Talent Acquisition Strategy in Supplementary Education Space- A Challenge

1. Talent Acquisition Strategy in Supplementary Education Space- A Challenge
Prologue
The Talent Acquisition Strategy is designed to provide a glimpse of how an effective talent acquisition strategy can be
formulated/ adopted by the organizations. All the Salient features of this strategy, is designed to equip the organizations
to adopt best practices.
In today’s scenario where organizational growth suffers due to talent management beginning with acquiring the right
talent to managing a pool of talented professionals, the Author has outlined/ narrated his experiences in Supplementary
Education Sector.
Embarking with the introduction of Supplementary Education Space, Creating Recruitment Pipeline, Talent Planning,
Sourcing, Hiring Techniques and on-boarding process is designed to endow the organizations with the recent practices
followed in Supplementary Education Space is what has described by Author.
Strategising Talent Acquisition is one of the most prominent and salient feature enabling hiring/on boarding the finest
talent available asset across the market in minimal possible time.
Let us first describe a typical Coaching or Supplementary Education Space. The supplementary education industry can be
described as, an organization or business which provides products and services aimed at enhancing the quality of
education in society.
Key Drivers of Supplementary Education Space
Middle income group often referred to as Middle Class have always had a strong belief that to reach at the top,
education is the only platform. Hence IIT’s, IIM’s and other eminent institution have become a dream choice, rather an
aspiration of both Parents & Students. As the competition is severe, the emergence of test preparation market is
inevitable. Coaching has come of age, although unregulated, has become a hot spot amongst the funding agencies and
investors alike.
The organized test-prep industries are now professionally running companies. Problems notwithstanding, it is easy to
see what drives this phenomenal bazaar — the yawning gap between the learning imparted through our basic education
system and the level of entrance examinations.
General
increase in need
for educated
workforce
Economic Boom –
Rising
Compensation for
high skill jobs
Rising per capita
income and
availability of
educational loans
Rising global
recognition of
Indian Institutes
Supplementary
Education
Demand Supply
Gap
(Inadequate
Seats)

2. Emerging Business (Coaching industry – A Parallel Education System)
Rationally, the cause of growth may be defined as; first, there is no dearth of demand for coaching services in India,
approx half population have their aim to make their career/future in engineering, medical, Management profession etc.
Secondary, lack of good schools, quality education, up to date syllabus and proper infrastructure are another very strong
reason for the exponential growth of supplemental education market. This is one where Indian consumers are not price
sensitive.
The Associated chamber of commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) recent survey on "Business of private coaching
centres in India" revealed that private tuitions have become a multi-billion rupee industry which recorded a growth of
35% in the last five years in India. The current size of private coaching industry in India is about $23.7 billion and likely to
touch $40 billion by 2015.
Report by Assochem, The private coaching industry in India is one of the fastest growing areas in the service sector. Not
even the biggest economic recession was able to slow down this industry. The average growth rate for the coaching
industry for the past six years is a whopping 35%.
Several leading test preparation companies are diversifying their portfolio from supplementary education segment to
the formal school education space, perceiving improved market potential and a more sustainable business model.
Career Opportunities (Why’s Supplementary Education Space Lucrative or Attractive)
There are few career choices today, which can be said to be totally recession proof. One of them is Multi-Million dollar
Supplementary Education Space.
Coaching, these days are run by expert teams of academicians and industry experts. Supplementary education space has
emerged as a good career option for academicians and professionals as they provide career instead of job with
handsome pay packages, flexi timings, operational freedom & ease, intellectual growth, better work-life balance and
excellent creative options.
Moreover, this is an arena to demonstrate the sound business management knowledge and high-minded goals. Using a
diverse skill set, ranging from business expertise to a deep understanding of education, visionary’s have an opportunity
to reshape the industry. A few more sufficient motivational factors which shall drive every individual to explore the
opportunities with Coaching Industries which is self explanatory towards our peculiarity & uniqueness:
 Brand Name
 Job Security
 Reward & Recognition
 Career growth and advancement opportunity
 Huge Compensation pay and Benefits, boosts mental satisfaction
 Good hygienic environment

3.  Offer a career which best suits
 Better work –life balance
 Best HR Practices
 Learning Organization
 Ample Opportunity to grow and make a difference
Truly speaking, supplementary Education Sector is not Organized, Corporatized and Regulated like multinational
companies (MNC’s) albeit this sector has successfully attained the tremendous/remarkable growth rate and has done a
stupendous job towards imparting quality education to tomorrow’s Engineers, Medicos, and Management Experts etc.
In a nutshell, this industry has Revolutionised quality and focussed education.
Objective
The objective is to equip an organization with finest available talent assets to redefine and enrich organizational growth.
In other words,
“To save the organization in current competitive market, where business begins to fall in the war of talent”
Talent Acquisition Strategy
A robust manpower plan can considerably improve chances of getting the right supply & mix of talent, who are culturally
fit to be inducted in the organization within a minimum time frame. Well thought out talent acquisition can help the
organization in aligning the people job fitment wise, thereby arresting attrition to a large extent.
Steps towards an effective talent acquisition strategy could be narrated as under:
A matured Talent Acquisition Strategy would include Talent Planning at and from where the necessary inputs can be
taken;

4. Talent Planning: Jumpstart with the Business Review
A well thought out talent planning starts with an in-depth Business Review. The deal would be to get the senior most
executive to lead the process, convey the entire business plan, the projected mapping and most importantly the salient
features & delivery timelines.
To frame the best talent planning, following aspects has to be encapsulated and discussion should revolve around:
 How did we perform over the last annual business cycle?
 What are the near-term — three to 12 months — business goals?
 What are the longer-term — 13 to 36 months — business goals?
 What are the current and future critical business challenges?
 What are the two or three most critical skills and attributes needed to meet these business goals and
challenges?
A. Attracting Talents
Today’s employees don’t just want a job, they want to learn, grow and advance – quickly. To enrich employment
opportunities in supplementary education space, following aspects needs to be taken care towards building a strong
corporate sustainability and which plays a crucial role towards attracting talents:
 Extremely Transparent & Value Based Corporate Governance
 Projection of Long term Goal
 Robust Hr Processes & system
 Corporate Social Responsibility
 Eco-friendly Corporate Practices
For attracting market best talents, employer branding plays the most crucial Role:
Employer Branding – the most effective way to attract talents
Getting people aware about the organization is a tough job. It requires a consistent communication process as well as a
well developed plan to raise awareness through advertisements and promotions via online and print media. Our aim has
to provide a clear insight about the organizational culture and practices and how the Supplementary Education Space is
the “Best place to work” and “How we are different/ unique from others”.
Crucial Employer Branding Mantras, which shall be followed:
Digital Branding – Digital Branding through e-promotions.
Communicate it right: Organization’s requirements should be communicated appropriately.
Be specific: Nothing but excellence is acceptable.

5. Talent matters, marks don’t: Focussed towards best talent, leave marks eligibility.
Engage & Educate: Promote brand as an enterprise which doesn’t grow without their employees. Our team is a mix of
people with impeccable industry experience and fresher’s who have the zeal to learn and adapt.
Tap into social networks; Make your strong presence on social media. Emphasize on factors such as “company image
and reputation” and “company culture”. Highlight work-life initiatives, initiative for Social Responsibility and greening
environment, career advancement options, competitive salary and challenging work.
Make your career webpage sizzle, if employer’s career webpage is bland and boring, candidates cab make up his/her
minds in first 30 seconds and they assume that company is bland and boring
Zest up your Job Referral Program: Send out mailers to your employees highlighting the ‘Internal Job Postings’ with
appealing descriptions on a regular basis.
Provide extra earning options
Start a Blog: An Online Blog is the best bet for spreading stories about your company and making you appeal “real”. It
also helps in preventing any negative comments that might be posted about your company. Do create rules and
expectations for your official blog and invite & reward people for writing blogs that highlight best practices and success
stories.
B. Sourcing Techniques
Sourcing Talents can be sourced through various sources, for example;
1. Employer Career Site
2. Job Portals
3. Social Media
4. Mobile Sourcing
5. Print Media
6. Crowd Sourcing
7. Campus Recruitment
8. Internship Programs
9. Poaching
1. Employer Career Site: This is the most effective way of Recruitment; Career Sites may help us in building a huge
talent pipeline, wherein Recruiters can create a pool of talents.
2. Job Portals: In recent scenario where every possible executive, professional and leaders have their accounts on
different job portals. In case not having account, unregistered job seekers used to search jobs through job portals
only. So hoisting the position on job portals may lead to form a strong talent pool. The job search engine leaders are
naukri.com, indeed.com, iimjobs.com etc., which is in reach of every professional.
3. Social Media: A hiring idea fires up social media
Many of jobseekers using an online social network to find a job, Companies are becoming increasingly social: Google has
a Twitter account @googlejobs and Microsoft has @Microsoft-Jobs which provide regular updates to job seekers around
the world.
Recommended Effective Channels of Sourcing Could be:
LinkedIn: It’s imperative for the company to have a strong presence on Linked-in. Encouraging employees to join Linked-in
and link their profiles to company’s official portfolio on Linked-In will act as a catalyst in attracting the right talent.

6. Facebook: With the advent of Facebook connecting with millions of people has become easier. Facebook pages are a
great source for sharing the organizational culture, practices, perks & benefits, leadership insight etc amongst unlimited
numbers of potential candidates.
Twitter: Twitter works on same principles as Facebook, however in 140 characters or less. Here, a person could be
nominated from the department as a SPOC (Single Point of Contact), who shall keep the followers engaged by sharing
relevant content, articles, insight about the organization and current job openings as well.
Google Plus: While not as popular as other social networking sites, you will find that there is a wide breadth of
candidates using it. Like Facebook, we must consistently focus on sharing contents, information and engaging with our
followers.
4. Use of Mobile Platform :
Mobile phones have become an intrinsic part of our lives, yet many of the Indian organizations are not using it for
recruitment. For developing a concrete mobile recruitment strategy in place for Supplementary Education Space, we
need to follow following steps/paradigm:
Building Your Company’s Mobile-Friendly Website: Building your company’s mobile friendly website is the primary
aspect for reaching out to potential candidates.
Ensure Ease of Application: Make sure that the online application process is easy and takes the least possible time for
applicants to finish. Provide an option to upload the resume, opt-in choice for email subscription.
SMS Communication: Staying in touch with potential candidates via SMS. Sharing news & updates regarding latest job
openings, interview schedules, dates and other details via texts.
Be Found on Mobile: Create a professional profile; be transparent and offer them all the information they would wish to
know about you; including your work culture, what you expect from your employees etc.
Create a Mobile Social Presence: Create a company blog and keep updating the same with interesting and relevant
information, articles and latest job postings. Create pages, forums and communities on social networks and encourage
people to participate in them.
5. Crowd-Sourced Recruiting:
Recruiters in Supplementary Education Space shall develop a concrete Strategy towards searching a potential Candidate
via crowdsourcing. There are two modes of crowd-sourcing to consider, one is employee based and other is open crowd-sourcing
where the public are invited to make referrals.
 Recruitment through employee referrals is tried and tested and is the most effective and influential form of
recruitment. In fact, 6 out of 10 companies use this source to hire potential candidates. It can build great teams by
generating employee referrals from a talent crowdsourcing corporate program. A well-designed referral program
produces high retention rate and new hires that are a better fit may require less on-boarding time, lesser training,
and they may reach maximum productivity levels faster.
 Open Crowdsourcing, For Open Crowdsourcing, we can invite employees, or any of your contacts to become virtual
recruiters for our business by using face book, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. They can be invited to join our private branded
job referral community and we can use the system to encourage them to share your job listing with their in-built
referral systems. I also think it supports the employer brand in that it conveys the message, “we are not just using
crowd-sourcing to save costs, we are investing in a process that we think we provide long term strategic benefit to
the business.”

7. When an appropriate candidate gets selected, the employees are rewarded. Thereby it’s a win-win situation for both the
companies who’ve found talent as well as the employees who enjoy the rewards. Now, imagine opening up this
particular concept to the external world. Think about the kind of possibilities that it could create, the impact of collective
networking of employees and the kind of reach it gives organizations.
6. Print Media: Where social media is not available print media is readily available. So advertising through print media
may provide leverage to touch base with all potential candidates across all society. The same shall be applied for
leadership positions.
7. Campus Recruitment:
Hiring a candidate by Campus Recruitment process is also an effective way towards making strong talent pool. It
provides us a maximum number of options for choosing an apt profile and groom him.
8. Internship program:
Internship program fast emerging as key platform for talent hiring - Internship programmes are fast emerging as a key
platform for staff hiring and talent acquisition for companies and the same has been adopted as a key HR Strategy. HR
experts are increasingly seeing this as an important tool to build talent pipeline for an organisation.
"Through this, interns are hired each year and groomed through the various business critical functions. A good
internship program helps in building the talent pipeline for an organisation. To place and compete themselves on a
global platform, Supplementary Education space shall hire interns from the leading business schools like the IIMs, MDIs
etc.
9. Poaching:
Employee poaching takes place when a company hires an employee from a competing company. Employee poaching
often happens in case of leadership/mid level of hiring to meet the high-demand management/technical skills. In
poaching organizations target their competitor’s employees by lucrative offering, sometimes offering joining bonus and
other fringe benefits.
C. Talent Assessment
The foremost challenge of an effective assessment is to completely understand the job and devise the success factors. In
absence of a transparent understanding of job and key success factors, assessment can’t be effective. There are two
basic categories of job requirements-Eligibility and Suitability.
Hygiene Factors in terms of eligibility include previous experience, education, certification, skills, abilities and reference
checks.
Cultural Fitment yardsticks include attitude, motivation, integrity, interests, work preference & congenial relationship
with your immediate supervisor, peers & other departments.
Effective designed talent assessment tool helps organizations to select the best talent for any open position by
administering various tools/exercises:
 HR Interviews
 Psychometric Assessment
 Case Studies/ Live Exercises/ Presentations
 Functional Assessment/ Panel Interviews

8. D. Talent Selection (Hiring)
Post the Talent Assessment process, Talent hiring takes in place. Talent Hiring shall be carried out only in light of the
outcome of HR Interviews, Psychometric and functional assessment and the same is also subject to approvals of
functional/departmental head.
In case of Leadership Roles, Talent hiring shall only be accomplished on the basis of outcome of HR Interviews and
Assessments results and consent of Panellist/Chairman on an apt candidate.
Offer letter generation shall be subject to clear/positive background check from previous organization. Thereafter Offer
letters shall be released on mail and copy of Appointment letter shall be handed over to the candidate in person during
the joining.
Post the joining of a candidate a positive reference check shall take place to authenticate the candidate’s
Role/Responsibilities/Compensation/ Integrity & Conduct from his current employer.
E. On Boarding
Following practices shall be followed for smoothen on boarding processes of a candidate:
 Before the joining of a candidate, all the official belongings/materials relating to candidate should be handy in
HR department.
 Space allocation responsibility shall be given to Administration department and the same shall be allocated
before the joining of a candidate.
 Rest, Employee Code, Email id, Attendance punching etc formalities shall be completed within 2-3 days of
joining; otherwise negligence of the same may paves a bad impact on candidates psyche about the organization.
 Completion of on boarding process can only be complete if it’s aligned with induction process.
Conclusion:
Getting the most appropriate talent is very critical for any organisation to succeed, which is nothing but an outcome of a
very comprehensive and customised application of various assessment tools and parameters. The benefits are plenty,
just to name would be as under:
1. Accomplishment of organisational objectives - Puts the organizational growth to the next level.
2. Increased Top line leading to greater profitability.
3. Increased performance efficiency.
4. Improvement in processes and operating procedures.
5. Improvement in word of mouth publicity leading to becoming an employer of choice.
6. Enhanced team work & bonding.
7. Better work Culture/ Environment/Climate.
8. Reduced attrition etc.
“Simply said, organisational growth is not possible in absence of a well thought robust Talent Acquisition Strategy “.
About the Author
The author of this article, Mr Bhaskar Sen is an eminent human resource management professional having a vast
experience in hospitality & education sector. He is currently associated with a top notch New Delhi, India based
Educational organization as a VP-Human Resources. He can be reached at sen.bhas@yahoo.com.