This Is How A Recruiter Think & Hire A Candidate | Job Talks With HR Specialist Swati Pandey #2

Sundaraman: Today we have a guest Swati Pandey from MasterMined( Link ) she has been a recruiter and she has been in this industry for quite a long time. Swati, would you like to introduce yourself to our guest?

Swati Pandey: Thank you so much Sundaraman. Hi everybody, good morning, my name is Swati Pandey. I'll just give you a little bit of background about myself so I come from a defense background and I finished my two masters one in HR and the other one in a Master's in Labor Law. I started working with Amdocs in the year 2011 as an HR generalist in the global relocations team. Post that I had the opportunity to work in HR operations where I looked into the complete employee life cycle from onboarding to exit. And then I got another good opportunity to move outside for about five years and I worked for a company in the middle east where I started my recruitment journey. There is where I picked up recruitment and I realized that I have a passion for recruitment. And then from 2015 until now, I've been completely into recruitment. In 2020, I shifted back to India, and the pandemic hit and I was lost I didn't know what to do, and then that's when I met a friend and we started a company together called MasterMined Consulting and now the journey is still going on and it's been wonderful.

Sundaraman: That's a good journey you have been all through the ups and downs of your career by this point you have tons of experience and a great pair of wisdom, I believe.

Swati: Yes luckily, I got Sundaraman, an opportunity to get my hands dirty in all the domains of HR, from recruitment onboarding to the entire employee life cycle to the exit. From A to Z of what HR domain is, I got to experience; that's been good.

Sundaraman: I believe that everybody can learn from your experience. I and more people can also use that experience to get a job or else can do something better with it. Moving on, can you just give us a brief about what is Mastermined, what does it, and what is the company's mission?

Swati Pandey: Mastermined was started back in 2020 and we are a recruitment consulting firm. We completely specialize in the Ai, data science, data engineering, and data analytics space. That's where we started our journey from and luckily you know we onboarded clients who had similar needs.

Mastermined is like a one-stop solution for all their hiring needs. We know having such a huge database, I think you know that's what Mastermind been doing that's been a strength and one of our missions for a consulting firm is to capture the data science and analytics domain as much as possible you know and grow as in you know in that space that is our main aim. We work with fortune 500 companies and the top analytics form which we are also currently doing right now but we want to work with more fortune 500 companies and more you know analytics organizations and you know be like the go-to company you know for them for all the analytics hiring.

Sundaraman: In the future hiring for analytics you want to be, you want to be the firm that leads it and shows the way for every candidate.

Swati: Right exactly like if you think of analytics hiring or data science hiring you should you know you should have mastermind in your head yeah mastermind in my mind.

( Laughter breaks out! )

Sundaraman: What are the domains you have done hiring apart from data analytics or any other form apart from technical background?

Swati: We do non-IIT hiring like hr and you know manager level leadership hiring and all we do non-technical hiring as well. But like I said we specialize in you know analytics hiring which is our forte. So we've been more concentrated on that area and if you're talking about domains the kind of domains that we've worked in so we work from we've worked in you know CPG, Retail, E-Com, Telecom Industrials, Healthcare, Media, Banking. However, analytics has been you know the main forte.

Sundaraman: I was just curious about, did you enter the food industry or healthcare industry for recruiting as well?

Swati: Yes, we are working with one of you know not one we're working with two fortune 500 companies that are in FMCG food and beverage area.

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Sundaraman: What is the hardest part about recruiting with your experience from now until today?

Swati: Currently, I am sure most of my colleagues are going to agree with me is the major challenge that we are facing is not sourcing a candidate it is candidates having a lot of offers. The dropout ratio is very high so that is one major current crisis not only me but the companies that are hiring the corporate recruiters all of us are facing. This is one of the major challenges that you know currently we are all facing.

Sundaraman: The dropping out of candidates is the current crisis is going on in the HR division, I believe.

Swati: Yes, actually it's not only in India it started in America with a great resignation in 2020. If you read about it there are articles on it, where people you know are just resigning despite the pandemic hit. People were okay resigning and giving up their jobs same things happened in India as well we see a great shift in the way people are thinking people candidates are sitting with two to three offers. They're okay leaving their companies in about you know a year and there's so this is one recent trend that is also a challenge that you know we're facing okay.

Sundaraman: Just getting into the vibe of the podcast, do you contact any discussions with the company when they share a job profile with you?

Swati: Yes, we have to and it is important to discuss with the company as soon as the requirement comes to my company. The first thing we do is get on a call with the hiring manager and the hr because we need to understand the role which is very important what kind of skill sets are required, what is what would be the primary skillset, what would be the secondary skillset, the kind of educational background, the client is looking for also the kind of projects. They would want certain candidates to do so all these things are important the budgets the notice period so that is why it is imperative you know to have a call with them is important.

Sundaraman: If am a candidate I come to you and I show up with my resume so is there a process that needs to be followed to get into the recruiting part?

Swati: I'll try to break down your question if you're saying how this process works once I get the requirement so I'll explain to you how it works once the requirement comes to us the first thing that we do is we go on locally that's where the candidates you know we'll see at least 80 to 90 candidates you know on that platform Linkedin, Monster these are some platforms where you'll find maximum candidate presence so that is our first go-to place. That's where we go we also have our database and what we also do is we make hiring alerts on LinkedIn, we float hiring alerts on LinkedIn. That is where the candidates can come they would see it on their wall that they know it's like an announcement, where they can see what kind of position or what role is you know open right now. Then once a candidate contacts me or I contact the candidate that's where I give them more information about the company the role, the location the budget, etc that's how the process works. If that's what you were asking me

Sundaraman: Perfect, I was asking just that you just better articulated your answer.

Do you prefer an in-house pre-screening test before you send the candidates to a perspective firm or do you have any other methods to screen the candidates or just take the resume and look at it and decide based on the resume directly?

Swati: So Sundaraman, once you know the requirement is given to us, a lot of companies actually, most of them at least 70 to 80; they have their tests you know because it's a technical domain of analytics, data science. Also, they have particular tests you know coding tests you know like a python test or a SQL test basic coding test so that happens in the first round itself. Before that our mandate is to give them the correct fit so how we do a proper screening would be you know getting into their projects. What we do is we speak to the candidate, we dig into their projects, we see if it's matching with what the client has requested and also their communication skills. If there are leadership roles for example then we make sure they have teamwork experience, what kind of projects they have led etc. So there are various screening mandates that we follow and for each position it is different.

This after the candidate all those mandates, are check-marked and we are sure that at least eight out of ten are met that is when we submit the resume to our client.

Sundaraman: What advice would you like to give a candidate based on how to negotiate their salary?

Swati: The current market trend, Sundaraman, I don't think negotiation is a problem. I'm sure my audience will also agree as I said in my previous chat as I told you that the biggest challenge that we are facing is candidates sitting with two to three offers. So negotiation is not a challenge here Sundaraman, I encourage or I would encourage the candidate is you know rather than holding three to four offers and looking for a better offer because that is not an issue here companies are ready to pay. I think looking into the role, looking into the company's culture whether the projects are aligning with what they're looking for, what their aspirations are, how they want to grow into this data science and data analytics domain where do they want to go to you know to head to in future that is more important and that is what we encourage rather than I rather than you know negotiating salaries you know it is very important to you know have your uh the candidates.

Candidates need to know that this is my role in the company this is, how the company is going to read up the reviews of the companies? how is the work culture going to be? am I going to be able to work in this kind of work in a culture? These things are more important I feel you know salaries are something the companies are ready to pay so negotiation is not an issue. <