Vineet Gambhir

▶0:00HostWelcome to the Built by People Podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Vineet to the Built By People Podcast. Vineet, thank you so much for joining us today. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:48GuestThank you, Dave, and I'm really excited to be here. So I'm Vineet and I have 25 years of experience in the HR industry. I'm an accidental HR executive. I started my journey as an electrical engineer on a factory floor and realized that there was a big gap between what the business wanted in terms of people priorities and people imperatives and what we had the potential to deliver in the function. I went to the HR department with 5 questions. They said no to all of those. And that was my motivation to then say, what if I could transition from the business to join the HR department and be an HR executive someday. This journey has been, as I said, 25 years. I have worked for some of the world's most admired people brands. I'm very grateful for those journeys. And the last 5 years have been more pivoting to the PE-backed, fast-scaling, hands-on, built-from-scratch kind of stories. And in each of these journeys, and I've done many different HR functions from compensation and benefits and staffing and the people-business partnership and international building. So of all these, I feel that talent acquisition is in a very unique position to be able to help build a company's brand. It's a very key part of a company's culture. So I'm excited to share my observations on what can go right in a good recruiting practice, but how it can come in the way of a competitive advantage or disadvantage. So excited to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.

▶2:20HostVinay, I know you pioneered the 7 Deadly Sins of Recruiting. And so I wanted to start our conversation by having you tell the audience what those 7 deadly sins are.

▶2:31GuestThank you. Look, I think this whole motivation to define the 7 deadly sins came actually from an accidental phone call from a friend of 10 years. And he was upset at an interview experience he had with a company. The story goes on like this, where he was recruited by a firm to participate in what he considered a dream opportunity. He went through 7 rounds of interviews, fell in love with the company, got some great feedback, then went on-site for an interview at the company's headquarters. They entered the conversation with something like, this is where we think you'll be sitting. You can take a look at your office. Now the candidate is dreaming about their new journey with the company. They were supposed to get an offer probably within 7 days of that trip. A week goes by, 2. Being professional, he didn't want to over-follow up, but when it was 4 weeks, he actually found out through a social media update that the job had been offered to someone else and that new person had started the journey. That was my motivation to reflect, introspect as an HR leader, reflect on some of the stories I have observed in other cases and say, you know, what are these issues? So when you are very interested in a candidate, when they seem very relevant to your business need, and yet that relevance changes because something changed in the recruiting process, and now what we call ghosting the candidate, when you no longer recognize the identity of a candidate, I would say that is one sin which I'd like to start up with. Second, I'll talk about is I've been, as I mentioned, in some popular people brands where we used to get more than 800 applications for every job position we had. And one of the common shortcuts you would often say to yourself as a recruiter is, hey, I don't have time to get back to the candidate. I'll just filter through this and I'll get back to the 5 people I'm interested in. By not closing the loop with someone who applies to the candidate, you are A, missing the opportunity to build a relationship for potential future needs. You are also giving them the respect they deserve for the fact that they expressed an interest in the company. So for me, the people brand is not a function of who works for you today. It's a function of who's interested in you and who used to work for you. And it's that complete continuum. Which has to be correct from an experience perspective. So I found out algorithmically that the time it takes for our mind to tell us that we are too busy to get back to that candidate is statistically equal to the time it takes to type a one-line message and say, thank you so much for your interest. Not the right time. We'll get back to you as something else opens up. It may not mean much, but it means the world for a candidate to get some sort of a closure from you if someone has applied for you. Now, the third is really around judging someone based upon perception. So I had an interesting case I wanted to share, different company, not the company I was working for, but a recruiter I was interacting with, and they ended up rejecting a candidate, and I was intrigued as to why they did that. And their answer was that the last name suggested that the candidate would not be good in English. And I think having perception based upon how someone is dressed, what sort of accent they have, what their cultural identity would look like, and making assumptions based on that is a deadly sin which can happen in these unconscious biases. And this can again come in the way of the company being able to attract the best possible talent. Again, remember, the goal of recruiting is not to hire just about anyone to fill the position. Beyond that tactical task of closing the requisition, this is a huge opportunity to explore and get introduced to the amazing talent which exists in the industry. The fourth is really being very narrow-minded. Hey, I am a good brand, especially when you are a popular people brand. You can attract a wide range of talent. So if you have the attitude which says, I want exactly what I need the person to do, I want an exact fit. You're again missing potential in someone. I'll give a specific case around it. There was a case where, again, another of my friends, she interviewed for a position. This was a cloud computing company. The position was in finance. So again, this is the skills needed for that position were financial planning and analysis, being able to understand the accounting principles. This was a cloud computing company. The recruiter insisted that they were looking for someone who works for a cloud computing company. When she pointed out that she had, in fact, by some coincidence and good luck, worked for a cloud computing company at some point of her career, the recruiter then came back and said, but that was 5 years back. We are actually looking for someone who's working for a cloud computing company now working on spreadsheets. So then if you extrapolate that experience, what you need to be focusing on is what makes a good financial controller or analyst. Not so much as whether it checks that exact specific box. Yes, you can do that when you are attracting a large number of candidates, but in doing so, you may be precise in your spec, but you may be missing the bigger picture of attracting the best talent, which can bring in innovation and bring in greater success for the company. The fifth sin I feel is that we hire for today. We don't hire for tomorrow. Sometimes you'll Here, the news in the media, such and such company hired 5,000 people over the last 2 years, and now you have a round of layoffs which is happening. Oh, sorry, we overhired, we hired the wrong kind of people, our needs have changed. That happens when you've hired for yesterday and today, but you have not factored in where your company could be growing going on. For example, you may be expanding in international markets. The talent you would need therefore would be someone who has worked at has knowledge of international markets. If you're hiring only for your domestic market and then a year later you're expanding into an unknown territory, you suddenly now have talent who will not be able to help you scale. Therefore, hiring for future needs is as important and as a sin focusing only on today results in that issue. The sixth, and again, something which is dear to me, is not representing the company's brand effectively. So a case where the hiring manager shows up 25 minutes late, is yawning in the middle of conversation, checking the Apple Watch for every ping and ding they get on their device, not paying attention to what the candidate has to say, which is a missed opportunity in representing the culture the company stands for. And I feel that again, that's a missed opportunity from not only that particular need, but it's also for any future need in the company. Finally, the last sin I would like to talk about is inauthenticity. This is when you try to oversell. You want to sell the promised land, but you do not tell the person you're hiring they wanted a closed office. That's what they were used for. You don't tell them that we are a cubicle-only office. Again, it's a simple task, but you have mismatched the expectation. You forget to mention the realities of the bad news. For example, if the company is undergoing an acquisition, and you forget to tell them that, hey, by the way, the company may change completely in its operating model if we have a change in ownership. Or if the hiring manager— there was actually a personal experience I had in some part of my journey where my hiring manager left 3 weeks after I joined, and the person was one of the key reasons why I felt that company and that particular position. Fortunately, the replacement manager was as great. But it could not have been. So being transparent, not overselling, sharing all the facts is a recruiting sin, which can then, if it doesn't go well, create a lot of change management issues from an experience and from an employee perspective. So these are the 7 deadly sins which I feel come in the way of an effective recruiting experience.

▶10:49HostBenny, thanks for that great introduction into the 7 sins. What specific actions have you taken to transform traditional recruiting practices, especially when dealing with resume gaps in today's post-COVID and layoff-heavy environment?

▶11:07GuestGreat question. I focus on the story. I focus on the journey someone has had, and I am particularly interested in the scars on the back. I want to know the failures, and so some of the questions people can expect I would like to ask them if they're interviewing for our company would be times you have failed. What have you learned from those failures? I do not focus on why someone has a gap. I would rather focus on what they did with that gap. For it, that person used the time to explore new skills. Did they invest in their development? Did they make themselves ready for the future? Because that gap provided that learning opportunity in the meantime. The second thing I look for in the gap is Does the person still have the passion to succeed? Do they still have the ambition and as we call the fire in the belly, or did that setback deflate them that they no longer want to pursue the trajectory? So it's a few things. One, behaviorally, how does the person deal with circumstances which are unexpected? For example, you just relocated for the new job. Now the company downsized. You lost your job 2 months after closing a new home in a new city. How would you deal with that adversity? How do you deal with change and chaos? Second, if you have had a gap and an adverse circumstance, what did you do with that opportunity? Because there's a good and a bad of every opportunity in life. And I think even the bad events like a gap on the resume or the problematic events rather in a resume can offer some positive behind them. Maybe you get that balance, the attention to the family, Maybe you can take care of a loved one which you normally couldn't have because this gap forced you to do that. So what do you do with that opportunity and how do you see the glass as half full and half empty? That is something I look for. Sometimes adversities reduce our passion. They discourage us. So I look for the fact whether that encouragement, the spirit of encouragement is still intact and is the person still ready to keep running? These are the 3 things I do. And I think when you do that, the resume gap becomes irrelevant in the background.

▶13:13HostHow have you personally implemented more empathetic and effective recruiting strategies, and what measurable improvements have you observed in candidate experience and hiring outcomes?

▶13:25GuestYeah, there are two parts to this. One, I think I alluded a little bit to in my previous— I go by behaviors. I do not go by list your accomplishments, tell me how, what did you achieve in this, and what was the measure of success. I look at behaviors. I look at the psychology of a person, and I think when you do that, people share their personal stories, they share their circumstances, they share how they navigate through them. And by doing so, you're also saying, I care about your story. I care about you as a human being. That is one part. Second part, I think the pandemic has taught us is that, look, everyone is dealing with a lot of different things. So you could have a sick child in the background. A crying baby in the background when you're interviewing. You can no longer have the standards and say your camera needs to be at a certain angle. You have to be accommodating to the fact that people will have lives and families, and we have to be sympathetic towards, again, accommodating. I've had circumstances where I've offered to reschedule the interview because the person was just returning from a doctor's appointment. Times have increased after COVID. So you cannot hold that against the candidate and say, but you were late by 7 minutes and therefore I'm rejecting you as a candidate. I think that sort of empathy is something we put in. The third, as a data-driven engineer, I do measure my effectiveness in the process, not just the candidate's effectiveness. Therefore, I track how many rounds of interviews I have between the time I've opened the requisition. So time to fill for me is not when I open the requisition to when someone joined. I actually track the time of the interview process, how many people spoke with the candidate, How much time did we take between the interviews? How much total time we took from the first and the last conversation? And I have a rule. I have no more than 5 conversations in any interview process. I have no more than 2 weeks in any interview cycle. It achieves 2 purposes. One, it avoids interviewee fatigue, that they feel that the momentum is there and they are engaged throughout the process. It allows them therefore also the closure. If they are not moving forward, it allows them to consider other opportunities. Be respectful of that experience. So time of the process, number of interviews, as well as empathy for people's circumstances is how I'm driving this.

▶15:45HostRaneem, based on your experience teaching at Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland, what generational differences have you observed in recruiting expectations and how should HR professionals adapt their own approach?

▶16:00GuestThat's a great question. Look, I think one of the reasons why I wanted to, when I was offered the opportunity to teach, I wanted to understand how the new generation thinks. I was curious to know how do those differences manifest in candidates. And here's what I have observed. One, my generation or the traditional generation was interested in stability and how many years can I work in the company? And this is the company I can see myself retiring in and I need structure and I need a formal communication and I need more rhythm to it, more rigor in it. So in other words, give it to me in writing, explain everything to me, have a process. If it's an interview, I need a structured process. That's what we were used to, that there'll be a rhythm, there'll be an agenda, there'll be a schedule. Now what I'm noticing in the latest generation is that it's beyond just, hey, this is a great opportunity out of school for me and I'll take it because it's my first job. It's more around what are you trying to solve? What is your social agenda? What difference are you making to the community? How does teamwork look like? What could be my work-life balance be like? What growth opportunities would I have? Questions we never asked. We were too scared to ask, if I can make this confession on the podcast, because you were the interviewer, I am the interviewee. I have a formal relationship with you. You will give me the job. I will be this best possible employee, and I will stay with you as long as I can. Now the relationship more is tell me the whole picture. Tell me what's so special about you. That's one. The second part of it is the learning pattern itself. We now live in the age of Instagram and instant messaging. What I'm noticing is that the attention span is much shorter. Like, you cannot send a long email, a traditional form of communication. Now it's bite-sized learning, bite-sized communication. So instant updates is what people resonate. So it's more digitalized as an experience. Therefore, I have had to redesign my entire employee onboarding experience. I can no longer do a 2-day onboarding session. Because I know I will lose the employee in there. I now have modules which are spread across, which are self-paced, which are based on gamification. Same thing goes with my learning and development. I've put a new initiative called Learning Bingo, where you complete a set of tasks diagonally and horizontally and vertically, and whoever finishes the line and wins the race, we give them certain incentives to complete that learning. So that's what learning looks like. That's what orientation looks like. It's a whole lot around social impact the company's making, the mission the company is on, what sort of camaraderie you can offer to the employees, what sort of digital excitement you can offer in getting that very short span. And I guess, you know, what's in it for me is becoming the dialogue more than what can I do for you. And on that note, I would say it's not perfect in either case, right? Because I do want the latest generation, and that's what I coach them in the class is emphasize on how you will add the value, emphasize on the ROI, emphasize on what you can do. And the questions that when you are asked by the interviewer, do you have any question for me? That list of questions should not be around, hey, what else can you offer me? That answer should be around, here's how else I can add value to you above and beyond the job spec. So that's again, a coaching opportunity and it's also an opportunity for obviously us to modify our HR practices as well.

▶19:27HostVinit, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶19:31GuestThe biggest advice I'll give is that HR has many flavors. It's many different ice cream flavors available in HR, learning and development, HR technology, business partnership, and so on, and compensation and benefits, shared services. The one and the only one which helps build a company's brand, its representation of the values, the basis of the existence of the company is actually recruiting. So the biggest mistake we can all make is to treat recruiting as a tactical, here are the positions open, let's go check the box, let's move on. It's a huge opportunity which is missed, which not only damages the culture as it stands now, but a negative experience is what appears on Glassdoor reviews. A negative experience is what prevents 5 other people from applying to the company because someone else had a terrible experience with you. So my biggest advice would be do not take recruiting as yet another deliverable which one has to do so you can move on to that next position. Think of it as an employer value proposition. Think of it as a brand building exercise and think of it as a sales exercise when you are a salesperson You're dealing with a customer. The customer may not sign the deal with you, but you are doing your very best to convince the customer why you would be the best for them. You have to be that salesperson, authentic salesperson to that candidate as well and say, here's why we'll be amazing for you. And the final piece of advice again I'll have, which I've mentioned in the sense is do not treat people differently based on how important they are to you in that process. Treat every single person who comes to you as that potential next CEO the company may be hiring, as that next advocate for the company. Because if nothing else, they may recommend 5 or 6 people. Like in my experience, in many stories, 38% of my hiring has come from referrals. Ironically, referrals not from current candidates, but also referrals from people who interviewed with us and said, hey, by the way, I may not be the best person, but here is someone great I know, and we have ended up hiring that person. Finally, I leave with a measure of success. The measure of success again isn't the number of positions you close, but if someone came to me next year and said, yeah, I interviewed with you, I didn't get a job, but I still loved the experience so much that I wanted to check if you have something else open now. I think if someone can, despite being rejected for a job, back to you and say this was an amazing recruiting experience, I think that would be recruiting well done. So that would be my advice is make recruiting count and make it as a key catalyst for the brand.

▶22:13HostVineet, thanks so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast.

▶22:16GuestThank you so much.