Find Amit on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/amit-jain-711b2412
