The Role Of Smart Recruitment In Digital Transformation Strategy

The scale and speed of digital transformation across India in the last decade have been nothing short of astonishing. In 2010, there were around 9 crore internet users in the country. Fast forward to 2022 and that number has risen to 93 crores, with at least 34 crore users engaged in online transactions.

That is more than the total population of the United States (33 crores). In the highly competitive Indian market, digital transformation (DT) is essential to improve efficiency and unlock your access to new users. Quite unsurprisingly, India is only behind the United States, Europe, and China when it comes to global investment in digital transformation.

The formal rollout of 5G internet will bring further digital disruption across hitherto relatively untouched sectors – manufacturing, transport, and healthcare. Creating a workforce capable of handling these changes will not be easy. Recruiters will play a critical role here – along with a well-articulated digital transformation strategy in recruitment.

Why Hire For Digital Transformation – The Basics

Digital transformation involves the adoption of digital tools across all aspects of a business organisation, with the foremost aim of improving customer experience, efficiency, and productivity. AI, automation, and cloud technologies are the common tools that can empower an organisation to achieve faster workflows, anticipate challenges, respond to disruptions in real-time, and make smarter decisions.

According to MIT Sloan Management Review, digital transformation is a continuous process, where you have to adapt to a constantly changing economic and technological landscape. Laying a robust foundation will be key to future growth. And this is where the role of people becomes all-important.

You need the right people, mindset, and business practices in place for successful digital transformation. According to a Harvard Business Review study in 2019, nearly 70% of all DT projects failed due to the absence of these vital internal factors. The amount of capital wasted on these projects was huge – nearly $900 billion.

The study uncovered 4 major reasons for the abysmal success rates in DT projects:

1. Not having an organisation-wide DT strategy
2. Relying too much on external consultants
3. Ignoring the customer expectations
4. Not giving employees enough control over DT deployments
5. Failure in cultivating an agile business culture

While many of these are issues that need to be addressed at the C-Suite or Sales level, points 2 and 5 have important implications for recruiters, both in the immediate and long-term. Through a planned recruitment strategy, you can create the workplace conditions that improve your organisation's chances of success in undergoing digital transformation. 

Digital Transformation Requires Competencies At Multiple Levels

Since it impacts nearly every aspect of an organisation, a DT project will require experienced and skilled individuals across multiple disciplines. It is unlikely that a firm will have all the requisite talent at its disposal. As a recruiter, you may have to look for at least a few of these positions when hiring to facilitate a DT project:

• A project manager with prior experience in digital transformation
• Business analysts to study the feasibility of the project and provide data-driven recommendations to connect IT with your business goals
• Software developers, UI architects, and designers to develop and maintain dedicated business software and apps
• Skilled DevOps specialists to connect your developers and IT teams and optimise the automation process
• A Cloud expert to handle all the cloud-infrastructure needs of the organisation
• Testers, security experts, designers, network hardware specialists, and more, depending on your DT requirements and the nature of business

That is quite a formidable detailed list of talent requirements that will need to be addressed promptly. Finding skilled talent is already becoming harder in the current era of “The Great Resignation.” Recruiters are being forced to rethink the traditional recruitment processes.

3 Ways To Improve The Hiring Process  For Digital Talent

There is no silver bullet to the problems associated with the hiring of digital talent in India. There is an ever-widening gap between demand and supply, which currently stands at 21%. While that is the lowest among all global tech leaders, which is a scant cause for comfort. The shortage is expected to more than triple by 2026, according to a Nasscom analysis in 2022.

Recruitment managers have some tough choices to make when approaching the hiring process. The following strategies can help to improve the odds of landing the best candidates:

Be prepared to pay a premium for exceptional talent

If you are hiring a core team of digital experts to build your digital transformation base, be prepared to pay above the industry average. Loosening the purse strings may be a hard decision to make, particularly in the present climate, but having rock-star software developers and architects has a hidden benefit.

Apart from giving your organisation an edge in the technology sphere, these hires can also have a cascading effect on future hiring. Employees, particularly those in the digital sectors, prefer to work with people who are of the same calibre. If you have a team of good developers, it can help to attract similar candidates to your company.

Provide other perks and benefits beyond pay packages

Money is no longer the sole motivating factor for employees in the post-COVID era. People are seeking things like better work-life balance, work from home options – many are even willing to take a pay cut if firms are willing to offer such benefits.

In the highly dynamic world of digital technology, many professionals seek assurances of career growth and new challenges. Highlighting these benefits in your recruitment ads will help in bringing more job applications. While some of these demands will require intra-organisational changes, in the long run, they are well worth the effort.

Hire with an eye on workplace culture

The tech sphere is rife with controversies related to toxic workplace culture and gender-based discrimination. And it is a major driver for resignations, according to MIT Sloan Management Review. Just as having talented developers can help to attract other skilled workers, having a team filled with toxic individuals will repel candidates from your firm.

While the buck for workplace toxicity ultimately rests with the senior leadership in an organisation, HR managers can do their bit to prevent it or mitigate its impact. Hiring individuals capable of contributing positively to the company culture should become a standard practice or SOP. If you can build a reputation for positive work culture, hiring will become infinitely easier.

To Sum It Up – Start With The Digital Transformation Of Recruitment

A digital transformation strategy should begin with a revitalisation of the recruitment department. You can no longer rely on outdated technologies and practices to make optimal hiring decisions in a digital employment marketplace.

For starters, you need recruiters who understand the technology to hire the right digital talent. Reskilling and upskilling the HR team may be essential to build capabilities for digital recruitment. You can rely on outside consultants in the short term.

But since digital is here to stay, this will not be a viable strategy for the long-term. Along with changes in the ranks of recruiters, you will also need to embrace new technologies and automation. AI-driven Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are the mainstay of the modern recruitment process, for better or worse.

These tools, combined with the new forms of candidate evaluation, including video interviews, social media outreach, and innovative onboarding processes can help to implement a successful digital transformation strategy across your organisation in the coming decade.