Which would be the profile of your ideal candidate? What do you especially look for when hiring?

Our ideal candidate is enthusiastic with a desire to learn and succeed, a team player, performance oriented and customer centric. While hiring candidates, we are especially interested in their long-term professional goals, whether they are a good cultural fit and most of all have the motivation and interest to develop current as well as new skills to grow within the organization.

 

Which is the recruiting policy of your company for the near future?

We intend to add between 400-500 employees in Romania in the following year to service our customers in Finance & Accounting, Procurement and IT Services in all European languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, German, Hungarian - being the main languages of support)

 

Do you find taking part in a job-fair efficient? What does your company look for when interacting with participants present at such an event?

Job Fairs are effective platforms for drawing talent and building brand so they serve an important purpose for both company and candidate.  We are an employer of choice in our key markets and look at recruiting top talent as we expand our footprint and continue to serve our customers from around the world. Romania has a large pool of skilled talent which we wish to leverage through such forums. For us, job fairs are not only a medium of recruitment, but also for communicating what we do and offering meaningful careers to the best talent in the Romanian job market.

 

How important is the on-line component of your recruitment process?

Genpact Romania has hired over 800 employees each year in the past two years, and out of this number 20% were hired through our own portal and  as well as through several job sites.

 

How do you motivate your employees? Does your company promote from within?

Besides ensuring that we attract the right talent, there are processes in place to further ensure that we retain our employees by managing their long term career interests and well being within the company. First of all, from the stage when they are candidates and not yet employees, we treat everyone equally despite their nationality, race, age, gender, religion or being differently able. – Going forward, before offering the job to interested candidates, we give them an insider’s view by offering them a demonstration of what their job will entail. We call this program “pre-hire orientation.” Employees who then commit to our work culture and ethic undergo a comprehensive on boarding induction through the New Hire Orientation Program and are provided with various materials including the Employee Handbook. Further, we also have a ‘buddy program’ wherein an experienced employee is assigned to each new recruit to help integrate them into the new environment and role. Our performance management and career pathing processes are well defined and there are periodic assessment cycles where employees are encouraged to work on their goals, define expected outcomes to ensure that reviews and accompanying assessments are fair. Given the diverse nature of our portfolio, employees have the added advantage of looking for growth within the company in other domains that are of interest.. Approximately 45% of our new positions were covered internally last year, a big number considering we are still a young organization in Romania (we started in 2005). This number is increasing year-on-year, which is a proof of our growth and development plan for our employees.

 

Does volunteer work offer young candidates a professional boost when looking to get hired for the first time?

Any kind of volunteer work is appreciated because it shows that the candidate has an interest in helping others. A person who is open to volunteer work is usually sociable and therefore can be a good team player. Also, it demonstrates that the individual is receptive to making a difference to the environment and community.

 

On such an active marketplace, with employees constantly feeling tempted to change work places or even fields of activity, how do you convince your most valuable employees to remain loyal to your company?

Employee retention is achieved through a multi-pronged approach which looks at a number of issues in context of today’s workplace. Some of these include the opportunity to be actively involved in decision making to drive business objectives and outcomes thereby increasing contribution significantly, a dynamic learning environment, strong performance management and rewards systems, flexible environments that accord work life balance and the opportunity to move across different disciplines to build experience and skill. 

Genpact offers a host of comprehensive training opportunities (including opportunities such as MBA, ACCA, SAP, etc.); robust career development which allows our employees to grow horizontally or vertically besides according the flexibility to become subject matter experts or successful managers. There are periodic discussions on performance, learning and career counseling between employees and their direct managers and HR managers to ensure that they understand the business goals of the company and the role they will play in delivering results to achieve success which will in turn determine their growth within the company. Besides the above, we provide a work friendly environment with multiple fun@work activities for our employees. We also organize a lot of community service campaigns and engage our employees in many charity initiatives like teaching foreign languages to children from less advantaged families, baby sitting to help single mothers, payroll giving (we are GOLD Partner of United Way) etc.  We constantly listen to the Voice of our employees through periodic satisfaction surveys, forums with the senior leadership, regular team and all employee meet where we have “Zero surprises boxes” where employees can anonymously raise a question, concern or need. In summary, our Employer of Choice value proposition is more than ;a job at Genpact’ since it embodies multiple facets of our employee centric work practices that include periodic performance bonus, medical care program, life insurance, rewards & recognition programs, besides the tremendous learning and growth opportunities we provide for them to develop and contribute.

 

If you were to give a young candidate a piece of advice what would you tell him? What should a young professional focus on?

Companies look for employees who are enthusiastic, self driven, and have the desire to succeed and excel at what they do. As new entrants to the job market, young candidates must focus on learning as much as they can to build experience which means that they should actively look to work for organizations that encourage a culture of experiential learning. So salary should not be the prime differentiator when it comes to making choices. It is important, but being in a work environment that invests in continuous growth and development is likely to pay off in the long term. Skilled talent will always command the best price, therefore young professionals should focus more on investing their time in building domain expertise and acquiring new skills on the job. In the end, a bigger salary is not an investment; a greater learning experience is definitely!

 

Akhilesh KVD

Recruitment Leader [AVP]- Romania at Genpact