Abhijit Bhaduri

Day: November 30, 2021

  • Create opportunities for unbranded talent

    Create opportunities for unbranded talent

    In every country, educational institutions are categorised as Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 etc. Does making it to a Tier 1 college guarantee a fast-track in climbing the corporate hierarchy. Or is this a fatal flaw built on the assumption of “ceteris paribus”.

    A flawed assumption called ceteris paribus

    Ask your economist friend to explain the term Ceteris Paribus. They will laugh sheepishly. Traditional Economics had a fatal assumption. The average consumer finds an expensive wine to be tastier than one which is priced lower. This defies the law of economics that says at high prices demand will drop, ceteris paribus. Traditional economics ignore factors like affordability and desirability and the irrational side of humans. (read more)

    The talent market also assumes ceteris paribus. When colleges are ranked as Tier 1/ Tier 2 etc, they assume that the colleges have filtered out the students in terms of their “merit”. If the employer simply shows up at a Tier 1 college, they are assured of hiring someone who is “meritorious”. They then pay a premium to these Tier 1 campus hires.

    For people with an advanced degree, the wage premium is two hundred and thirteen per cent. This is based on the flawed assumption that the brightest students will be better performers. That is rarely the case. Yet paying a premium for a Tier 1 campus continues. <read more>

    Privilege and flawed assumptions

    If the admission to Tier 1 colleges was an opportunity available to everyone, it would be a fair system. That is a flawed assumption.

    The wealthy parents can pay to have the best tutors teach their kids. And pay for all the extra curricular classes and equipment. They can pay the fee to take the standardised tests needed to apply to any college in the world. Then the employers go to those “tier 1” colleges and pay eye popping salaries and turn them into employees on their rolls.

    The winners of these top tier colleges ignore the role of luck and believe they deserve the spoils.

    Here are three assumptions to be challenged.

    • Hiring from the Alma Mater: When the hiring manager goes back to their alma mater to hire, they are perpetuating the flawed assumption that the brightest students are only available there. In India, my alma mater – XLRI and TISS make up the majority of CHROs. They in turn hire their team members from the same colleges. It leaves out many more serving students who could benefit from the opportunity. A CHRO summarised it perfectly by calling it a

      “It is an invisible caste system”

    • Hiring the topper: When an employer hires the class topper, they believe that “other things being equal”, a topper will be a better performer than the rest. Academic achievements are a result of individual effort. The world of work depends on collaboration and teamwork. Assuming that capabilities and behaviour and motivation needed to succeed in business can be predicted by grades is a flawed ceteris paribus assumption. <Read: what they do not tell you about class toppers>

    • Hiring “experienced” people only: Ceteris paribus, only someone who has done the job before can do the job, it is a flawed assumption. People get rejected for having too little experience and they get rejected for having too much of it. In the world that we are in, technology is creating new products and services. New business models are being created. New markets are being addressed. Everyone, from a fresher to a retired person can contribute because the map of this new world is still being built.

    I asked my readers the single biggest initiative to increase diversity in the talent pool. Hiring beyond Tier1/ Tier2 colleges can really diversify the talent pool.

    The Tyranny of “Merit”

    Not everyone has an equal chance to compete when we put a premium on merit. Poor families stay poor while affluent parents create advantages for their kids. In the college admissions scandal, 30 parents in US were charged with facilitating fraud and paying a combined $25 million in bribes to get their children into elite schools. <read more: did anything change?>

    43% of Harvard’s white students are ALDCs ie Athletes, Legacy students, Dean’s interest list (meaning their parents have donated to the school) or Children of faculty and staff. Roughly three-quarters of these applicants would have been rejected if it weren’t for having rich or Harvard-connected parents or being an athlete. <read more>

    Michael Sandel, the author of the brilliant book The Tyranny of Merit summarises it best. Don’t miss this 8 minute talk

    Take chances on “Jagged Resumes” & unbranded talent

    “Jagged Resume” is a term coined by George Anders. His book The Rare Find is full of such jagged characters.

    The idea is that often, the most important differences among candidates will not be at the top of the resume/CV. You’ll be looking at a large pool of people who went to good universities, got good marks, and have at least some amount of good experience. Trying to spot relatively small differences within these mainstream markers — and hire the candidates who appear 97% perfect instead of those who are 96% perfect — may not be a wise way of doing your final sorting. 

    Instead look for Jagged Resumes or unbranded talent. More than 55% of America’s billion-dollar startups have an immigrant founder. <read more>

    While reading a resume, most people start at the top and work their way to the end of the document. What if recruiters started reading the resume backwards? That is where you might discover a jagged resume – one that bucks the trend and could often hold the key to discovering great talent. <read more>

    Here are two lesson in building talent pools

    1. Create a network of mentors who can generate ideas and connections

    2. Create a culture that is comfortable with failure.

    There is every likelihood that the opportunities created for the unbranded talent pool will address The Great Resignation.

    If you have a question, do drop me an email. Please do subscribe to this newsletter and encourage others to subscribe too. Thanks!

  • Employees are getting used to working fairly unsupervised: Abhijit Bhaduri

    Employees are getting used to working fairly unsupervised: Abhijit Bhaduri

    “Technology must be viewed as a means to simplify work rather than the employee looking at it as yet another piece of work that gets added,” says Abhijit Bhaduri.

    How do you believe the pandemic-induced disruptions have impacted employee expectations of HR technology?

     

    I believe employees have gotten used to so much great technology, such as e-commerce, where they can order seamlessly and have stuff delivered within a couple of days or hours to their doorstep. Everything that they consume is now accessible, so ease of consumption is primary

     

    Secondly, employees are also beginning to get used to working fairly unsupervised. So the notion of what technology can do and what the manager can do in terms of supervision will change.

     

    The third change I expect to see is on the whole issue of going back to the office. Some people want to return, and some don’t. This is an opportunity to revisit the design of what a workplace is meant to do and, therefore, decide spaces based on the nature of work. In some cases, employees may need to be in an electronically-enabled zone of collaboration or a physical sort of collaboration, depending on the nature of work. There’s also a lot of stuff that employees can do by themselves. Work will get done at their own workplace for individual contributors who don’t need to really engage and interact with anyone.

     

    While most HR and business leaders recognise the importance of HR technology, few pay attention to user experience (UX). How important is it for organisations to bring consumer-grade UX to their employees?

     

    In their lives as consumers, most employees today are getting used to making choices based on apps that are convenient to use, simplify things and speed them up. So this is an experience that they expect to get when they use apps, websites, or collaboration tools in whichever way they work.

     

    Being able to provide them with the same user experience, whether by the learning management system or the learning experience system, or their experience as a candidate, at every step, matters a lot.

     

    Given that the HR tech market is fast-paced and flooded with products and vendors, what are some important considerations to keep in mind when evaluating options to select the right tech tools?

     

    First, you need to look at a design that is low friction and makes it easy to get work done. Second is the ease of adoption – you should be able to start using it seamlessly and instinctively, without any training. Third, technology must be viewed as a means to simplify work rather than the employee looking at it as yet another piece of work that gets added.

     

    Which HR technologies do you think will see massive adoption in the post-pandemic era, and which do you think will prove duds?

     

    Technology that simplifies our lives and gives us better opportunities to connect, collaborate, and do things more creatively will catch people’s imagination. It could be data that gives people insight into their career or technology that gives them a certain degree of freedom of choice. Any of these would be powerful technologies to look out for in the HR tech space.

     

    The massive shift to a dispersed, distributed workforce has compounded the security challenges for organisations. What major concerns must HR and business leaders recognise and address to function securely in a hybrid work environment?

     

    One of the new–age competencies for HR people is to learn about cybersecurity and data security. Imagine if one day you open your computer and discover that there is ransomware, and people are asking for a certain amount to be paid in cryptocurrency in exchange for not releasing all the sensitive information about your workforce.

     

    For a large organisation, that could spell disaster because you have thousands of employees, and sometimes, sensitive information can be held at ransom.

     

    Cybersecurity is something that people have to learn, discover, and understand on a continuous basis because it’s not a body of knowledge like, let’s say, a law, which once you’ve understood the intent, helps you along for a couple of years.