On June 22nd, we organized our first Belong Executive Briefing - an exclusive Roundtable and Networking event attended by some of the top Talent Leaders in India today. The aim of the event was to offer a platform for industry leaders to meet, discuss the challenges being faced by Talent Acquisition teams today, and learn about how companies have to adapt to remain competitive in today’s candidate-driven market.

1. Belong Executive Briefing:
Future-Ready Talent Strategies for
Business Impact

2. On June 22nd, we organized our first Belong Executive Briefing - an
exclusive Roundtable and Networking event attended by some of
the top Talent Leaders in India.

3. The aim of the event was to offer a platform for industry leaders to
meet, discuss the challenges being faced by Talent Acquisition
teams today, and learn about how companies have to adapt to
remain competitive in today’s candidate-driven market.

4. There were three main points of discussion at the event:
- Innovative ways to deal with shortage of talent
- Improving Candidate Experience
- Importance of aligning Talent Acquisition with Business

5. 1. Innovative ways to deal with shortage
of talent

6. “Lack of relevant talent is going
to be an issue particularly when
you are hiring for extremely
niche roles or skills that are
inherently difficult to assess.
The important thing is to
enable business to give
constructive feedback to better
your search -- even if it means
a hard pushback at times.”
TARUNA REDDY
HEAD OF TALENT ACQUISITION
TESCO TECHNOLOGY

7. “Maintaining a healthy talent
pipeline needs us to think long
term. At Sabre, we are thinking
at least two to three years
down the line -- which is why
we have started working with
universities and colleges to
facilitate incubation centers to
equip the next generation of
talent.”
SHREEDEVI ROOGI
GLOBAL TALENT ACQUISITION APAC
SABRE TECHNOLOGIES

8. “At Intuit, Talent Marketing is
a specialized function that
focuses on our employer brand.
Ensuring our target talent have
a top-of-the-mind recall of our
brand is a high priority.”
DENNIS WILFRED
HEAD OF TALENT ACQUISITION
INTUIT INDIA

9. “There is a need for a mindset
shift when it comes to
technology. While there is a lot
of focus on AI and analytics
technologies, do we know how
to leverage them right? Are we
incentivizing the right behavior
along with the right tech?”
SINDHU SUBHASINI
INDIA HR HEAD
BRILLIO

10. “Whenever business leaders
talk to media, they talk about
products and technology. But
equip them to talk about your
talent and hiring and you will
begin to see the impact on your
employer brand.”
GAUTAM SHETTY
HEAD OF TALENT ACQUISITION
JCPENNEY

11. “Empowering our leaders and
people to evangelize the
InMobi brand has hugely
impacted our ability to attract
talent. And that’s where
investing in content and digital
internally in Talent Acquisition
has made sense to us.”
NAMITA VYAS
HEAD OF TALENT ACQUISITION
INMOBI

12. 2. Improving Candidate Experience

13. “It is impossible to deliver great
candidate experience if it is
solely an HR responsibility. In
my view it is a shared
responsibility between HR and
Business and we need to drive
it.”
VINUTHA RAJA
HEAD, HUMAN RESOURCES
SONY INDIA SOFTWARE CENTRE

14. “I think talent leaders are like
full-time career coaches today.
I spend a large amount of my
time today out of the office
engaging high-quality passive
talent.”
CLIVE RODRIGUES
TALENT ACQUISITION PARTNER APAC
KRONOS

15. “One way to bring in efficiency
into candidate experience is to
separate the sourcing and
engagement function, which
means the engagement
specialist holds the candidate
relationship across their
journey with us.”
MAHESH SRINIVASAN
VP - HUMAN RESOURCES
FIDELITY INVESTMENTS

16. 3. Importance of aligning Talent Acquisition
with Business

17. “Talent Acquisition has to
enable talent pipeline visibility
- we have to bring an
understanding of the landscape
and get forecasting right. If we
don’t, it seriously hampers our
ability to do the right kind of
candidate engagement.”
SRIRAM A G
GLOBAL TALENT ACQUISITION
DIRECTOR
JUNIPER NETWORKS

18. “When helping business
understand the talent
landscape, don’t just focus on
the number of people in the
market. Focus on the different
kinds of impact different kinds
of people have.”
ANIL CHANDRA
HEAD OF TALENT ACQUISITION
OLA CABS

19. “Business requirements for
hiring are going to be niche.
And when that happens our
focus is not on speed, but on
quality. In fact, at InMobi we
have stopped tracking SLAs for
hiring time.”
KEVIN FREITAS
HUMAN RESOURCES LEADER
INMOBI

20. “We are enabling business and
recruiting to align better with
Recruitment Strategy Meetings
before opening up a new role.
The goal is to proactively align
and outline key requirements,
without which we don’t open
up hiring.”
GEETA RAMESH
GENERAL MANAGER - TALENT
ACQUISITION
PHILIPS

21. “While the JD is something you
measure your hiring against, it
doesn’t necessarily do a good
job of capturing a lot of critical
information. My fear is it is lost
between business and
recruiting invariably.”
CHARITHA RAO
VP, HUMAN RESOURCES
ABB

22. “While there is a lot of focus on
hot-skill hiring, business also
needs talent with “legacy”
skills. This is always a huge
pain point that doesn’t get
enough attention. For example,
how do you find the folks who
have worked on OS/390?"
ANNU MATHEW
DIRECTOR, INDIA RECRUITING
CERNER CORPORATION

23. “When we stopped obsessing
about time-to-fill and instead on
value of talent being
hired, coincidentally
our hiring time actually
dropped. Hiring right talent
ensures that we retain them
longer. This demonstrates impact
to business”
CLIVE RODRIGUES
TALENT ACQUISITION PARTNER,
APAC
KRONOS

24. MAIL US
hello@belong.co