Talent Acquisition Group at HCL Technologies: Improving

the Quality of Hire through Focused Metrics

By
Dhruv Sapra
15PGP130

The case reflects the escalating threat of talent shortages in the market
and simultaneously increasing wage cost which the Talent
Acquisition Group (TAG) of HCL is proving itself to become an
attractive employer in the industry.
HCL is taking the measures to realign the TAG, many programs of
broad significance have brought in actions. SLAs has been modified
with its stakeholders which is not mere a declaration of intent.
Widening the boundaries of strategic recruitment, a new Human
Resource Information System (HRIS) has been implemented to
promote the innovative culture and quick decision making of
employees in a complex and competitive environment
Changing environment has not been the problem for the company
because of the talented workforce that HCL has gathered, the
company is modifying the strategies of talent management to have
more and more talented employees under their belt.
With a significant portion of workforce cost in operating costs, HCL
still just lagging its competitors in terms of profitability but this has
enhanced the employee engagement and their efficiency. On the other
hand, however the company has succeeded to raise the customer
satisfaction, employee involvement and its sales as well.
Employee First, Customer Second one of the unique strategy used
by the HCL, Indias fastest growing IT service company, has
renowned the company as Top choice employer and has enabled the
company to capture a huge segment of talented workforce which has
strengthened the companys position in the industry to avail each
opportunity and to face each challenge in the market.
Dilemma
Recruitment functions in IT organizations like HCL use a rule of
thumb approach using the average renege ratio, to mitigate the risk of
renege by releasing extra offers. For example, with an average renege
ratio of 30%, recruiters would release four offers in order to hire three
individuals

However, the downside of this approach is that if there is no renege,

the additionally recruited employee increases the bench strength as
well as the costs for the company. Moreover, improving the resource
utilization and minimizing the bench strength were among the key
objectives of the Resource Management Group at HCL.
HCLs Steps
HCL revamped its global organizational structure and
streamlined it
New HR information system (HRIS) system was introduced and
named iTAP which provided an online channel where aspirants
could log in and post their candidature.
Each recruitment team members had access rights to iTAP.
Focus on just-in-time hiring was also done in order to
contribute to the economic fulfillment by too-early or too-late
hiring could be measured.
Also, Post-offer follow-up (POFU) gamification was introduced
in regard of recruitment professionals help. So, TAG improved
its fulfillment.
To support this, the TAG team needed to accurately identify
which individual (skill), of what experience level, at which
location, and for which project team, was likely to renege. To
obtain a better understanding of this, TAG used analytics from
the POFU gamification. It was therefore important to design the
POFU game in such a way that it elicited high engagement
levels from the potential hires