Ram prioritizes soft skills and personality traits like loyalty, willingness to learn and work hard, teamwork, honesty, and communication skills over technical skills when hiring employees. He thinks technical skills can be acquired on the job more easily than instilling good character traits, which would be more costly. Ram wants to assess candidates' soft skills and personalities through tests and case studies evaluated by professionals and current employees to determine their suitability for the role beyond just their academic qualifications.

1. Empathize and Define
Venture Lab MOOC
Design Thinking Action Lab

2. The Empathy MAP
I have segregated the results into FEEL, THINK
and SAY in the following slides.

3. Ram FEELS
• What do you expect from an employee?
– Loyalty to the organization
– Willingness to learn
– Willingness to work hard
– A good team player
– Honest
– Communication Skills
– Technical Skills

4. Ram FEELS
• Why do you rate technical skills so low in your priority?
Technical skills can always be acquired in this line. The other
traits are more relevant in the real world. I do not say that
technical skills are not important; rather I feel that given a
basic educational/technical qualification, we can always
build upon it on the job, with our in-house resources.
Instilling the other skills and traits in an employee, however
would imply additional costs.
• What about dynamism? It does not figure in your list of
traits?
Yes, dynamism is an important trait. I would rank it above
technical skills.

5. Ram FEELS
• If you would only consider academic
achievement as a benchmark for recruitment,
would it not be possible to instil the other
values and traits in a new recruit?
It certainly is possible, but the cost of doing so
would be very high for my company. It is much
easier to train an employee to acquire domain
knowledge as that is what we are good at.

6. Ram FEELS
• Would you give importance to work
experience gained through part-time jobs?
Yes, depending on the kind of experience, I
would certainly consider experience in a part
time job. I would also look at the report from
the employer where the candidate worked
part time- specifically with respect to the
traits I consider important.

7. Ram THINKS
• How would you determine the first
six traits in a potential employee?
I would seek the help of professionals
who can assess the extent to which
these traits are present in the
candidate.

8. Ram THINKS
• What kind of methods would you like
to be used in such assessments?
I would like the assessment to be
based on a mix of general tests as
well as case study examples picked
from the area in which the future
employee would be working.

9. Ram THINKS
• Would you like some of your employees to be
a part of the assessment team?
I would shortlist candidates based on the
assessment of the professionals and then
conduct the final selection through a panel of
existing employees, some of whom would be
future colleagues.

10. Ram SAYS
• The cost of developing soft
skills and other personality
traits in an employee is very
high.

11. The Problem Statement
• Ram needs a way to assess soft skills and personality traits in a potential
candidate. Because the present process of recruitment only looks at the
educational attainment of the candidate.
• STAKEHOLDER: Ram looks at the big picture. He believes in nurturing his
employees and expects a long term association. He believes that domain
related skills can always be acquired and developed but soft skills and
personality traits are a pre-requisite. He is a person of high integrity and
commitment and expects the same from his employees.
• PROBLEM/NEED:
• He needs a better way to assess the personality of the potential employee.
• INSIGHT: the present process of recruitment only looks at the educational
attainment of the candidate.