• According to the State of Startups Report 2017, 74 percent of startup founders say that hiring good people came is a topmost concern for them.
• The Startup Hiring Trends Report 2019 by Lightspeed Venture Partners says that only half of the startups reported having the necessary recruiting team to effectively hit their hiring goals.
• CBInsights analysis of 101 startups polls that 23 percent of small businesses fail because they don’t have the right team to work with.

Organisations today are increasingly looking at ways to foster innovation and grow their businesses rapidly. Indian startups need robust manpower to cope with the rapidly changing environment but struggle to attract diverse talent with must-have skills. When it comes to hiring, every action and decision is critical for startups. Having a small team size means one additional employee could contribute massively to the company’s growth, or have the power to disrupt the workflow. A bad hire proves to be more costly for startups where their contributions can tip the scales in favour of success or failure. Besides, they have to source talent from scratch as they don’t have an established talent pool, to begin with. With the stakes so high, it’s no surprise that startup hiring is a founder’s greatest challenge.

But there’s good news in the form of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), which has been helping larger enterprises in traditional sectors manage their recruitment requirements with efficiency and agility. RPO is when an employer transfers all or part of its recruitment processes to an external service provider. As part of RPO, this service provider takes care of turnover rates, technology, scalability, and even the time taken to fill a position.

The estimated size of the recruitment market for permanent hiring in India is about $1.8 billion, of which the RPO segment is probably the fastest growing. And contributing to this segment’s growth are companies like Taggd by PeopleStrong, whose RPO solutions help them deliver on customer expectations and build great relationships. There’s a misconception that PeopleStrong’s recruitment solutions are meant only for large enterprises, but that’s not true. With today’s competitive market, more and more startups are focusing on agility when it comes to hiring, a valuable trait to have as they scale. RPOs make a particularly compelling offering as startups get improved quality of hires, on-demand scalability and speed and better cost-benefit advantage.

Also, while getting the right talent is important, what’s equally important is to find someone who can stay in the job for a significant amount of time and contribute to the organisation’s long-term goals. PeopleStrong, with its depth of hiring experience and domain expertise across industries, can help companies meet these expectations.

Staying agile in the people industry

PeopleStrong’s independent and unique brand for its recruitment solutions, called Taggd brings together data and human knowledge, and offers companies the power to choose the right fit for their roles.

Four-time winner of HRO Today Services and Technology Awards from 2014-2017, rated as 2014 MPHRO Market Star Performer in Everest Group’s PEAK Matrix, and publishers of India’s only report on India’s talent landscape India Skills Report, Taggd by PeopleStrong is seen as a leading talent acquisition solution provider in Asia. Also, Nelson Hall has rated Taggd by PeopleStrong amongst leaders in the RPO NEAT Matrix.

The company has a strong list of customers and has partnered with leaders across diverse industry sectors, including Honeywell, Tech Mahindra, HCL, Wipro, Citi Tata Motors, Renault Nissan, Mahindra Rise, MG Motor, SBI General Insurance, HDFC Life, Covance, Pfizer, Teva Pharma, Oyo, Rentomojo and Swiggy among others.

Taggd offers comprehensive recruitment solutions across 14 industries, like technology, engineering, pharma, automotive, BFSI, e-commerce for frontline, lateral and executive roles. The offerings include talent attraction, delivery and experience and advisory support. Technology drives the end-to-end hiring process, from requisition, sourcing, screening, assessment, interviews, to receiving the offer letter and joining.

Hiring for 55,000 permanent positions every year, giving access to 2.6 million active candidates, with experience in managing 14+ industries, providing 5000+ skills, and accelerating revenue realisation by 50 percent or more, the solution has helped companies hire at scale, efficiently, and within the least possible time. Covance, a pharma company partnered with Taggd for Talent Acquisition solutions which helped them hire an over 1,100-strong diversified workforce across 100+ roles in just 10 months, increasing their joining ratio from 87 percent to 95 percent. Another large hospitality company in Asia leveraged Taggd for talent sourcing. Taggd improved process efficiency by tying the recruitment results of SLAs to KPIs, and ensured compliance needs were met. This led to a 53 percent increase in selection ratio, 47 percent reduction in early attrition and 31 percent reduction in time to fill. Taggd also supported a manufacturing company with talent mapping, talent advisory services, and end-to-end recruitment. The solution helped the client hire some of the niche and super critical roles, 80 percent through head-hunting and high-end networking, reducing the source mix ratio an all-time low.

Solutions to simplify work processes

When PeopleStrong started in 2005, the focus was on the data services space. Now they’re more of a technology firm with a comprehensive set of solutions for their customers in the following areas:

1. PeopleStrong Alt – The Technology Offering

The Alt solution ensures anytime access to HR-related data for employees, management and vendors at the same time. This platform as a service is interoperable with ERPs, other cloud applications, and social media tools. Their offerings have helped organisations improve the efficiency of various HR processes, resulting in a 30 percent turnaround time, reduction in sourcing cost by 20 percent and enhanced candidate conversion by 4 percent.

2. Taggd – Recruitment Process Outsourcing Offering

The Taggd solution optimises the recruitment journey — from planning vacancies, to sourcing and matching talent, to screening and assessing to selecting hires, all at the click of a button. The solution identifies needs and vacancies that are aligned with the organisation’s workforce strategy, and benchmarks them with market competitors. With sourcing and screening parameters in place, the right recruitment strategy is built by experienced talent advisors. They use present sourcing channel resources like job boards, CII skill database, 400+ vendors, and mapped campuses.

A team of 400+ recruiters with an average of 4+ years of experience scrutinise and assess each profile using machine learning and artificial intelligence, leading to high performance and retention. Over the last 15 years, 95 percent of screened candidates chosen by Taggd solution have stayed 45% longer than their peers in organisations. There has also been a 30 percent reduction in time to hire a person for a job and a 41 percent reduction in early attrition numbers.

3. Wheebox – Online Talent Assessment Offering

PeopleStrong is the parent company of Wheebox, a leading online talent assessment firm. They work together to hire and develop talent across various levels in both blue-collar as well as white-collar jobs using validated assessments like psychometric assessment, behavioural assessment and others.

Get Taggd, and get the right people on board

With more than 13 years of experience in managing permanent recruitment for over 60,000 positions annually, PeopleStrong has the required business understanding, recruitment expertise, talent network access, data intelligence and access to a robust tech stack to deliver business gains. Taggd will bring together businesses, recruiters and candidates under the same roof. In fact, the brand already has marquee customers like Wipro, Honeywell, Mahindra & Mahindra, Oyo, Swiggy, Rentomojo and Renault Nissan.

If you’re a startup looking to fill a senior leadership position, or starting a project in a new, unknown city, you can count on Taggd and its expert headhunters to help you find the right people for the job.

This article was published on YourStory