Guest: Anj Vera
Presenter: Henry Acosta
Guest Bio: Anj Vera is the CEO of TalentView. Her passion for improving the state of Human Resources in the ASEAN region has lead her into becoming the CEO of TalentView in which they help companies of different sectors and sizes improve their talent attraction, engagement and development.
Segment Overview: TalentView is the expert in talent attraction, measurement, HR audit and research. With partners coming from all over the ASEAN region, they’ve helped bring solutions to forward-thinking employers that will help them get noticed and loved by prospective talents. Their mission is plain and simple: to develop research-based frameworks and integrate them into organizations’ people strategies to attract, retain and engage talent.
Address: Ortigas Center, Pasig City, Philippines
Contact: Local – (+63) 531-8395 || [email protected]
Website: www.talentview.com.ph
To know more about TalentView listen to the podcast below!
Our talk with Harry begins at the 01:45 mark of the podcast.
Transcript
Henry Acosta: Hi. This is the Outsourcing Offshoring Philippines podcast and I am Henry Acosta, the host for today. Our guest today is Anj Vera. She is the CEO of TalentView. TalentView is a 40 key organization that helps build stronger employer brands. She’s here to talk to us about what TalentView does for the BPO industry since they’re not strictly just in the BPO industry, but they have a very widespread market. With all that said, thank you so much for coming on the show Anj. I really appreciate it.
Anj Vera: Thank you Henry. Thanks for inviting me and great to be on the show.
Henry: Well to get things started, I just wanted to ask, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and what you do for TalentView?
Anj: TalentView as you’ve mentioned is an employer branding firm. We’re based in Manila but we’re serving clients across the ASEAN region. And essentially, what we do is we help organizations get noticed and loved. So it sounds very cheesy, but it’s always two parts is in it where you’re either a company that everybody knows about but when they get there, they have a problem and they don’t stay too long or you’re a company that nobody knows about but you’re a great company and everybody loves working for you, love staying in your organization and in that case, you just need some help building awareness in the market. So what we do for organizations such as these would be to help them on employer brand strategy, employer brand design, so just looking good in the channels where they want to be noticed and also employer brand technology. So making sure that technology works for you and you’re able to maximize all the possible talent acquisition sources you have through technology.
Henry: Sounds great. Well about TalentView, how do you guys tie in with a BPO industry in the Philippines?
Anj: We do a lot of work for Business Process Outsourcing firms in the country and primarily, the way that we help them is to employ our brand strategy. So BPOs as you know, always encounter so much problems hiring people because of the volume that they have. And in the environment today, in the landscape today, we’re seeing three core problems where we would love to come and help out. The first is a Marketing Shift. So we find that we are really marketing more to our candidates than they are marketing to us and you see that in the way that they don’t show up for interviews or when they come for an interview, they’re dressed in shorts and they didn’t even prepare or sometimes when you call them, they don’t even remember what BPO called them up because they applied to each and everyone. So definitely, a need for marketing and becoming more aware of the companies or the BPOs. Just making sure that candidates know who you are, know what you stand for and that you’re a great place to work, so that’s one. The second thing is a Demographic Shift. So if you take a look at the generation today, the kinds of work that they look for and the kinds of companies that they want to join. You’ll really see a bigger sense of purpose. They’re not in it just for the education. They’re not in it for the power plan. They really want to join organizations that align into the values that they have. And if you look at these demographics and how Millennials for example grew up, everything is instant. So if you want to have noodles, you don’t cook it for 10 minutes. You just add hot water and you wait a few seconds, you get instant noodles, right? So think of it in terms of of job applications and it’s become very different. People are expecting that you give them feedback after their application the day after, if not, they’re going to walk to another building and they’re going to apply there instead. They want to get promoted very quickly. They want the company to be able to provide them everything they need very quickly. So we live in a Google world. Everything is fast. And the last one is Technology. So if you look at the technological shift right now and you see how technology has changed the game, how many applications do you have for you to look for jobs? You’ve got LinkedIn, you’ve got Facebook, you’ve got job platforms like JobStreet. So it’s very different now. People can just be in the comfort of their homes and apply to 50 jobs if they wanted to. So how do you become first? How do you reach out to a candidate faster than your competitors? That becomes an increasing challenge for the organizations we work with.
Henry: I see. What are the solutions that you offer since we basically just stated the problems with these BPO companies ways of acquiring talent?
Anj: Right. So in terms of solutions for TalentView, one is Strategy. So looking at your talent segments, looking at what your competitors are doing and figuring out what channels to tap. That’s where we can come in for an organization. The second is Recruitment Marketing. I guess that’s the most acceptable term. Right now, recruitment marketing means if they’re on Facebook, how do I attract their attention? How do I make them stop to watch a post? How do I make sure that when they watch the video, they can really relate to the people that are working in our teams, and the culture and values that we have? And the third is Technology. We are an official partner of LinkedIn in the Philippines, so what that means also is if companies want to get on LinkedIn but they need some help standing out, we can work with them to build content. We can work with them to to write up all their job openings and just make sure that candidates see it first.
Henry: Wow. That’s very impressive.
Anj: I hope that helps.
Henry: Since we’re talking about talent acquisition, I’m sure a lot of employers and BPO companies, they get a lot of resumes all day. Do you also help filter those resumes and help them pick up the best candidates for their clients?
Anj: Right. So with that Henry, we will get the helper. I’ll call out our Partners. We are partnered with “Phoenix ATS” which is an applicant tracking system. So in the case of their resumes, you’ve got 100 a day at the minimum for BPOs and you don’t want to waste your time going through each and every one of them. So what Phoenix does is it allows you to sort of connect to your career website so that we can just give candidates the specific fields you want them to fill out and then from there, it’s easy for you to search which ones fit your qualifications,. They can upload their CV there. They can fill out information like what accounts have they handled before. They can fill out information what course they’ve graduated from or have they had any customer service experience. So everything can be automated now through the platform and from there, you can also assign tracking steps to your candidates – Who’s in medical check? Who’s in a background investigation phase? And just organizes everything seamlessly for you. We also have a partner called Talegent. So Talegent is our online assessment platform. We have organizations that use Talegent to sort of identify the competencies that are necessary for the job and then from there, they take a test. You’re compared to other candidates in the industry and we’re able to find out which of your candidates have the right competencies for the accounts that you have.
Henry: Wow. That makes everything so much more convenient for both sides, both the employer and candidate or employee candidate.
Anj: Exactly. You’re spot on Henry. What we really wanted to do is provide a great experience not only for the recruiters and for the organizations but also for the candidates because if you really think of it, it’s all about candidate experience now. Even if you didn’t hire a candidate, if they had a great experience and you focus on every touchpoint that you have during the application process, they’re still gonna refer you to their friends, right? So that’s what you want to happen. You don’t really want to end a relationship with a candidate but instead, provide them something they can hold on to and something they can share both in the real world and in the digital world.
Henry: This is a very interesting topic and I really appreciate you guys coming on the show today.
Anj: Likewise.
Henry: Well I just wanted to ask, I don’t want a name or ask for names for the BPOs that you handle but can you tell us about the results that they’ve had working with you and/or how their recruitment or how it affected the way they acquire talent?
Anj: That’s great. You’re right. BPOs have all these high confidential stuff, we really can’t mention names but I’m happy to share the experiences we’ve had. So one of the biggest BPOs that were working with, they’re hiring 200 people minimum a week. So typically in a month’s time, they would encounter something like 3,000 to 5,000 candidates and that’s really a huge amount of volume to walk through your doors and it’s just hard to organize and find the right talent to accept, right? So what typically happens is the user assessment from the very start. They don’t talk to anybody that does not meet the minimum requirements that they have and because our assessment also offer a branded experience even from the get-go, even from the candidates just taking the assessment, they already see the brand of the company. The company is able to communicate already the look and feel in the culture of the organization to the candidates. So you’re already selling something. You’re already marketing your values to them as they’re taking a test. And once they take that test, what happens is the organization or the BPO rather is able to filter out who they want to shortlist for specific interviews for specific accounts. And over time, we’ve been serving these organizations for about 5 years now and over time, what has happened is instead of filtering candidates and processing them for a week, we’ve now cut down that process to half a day. So somebody can come in at 8:00 a.m. and get the results by 12:00 noon, meaning from the time that they walk into the office, the time they take a test, the time they do the initial interview, the final interview, you can all do that in four hours. So it’s pretty fast. Speed is the name of the game now. So most of the details we work with, that’s the metric that we track for them. So everyone’s probably started 7-day processing, 5-day processing, 3-day processing, all the BPOs we worked with, they’ve cut it down to half a day because of the tools and the technologies that we’re able to work with them on coupled with the employer branding services that we have.
Henry: I didn’t expect those numbers and it sounds very aggressive.
Anj: It is. And I guess there’s a fear factor there as well, Henry like how BPOs love to have their building side-by-side. So in every city that you have – Ortigas, BGC or Makati, if you don’t give an answer to the candidate within that same day, they can just print their CV multiple times and move to a different building and you don’t want that because at the end of the day, you need to meet your FTE target. You need to be able to make sure that the client gets the people they want at the time that they wanted.
Henry: Well on the topic of BPO since this is the outsourcing podcast, I wanted to talk about branding and how, we really can’t name drop BPOs but what is the usual challenge on how you can make a BPO stand out to the prospective employee? How do you make them more attractive as opposed to other BPOs?
Anj: Right. I think even though like we’re on confidential terms with a lot of the BPOs, we don’t even have to look internally at what we’ve done. We can just look at the market and you can see the attraction efforts of various companies. I’ll name an example, if you see it a lot in the metro, for example “Tellus” where they’ve marketed themselves or at least the way they compare or the way they position themselves is they welcome everyone who’s different. So one of the campaigns that they have is really towards like having different sort of animals come onto their billboards. So they’ve got like a peacock, they’ve got a rabbit, a giraffe. So it’s something that it’s out there. You don’t need to look far. And if you look at that, their message is we’re accepting everyone no matter how different you are and that just helps because it’s something that’s new. It’s something that’s not typical. Gone are the days where you can just say “Join us or Come work with us or Build a Career with us.”. So I think the first thing you really need to do is look inside and find out what’s the culture of the company and anchor it on that. You don’t even need to copy what others are doing. You just simply be to look at what’s unique about your culture and be able to communicate that. To your question of how to attract talent, I guess there’s also now a variety of media that companies can choose from. I wouldn’t recommend that they stick to one because most of the companies, they just go on a job board and they think that’s it. What you really want to happen is you’re everywhere. So we see companies now on Facebook, we see them on LinkedIn, they’re putting out videos, they’re putting out employee testimonials, they’re sharing content from global offices and that’s what you really want. The first thing is awareness and to build that awareness, you’ve got to be where your talents are and for BPO organizations more so, just because the sheer volume is really a challenge for these companies.
Henry: Let’s say a BPO is looking for a certain or particular set of skills from an employee, how can they find that employee? I don’t think I’m asking it right.
Anj: No worries. I think that there’s also profiling involved. We should really move past what we call Post and Pray. And what BPOs typically do is they like posting a general job and they just pray very hard that the next day, a lot of applicants come in and apply and send their CV. So instead of doing that, what’s critical is for organizations to identify the channels that bring them the best talent. So if you’re looking for programmers and looking for IT talent, don’t go and join an accounting job fair. Join a job fair that’s specific to IT, partner with schools that have IT courses and are strong in IT skills, take a look at events where IT would be the main topic, so you’re not necessarily hiring but you’re probably networking into the audience for that particular event. So taking a look at a more creative angle on how to to fish out those that are not necessarily looking for jobs but have the skill sets that you need for the job openings you have.
Henry: Awesome. Well, I think we’re running out of time already Anj. So I’m down to my last few questions. For those interested in talking or finding you in the Philippines first of all, where can people find you in the Philippines and can you tell us a little bit more about your office location?
Anj: Yes. We are based in Ortigas, just one of the central business districts in Manila. You can drop us an email, drop by our office if you want. Our email is you can reach out to me personally that’s [email protected]. You can also look at our website, talentview.com.ph, if you want to learn more about our employer branding services and how we help BPO specifically in attracting, engaging and retaining talent.
Henry: Awesome. Well for our last question, can you leave takeaway message for all our listeners right now? They could be BPO, or owners or people who are looking to open up their own BPO firms.
Anj: Well, the key to attracting talent is focusing on the candidate experience. Make sure that every touchpoint from the time that they look at your website to the time that they meet your recruiter is absolutely in line with your culture, in line with your values and definitely, keeping in mind that they’re the priority and not just funneling them through our applicant process. I guess that’s the one tip that I can leave with everybody who’s listening.
Henry: Awesome. Well, it was great having you on the show Anj and I really enjoyed this interview. It’s very interesting.
Anj: Thank you so much, Henry. Thanks for inviting me and you guys have a great day.
Henry: And that was Anj Vera, the CEO of TalentView. If you’re interested about getting in touch with TalentView, please visit them at www.talentview.com.ph and you can email her at [email protected]. And if you’re interested in knowing more about the BPO industry in the Philippines, please visit us on our website at www.offshoring.com.ph. We also have our social media outlets which are Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube. So please share some love and leave us a like, and a subscribe and a follow and we’d be happy to get in touch with you if you message us. We’d be happy to interact with you. This is the Outsourcing and Offshoring Philippines podcast. I am Henry Acosta.
