HR Tech in Action: Transforming Talent Acquisition

In this episode of hrtech.sg’s Tech Talks, host Sriram Iyer engages with Sudarsan Ravi, founder and CEO of RippleHire, a prominent player in the recruitment tech space. Together, they explore the current landscape of HR challenges, focusing on the escalating issue of early attrition and the complexities of attracting and retaining talent in a candidate-driven market. Sudarsan shares insights into overcoming barriers to HR tech adoption, emphasizing the strategic impact of technology on organizational growth. The conversation delves into the post-pandemic workplace, highlighting the nuances of a hybrid model and the crucial role of communication in leadership.

This episode was recorded in Jul 11, 2022.

Discussion Topics: Transforming Talent Acquisition

• Biggest challenges companies are facing right now – early attrition
• Why do HR teams hesitate to invest in technology?
• How to ensure that HR Teams get their ROI
• What does the post-pandemic scenario look like?
• How to encourage HR teams to be more tech-savvy
• Advice to enterprises getting started on their HR tech journey

Transcript: Transforming Talent Acquisition

Sriram Iyer: Hello all and welcome to yet another edition of HRTech Talks, where we talk to subject matter experts. On all aspects in the realm of HR and HR tech today. Extremely happy to host Sudarsan Ravi, founder and CEO of RippleHire. Now, RippleHire has actually been creating quite a bit of ripples in the marketplace.

RippleHire is a cloud based hiring platform, a leader in the recruitment tech space that has been helping enterprises in hiring talent effortlessly. So they have two niche products. One is RippleHire Referrals, which is a market leader actually in referral technology, helps companies in transforming the referral program from being a very reactive channel to a more proactive sourcing channel.

The second product is Ripple has a talent acquisition cloud applicant tracking system, uh, best in class, smart application applicant tracking system that actually caters to all the four user personas and organisation, the employees, the recruiters, the candidates and the vendor partners. So extremely delighted to be talking to you, Sudarsan, especially when a lot of action is happening in the recruitment tech space.

Sudarsan Ravi: Likewise, Sriram it’s a privilege to be here. Thank you, Sudarsan.

Sriram Iyer: First off what are the key business and talent challenges that you are seeing in the marketplace at this point in time?

Biggest challenges companies are facing right now – early attrition

Sudarsan Ravi: So, there are, Essentially Two challenges that I would like to draw attention to, one is attrition attrition was a problem in sectors like insurance, pharma, a lot of sales-oriented organisations, but attrition is now creeping and is rampant across the board.

Whether it’s in technology, whether it’s in, even in niche and skilled areas as well. As a result, one challenge that I’m seeing organisations, CXOs and talent leaders struggle with is how to deal with attrition and the second biggest challenge that’s the flip side is when there is a, it’s a candidate driven market as a result, how do you enable or attract or convince the person you select?

To join the organisation. So joining ratios have plummeted and it’s not just India. We are seeing signs in markets that are now candidate driven, especially in technology in parts of Europe and parts of us where joining ratios are a problem and it’s an acute problem in the Indian subcontinent.

So if I have to look at it, organisations and leaders are essentially talking about how we hire talent that joins and stays, because it’s not just about convincing people to come over, but actually dealing with early attrition and then some. So those are the trends and challenges I see. What about you? What are some that you are coming across?

Sriram Iyer: The key challenge that we essentially are seeing is that a lot of the companies are. In a very hybrid or in an 80, 90 percent remote work environment, they’re really struggling to do that portion after hiring, which is the zero to 180 days, which is very critical for a person to come on board and get engaged. Is an area where we are seeing companies are really struggling and trying to do a lot of things to enable that.

Sudarsan Ravi: Right. No, I agree with you and that’s why you could see early attrition happen because in the past, belongingness was a feeling, right? When I come into an organisation, I feel like I belong.

And that feeling is created often by us connecting with each other and in a hybrid world, in a distributed world. You sit and stare at a screen. It’s not easy to create that belonging or that feeling. Especially when you’re peppered with a lot of choices. So, yeah, interesting. I agree with you.

Sriram Iyer: So it’s not just about hiring. It’s all about creating that employer brand, which helps you attract more people into the funnel and also ensures better joining. So that’s a very interesting point. What, why do HR teams hesitate to invest in technology for the HR function and more specifically for the recruitment function?

Why do HR teams hesitate to invest in technology?

Sudarsan Ravi: So actually in the more recent past, um, I am not seeing that hesitation, especially in the last six months or so, but to answer your question, right, I’ll actually have to go back a little bit to the psyche, right?

Especially enterprises, somebody like Facebook, when they were a startup would say they failed fast. But if you see in an organisation, that’s an enterprise, that’s mature, that’s been around for a while, failure is not tolerated. The ability to make mistakes is not tolerated. In fact, if anything, it also boils down to how organisations are judged.

If I’m a public limited company, I live quarter on quarter, which means I, as a CEO, I’m just quarter on quarter. As a result, the entire organisation has to show impact. And oftentimes, as a result, a lot of organisations take tactical steps and tactical levers. They don’t think strategically.

Technology is essentially a strategic driver of growth. It’s the same thing. Like if I have to take an example, right? Like if you look at the industry, now, if you look back, we can’t see ourselves, making products by hand when everything is made by machine. But if you’re in an era where we have to report 90 days to 90 days, we are not going to take the effort to create a factory and go through that, whereas adding people.

So I think. From a psychology or a psyche standpoint, culturally, if we are open to more mistakes, we’ll be a lot more open to, taking on strategic levers that have long-term impact versus short-term impact. Second is also the fact that technology in itself if it’s ROI positive if it delivers results.

In the same year, we can bridge that gap. So long answer, but I essentially see, why companies don’t invest has to do with the fact that, there’s just haven’t seen enough success, owning to legacy software, essentially coming in, selling to the C suite and only delivering failure after failure.

So that also is a barrier for them because what they have seen, uh, in the past, whereas technology has changed by leaps and bounds in the last decade, right? But what they have seen is, an era of ERPs and CXO selling, whereas ground-up products that obsess over a problem are just not delivered to them for success.

Sriram Iyer: So thank you very much. That’s a very valid point. In fact, technology is truly a strategic driver of growth and predominantly the focus has always been on sales and marketing functions. Now, this pandemic has brought the focus on the HR function. So I’m sure that as you mentioned, technology will be adopted faster.

Sudarsan Ravi: And what I love is just one thing. I love the fact that technology. Has brought the focus back or has the pandemic brought the focus back on the HR and the TA function because it was long overdue, right? Like if you see a person in TA essentially impacts. The top line or bottom line with every single hire they make.

Right? And if there is somebody who contributes to shaping an organisation, and delivering results, it’s people. And this is the function that brings people to the door. So essentially every TA person, I think the pandemic has given them their due, and I’m really happy because there have been recessions, there have been disruptions, there have been challenges, but I feel good about the fact that TA has been put front and centre in most organisations now.

Sriram Iyer: That’s right. Earlier TA was measured more on offer and joiners ratio today. A lot more companies are actually focusing on revenue loss as a fun, as metric for the recruitment team, which is helping them in this endeavour Right?

Sudarsan Ravi: Exactly.

Sriram Iyer: I want you to understand, right? How do you work with your client HR teams to ensure that they get buy-in from their leadership for investment in HR tech? Do you do anything specific for the HR teams?

How to ensure that HR Teams get their ROI?

Sudarsan Ravi: So firstly, we are fortunate that now I’ll talk about both our products. We’re very fortunate that both our products are ROI positive within the first year.

So, from a pricing model standpoint, we structure our pricing in such a way that they go in, there is skin in the game. And as they see success, they share value with us. This means that the cost of the investment is limited, which makes the ROI a no-brainer. Now let’s look at the flip side of it.

The second side of it is how you convince your leadership. And especially in a category creating software like employee referrals, a lot of people just did not understand how do you put the metrics together. But in reality, referrals drive better retention, and 12 to 20 per cent better joining ratios.

And, the cost you distribute wealth within the organisation and the cost per hire is positive. So when you combine, all of these elements into a simple ROI calculator, um, it becomes very apparent especially since you mentioned revenue loss becomes very apparent that you can kill, and you can improve or reduce your revenue loss simply by having a strategic lever on referrals. The second facet on the technology front in the 80s is a lot more straightforward, right? Now, the 80s is an established category. People have technology budgets against it, but the good news for us there is. The last candidate’s experience score is 7, uh, and a great candidate’s experience is 4.

7 on five, a great candidate experience drives better outcomes, quality hiring, it results in joiners, it results in people staying. And I think what that does is largely helps organisations pay off for itself within the same year.

Sriram Iyer: Interesting. Very nice. So, which leads us to the next point, right? With all of these happening in the market, a lot of adoption of technology, how do you visualise the post-pandemic workplace to be significantly different from what we are seeing right now?

What does the post-pandemic scenario look like?

Sudarsan Ravi: Right. I think organisations look at this in two binary sets, people look at it as remote and people look at it as in office.

And I know there is a hybrid that is hanging in there, but the reality is that the mindset is either organisations are remote first or office first, right? It’s got to do with it. They are a low-trust country or a low trust organisation, or you’re a high trust country or a high trust organisation. And I believe what will happen is that in the post pandemic.

The pandemic through new problems, we were building software for distributed workforces. Suddenly the entire world became a distributed workforce where every company had to have people in hundreds of locations and thousands of locations, depending on the size. So the way I see the pandemic post pandemic shift happening is that the pendulum will swing, right?

And it’s economics. Naturally, what will happen is that when you go towards, an organization, some organisations will force people and say, you have to come, what, then they will start talking. Stronger actions in a bit to push, going back to the same way, but then newer problems will emerge.

And I think somewhere it will settle down into a hybrid because the reality is that, there are benefits to both and it’s less friction for an employee to go from office to working from home. Because, you’re taking lesser effort to get to work, to get started. You have more time to do things, you have a better quality of life, but you lose out on learning, which has a longer term impact.

Sriram Iyer: So fantastic hybrid workplace. And I like the point specifically where now the leadership has to make a specific effort in communicating to the employees why they need to come to the office. The value of communication is becoming now critical, which was taken for granted. I really like that point. As taken for granted earlier, now needs to be communicated explicitly.

Sudarsan Ravi: Conscious, right? You have to be conscious about it because people, how do you, it’s easy when you’re in the room. It’s harder when you’re on Zoom, even harder when you’re on Zoom in different locations or different bandwidths and different people having different communication styles but interesting for sure.

Sriram Iyer: See, one of the aspects that we have always been finding HR teams struggling with is to present the ROI for their investment in the talent function and present it to the leadership team. Right. HR teams have always been very instinct-based gut based rather than data driven focus. So they have always struggled on ROI and presenting into the leadership. So the leadership never invested in technology. How do you encourage HR teams to be more data driven in their approach and more tech-savvy?

How to encourage HR teams to be more tech-savvy?

Sudarsan Ravi: I Believe HR teams are tech savvy and I will explain why. Technology is all around us. We order food through technology. We watch movies through technology.

We order a cab through technology. We’ve been looking at restaurant reviews through technology. And likewise, if you look at, consumer tech, it has been at that level of user experience that anybody and everybody has been adopting it. So I actually believe that the onus of. So the problem is not with the HR fraternity, not being tech savvy.

I think if you build products that are usable and user friendly, we see adoption and we see results and we see people giving us great outcomes. So, but to your point, I do believe that HR has always been a selfless function. If you look at TA and HR, they’re usually carrying the can for most problems in an organisation.

They are enablers. They want their business leaders to succeed. And in the sense that they’re so selfless that oftentimes they don’t stand up, shout through the rooftops and talk about what they’re doing. And they do struggle with showing an art, like, so it’s, they do struggle with making a case because they’re always making somebody else successful and they don’t necessarily.

Stand up and say, Hey, here’s what I need to become, or to help make you successful. Now from a data driven lens I think talent acquisition teams are the people I interact with. And I know they’re extremely number driven, right? As a function, because TA is a lot like sales, one of the things that I think TA definitely needs to get better at, and we as providers need to enable this.

Is the ability to build the right levers for them to showcase. Like for example, what does 1% joining ratio improvement mean for your organisation, right? What if we can improve retention by 1%? What’s the impact? Can we leave? Oftentimes, like for example, when you hire through referrals, you improve retention by four to 5%.

But that’s a huge impact to an organisation. And oftentimes somebody else in the organisation does take credit for retention, right? But the reality is that it’s a lever that got introduced by TA because they started hiring through a channel that delivered more joiners that stayed, right? So if I can impact, If I can get you an early joiner, here’s the actual quantitative impact in terms of revenue that we deliver, Hey, here’s the impact that we delivered because a lot of times these.

TF folks are dealing with escalations for things not done. Which is often 10 percent of the problems, but 90 percent of the time they don’t build a case to say, here are the things we’ve done.

So I wish the function took more credit. There are a lot more selflessness and I think making those cases should be an absolute no brainer. And that’s where I think we need to educate and I think, conversations like yours will help educate the fraternity, right. To talk for themselves and all the good work they do.

Sriram Iyer: Fantastic. Thank you very much for the session.

And finally, the question that I have for you is what would be your key input or advice to enterprises of any size, which is probably started that digital journey, digital HR journey specifically in the recent times. 

Advice to enterprises getting started on their HR tech journey

Sudarsan Ravi: Few things. I’ll start with something that Sunny Satnani, my sales head advises all our customers on technology is a strategic lever.

Don’t look at it as a case of automation of process. Look at it as an opportunity for transformation, which means look at the kind of leaps you can do, not just how you’re going to, because you want the system to be used not by auditors, but by your function. Second centre of excellence teams, implementation teams.

TA teams, the teams that enable the implementation have a lot going on. So be naturally empathetic because everybody wants their agenda to get delivered. So what is important is prioritisation. And if you want to see value delivery fast, prioritise scope and make sure you’re coming. If you have a choice between wanting more and wanting less, take more in phase two and that way you get to a goal line, you start utilisation and you continuously improve.

Technology has moved no longer the arcane world where you implemented a goal live and everybody forgot about it. Technology continuously evolves. Product teams evolve and customer success functions are there along your side. So we always encourage teams to do that. And third, right? I think this actually has to do with the evaluation stage itself.

When you’re selecting products, you’ll have to think about where the products are made. Where are the product managers sitting? Are they sitting in a geography that understands your problems? Or are they sitting in a geography where the world of recruiting and talent acquisition is very different? Do they obsess about the problem?

And when you present ideas, do they really focus on the feature or do they focus on the problem? And the reason I mentioned this is because if your selection is right, Success is a guarantee. And unfortunately, a lot of products think feature vomit, where you continuously keep churning features is the solution, but it’s actually not true.

80 percent of work is done with 20 percent of features. It’s really about understanding if those features have been built to the necessary depth and does the provider really understand your world and that problem statement really deeply, because only then will they be able to consult with you to result in the transformation.

And only then can you deliver.

And third, look for transformation, not just automation. Right. So that’s the advice, whether you are 500 on your first journey or you’re 50 or 90, 000 on your end journey uh, I think these would hold good is the way I see it.

Sriram Iyer: Fantastic input suggestion. So if I were to summarise today’s discussion, right.

Today’s focus for the recruitment team is not just about making offers to candidates. It’s about making offers to candidates who probably join, stay and grow with the organisation. Referrals is a strategic driver of growth. Look at technology as an opportunity for growth of the organisation and not just for automation of processes.

Referrals are really largely understated across the industry segment. So, referrals can actually drive better retention, cost per hire comes down. And actually, with the remuneration that is given for referrals, revenue gets distributed within the organisation.

And finally, when it comes to selecting the right TA product, a TA tech product, it is important to identify the right features. that the organisation requires, right? What is the problem that you’re trying to solve rather than starting with the solution in mind? That is a mistake most companies make.

So a lot of takeaways for me personally, from this conversation, Sudeshan, really appreciate your time and effort for participating in this tech talk session. Hope to have you in our future sessions too.

Sudarsan Ravi: Oh, lovely. Sriram. Thank you for those thought provoking questions. I enjoyed it and was very happy to see HR tech, marketplace go places.

Thank you for having me. Thank you Sudarsan.

Our Guest: Sudarsan Ravi

Sudarsan is the founder of RippleHire. He is known as a pioneer and category creator in recruitment technology. RippleHire’s referral software is the default player of choice with enterprises and owns the referral market. RippleHire is also now known for their ATS that is consistently in the top 2 in evaluations. Beyond talent acquisition, he is passionate about Manchester United, parenting frameworks and chess. He is recognized as a deep thinker and a passionate problem solver.