TalentHunt

TalentHunt

Talent Hunt is an initiative launched by HireLabs using the Tested Talent platform. The tests were provided by Employability Test.

Initiative Overview:

– 550 participants from 3 universities were tested on 4 occupations including Finance, Marketing, ICT, and HR

– The tests were developed from the feedback of line managers at 15 companies on what they are looking for in a new hire

– The HireLabs Talent Hunt yielded 53 participants (from 550) who were over 70%.

– All participants were provided with their Talent Score Cards, and were promoted to companies throughout Pakistan.

– Participants were invited to get their video profiles created which were also sent to companies

– This event was promoted on our Facebook page and it generated over 305,000 views in 20 days

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Initiative in detail

It was aimed at providing young, aspiring college graduates a platform to assess their employability skills, and have their career readiness results presented to hiring organisations participating in Talent Hunt.

This initiative is based upon HireLabs’ evidence-based workforce development framework. This framework has been developed considering the following factors:

Sharing our journey
In this article, you will read about Tested Talent and HireLabs’ journey when we first launched Talent Hunt in Pakistan. Three colleges, 15 corporate employers and 550 candidates participated in Talent Hunt. This was Talent Hunt Season 1.

As a result of Season 1, we were able to design a turnkey solution for spotting and promoting talent in regions that suffers from inadequate infrastructure and social-political disorder.

The Talent Hunt framework is now being leveraged by our talent partners in India, Philippines and Nigeria to assess and promote the youth.

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The story of Talent Hunt Season 1
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Skill-based platform with equal opportunities
Talent Hunt Season 1 created a buzz from the beginning. The college graduates instantly connected with Talent Hunt’s simple philosophy, which was, ‘Take one online Employability Test and have your test results presented to 15 participating companies.’

This format assured college graduates of an opportunity to measure career readiness for a specific discipline of work, and an increased outreach through a single platform. It also meant that the Employabilty Test results of each candidate would be presented companies regardless the candidate tops Talent Hunt or not.
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Employability Test (ET), increasing in importance
The Employability Test (ET) framework focuses on a standardized testing process. It assesses behavior, occupational knowledge and other 21 century skills through Tested Talent’s online Talent Assessment Platform.

Research methodology - 9 steps

The skills are measured to understand how ‘workforce ready’ or ‘employable’ a talent is for 27 different occupational families, such as Marketing, Finance, Medical Sciences and Engineering.

ET, with its metric-driven approach strives to collect ‘relevant’ data and provide predictive measures to conduct talent gap analysis and training need analysis (TNA) both at individual and national level.

ET for Talent Hunt
In Talent Hunt, the candidates were assessed for four occupations: Marketing, HR, Finance and Computer Science. ET consisted a total of six competency-based tests. All candidates had to take identical four core tests; the rest two tests were based on candidate’s main field of study (majors).

Learn more: ET structure designed for Talent Hunt
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Three participating colleges
IBA, IoBM and SZABIST, three well-known business colleges of Pakistan were invited to participate in Talent Hunt. One purpose for inviting the first-tier colleges was to understand and identify a skill benchmark of the tested sample population.

We partnered with the colleges’ Career Development Center (CDCs) to invite the graduates of 2011 to 2013 for Talent Hunt, having specialized in the following discipline of business: Human Resource, Finance, Marketing and Computer Science.

There were two important stages leading up to Talent Hunt.

The first stage was candidate registration. The Talent Hunt page was launched to engage the graduates (candidates). The page allowed candidates to select their colleges and register online for Talent Hunt. All registrations were kept free. See IBA registration page. A promo campaign was launched to generate Talent Hunt awareness among the college garduates. See Video – Talent Hunt promo

The second stage required candidates to appear for the Employability Test on their respective college campus.
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550 college graduates tested for career readiness skills
The candidates who registered online for Talent Hunt were 250, 300 and 350 candidates from IBA, SZABIST and IoBM respectively.

The registered number of candidates could had been higher. This could be attributed to the fact that the students and graduates of top tier colleges are frequently exposed to a large number of job opportunities available through multiple Recruitment Drives held at their college campus. Talent Hunt was scheduled at the tail end of the Campus Drive season; where most of the hiring organisations (including the ones participating in Talent Hunt) had already visited these colleges for their Graduate Trainee programs.

Nevertheless, the candidates who turned for the Employability Test were an enthusiastic lot. The total number of graduates who were tested for multiple employability skills were 550 candidates.

Later, we received test-retake requests from students who were unable to make it to the test on the scheduled dates.
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The talent is ‘hungry’ for such platform
Students from different colleges emailed and posted on our Social Media pages, wanting to know how they could participate in Talent Hunt.

There was a slight chagrin. A small segment of students considered Talent Hunt for being biased for choosing the known three colleges and not including other colleges in the region.

Though, only the graduates of the three colleges were invited to participate in Talent Hunt Season 1; we received registrations from the second-tier colleges in Pakistan – they comprised 20 percent of total online registrations.

The Ask your universities to invite us campaign was launched in response to these requests.

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Importance of Career Development Centers in colleges
IBA, IoBM and SZABIST have active, dedicated Career Development Centers (CDCs). The CDCs are instrumental in running effective placement, and training and development programs for their students and alumni. They establish active e-channels, such as, student portal and email groups, with alumni and students. Having an active CDC is not normally the case with most colleges in Pakistan, especially the second and third-tier colleges.

During Talent Hunt, the CDCs played a critical role to engage their graduates to register for Talent Hunt. The CDCs also helped in broadcasting a series of communication to their students, including initial, reminders and final messages.

One was Guideline for Candidates. It instructed the candidates about the eligibility criteria, testing process and anatomy of Employability Test.
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15 corporate employers participated in Talent Hunt
It was decided from the beginning that Talent Hunt would lack luster if it did not have corporate employers actively involved in the initiative.

Also, it was to be for the best if the employers were recognized names in the market. Since it was the first time Talent Hunt was being introduced in Pakistan, having less familiar names would have called for additional marketing initiatives, we were not ready for that just yet.

There was one concern. Top employers aggressively leverage on-campus drives and graduate trainee programs to position their brand and to recruit their annual intake of fresh talent. If this was the case, the question was that why would these employers associate themselves with a new initiative like Talent Hunt.

A litmus test was carried out. A ten-minute phone interview with top 50 employers (HR) in Pakistan confirmed the doubt. Three out of five employers scheduled Campus Drives every season to recruit fresh talent. The overall response to participate in Talent Hunt was not keen. Even when no additional cost was attached to participate in Talent Hunt.
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What made the employers participate in the Talent Hunt
During the phone interviews with employers wanted to learn about the Employability Test and how the online Talent Assessment Platform (TAP) would strengthen their recruitment and selection process. And also help in building an active pipeline. This hinted at the increasing need of employers to leverage evidence-based framework to assess how workforce ready their employees or potential hires are, train and develop them.

Fifteen employers that became part of Talent Hunt (season 1) were recognized names in the pharmaceutical, research, telecom, automobile and construction industry, such as MERCK, Nielsen, PTCL, Pak Suzuki and Lucky Cement.
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Employers received a tested talent pipeline of 550 candidates
All participating employers were given access to Tested Talent’s Talent Assessment Platform (TAP).

Through the TAP, the employers (HR and line managers) were able to view, manage and screen candidates. The hiring decisions were based on Talent Score Card, candidate online profile, and video profiles.

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Also see: Talent Hunt page launched for employers
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Talent Score Cards of top 20 scorers promoted to 150 employers
Talent Hunt held the Top 20 challenge to add some fiery spirit (watch: video).

The top test scorers from all three colleges were invited for behavioral interview with HireLabs’ recruitment specialists. The Talent Score Cards and video profiles of Top 20 were created and promoted to additional 150 companies.

Talent Score Card - Abid Khan
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Over 305,000 views in less than 20 days
As a result of choicest Social Media marketing campaigns, the Employability Test (ET) Facebook page – leveraged for the purpose – received 305, 873 views in less than 20 days.

Analytics from our Facebook strategy for Talent Hunt
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Marketing campaigns aimed at employers and graduates

 

HireLabs Talent Hunt Tested Talent

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Final thoughts: a turnkey solution
Talent Hunt Season 1 helped in developing a turnkey solution (framework) that could be leveraged to assess and equip the youth with numerous employability skills, and increase youth’s outreach to employers and equal employment opportunities.

The Talent Hunt framework, with its metric driven approach, could be leveraged at an organisational, regional and national level. See related projects launched for our talent partners.

  • Telenor wanted to test 10,000 college graduates in a period of 2 months in Myanmar. Visit TelenorTalent.com
  • SFI Group of Companies in the Philippines wanted a one-stop assessment platform through which they could launch skill-based assessment and e-learning initiatives, both at organizational and national level. Visit: Talentsource.ph

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Click to view the Talent Hunt framework: Talent Hunt Activation Box
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From the desk of