Why tech companies want talent with multiple traits?

Employers are looking for different sets of skills in addition to the qualification required for the current job

Kanchana Dwarakanath, Timesjobs.com Bureau

Remember the time when being a party animal or indulging in too many extracurricular activities was frowned upon by employers and your commitment to sit quietly in a corner and code was considered a good trait? Well, things have changed.

Today’s fast-growing companies look at a well-balanced personality to hire and people who indulge in a healthy number of extracurricular activities along with other skills are immediately considered as potential employees.

“The normal mindset we had in organisations earlier was: ‘We are screening people to determine if they are good enough for us today’. With companies, especially startups, focusing on faster growth and shorter turnaround time in hiring, the strategic change in approach has been to see how the candidate can contribute in the future as well so that we don’t have to go through the cycle of going candidate hunting, interviewing and hiring all over again,” Sachin Shenoy, cofounder and head of engineering, HealthifyMe, a Bangalore-based fitness startup, said at a recent TechGig boardroom discussion.

And this requirement has resulted in companies looking for different sets of skills in addition to the qualification required for the current job.
The message that came out from the series of TechGig.com boardroom discussions in the past few months is that companies have a dual requirement: a static interpretation at a particular point of time as to what can the candidate do and a dynamic one that portrays the potential of the person to carry through and deliver.

“There is a basic concept we need to understand when it comes to key traits for jobs today. A single trait in itself is not necessarily a success trait. It is a success trait only if it is paired with another complementary one,” Vikas Malpani, cofounder and VP-Groups, Commonfloor.com, said.

“So when we talk about making people being skilled to do the current job at hand, we also want to have somebody who is able to build a connection with his team, and not just follow instructions but also innovate from nothing, as startups often do not have set processes,” he said.

Thus, while a few years back, a disruptive candidate was considered a liability, today, if the person is able to show a more effective alternative to the current practice, he/she is considered a key find.

Thus, when it comes to hiring, companies look at the entirety of the package the candidate brings.

“The change in approach when it comes to hiring from the employer’s side is on the lines of: ‘We want to know about you’. We want to know what is important to you about work; what your work values are; what type of tasks you like doing; what you like in a supervisor; what kind of interpersonal interactions do you like and what is the work environment you like. And we turn this thing on the head because employment is a relationship,’’ Pratyush Nandkeolyar, global head-Talent Acquisition & Vendor Management Group, Fulcrum, said.
Experts also believe that asking behavioural assessments to do a high standard of validity is unfair because they are actually looking at only part of the picture.

“There is greater emphasis on human intervention in the form of the team head or the employee who recommends the candidate than on what happens during the interview or behaviourial assessment of the prospect,” Varun Rathi, cofounder and COO, Happay, a startup in the prepaid card-based business expense management solution space.

“Though you do get a lot of information from HR tools, I would rather hire a candidate who is not just a good programmer but recommended to be good by someone who knows him a little better, from say a social circle. In fact, if I find the prospect to be fond of socialising, I know he gets along with people and can give access to a broader cross-section of people who are potential candidates for our solutions. And for this, I wouldn’t mind encouraging his social life.”