Dialogue with Darwin

Hi Nishant. Hi. Hi Gowthami. Uh, thank you for joining us today for the series of Dialogue with Darwin. Thank you for having me here.

This is a series where we host leaders from the industry and try to gaze at their insights on how we think things have evolved over a period of time. What we wanted to understand from you is as a digital native company, in Ferns and Patels what do you think is one great change about how talent is looked at or how talent is approached vis a vis how a traditional approach existed for so many years.

Nishant: I like that word, digital native company like ours. That's certainly something we are, and in any digital native company, employee empowerment is something which is always kept in focus, coming to our talent attraction practices we focus a lot on employee referrals, apart from the usage of social media platforms. Tet me tell you an interesting fact that, this year 23% of our closures have happened through employee referrals. Whereas we do not have any incentives, which clearly shows that employees are happy. They are happy to recommend their friends and loved ones.

Okay. Secondly, the usage of LinkedIn, robustly use LinkedIn. It not only helps us close some very critical positions. Also, LinkedIn helps you with a lot of intelligence, identifying what kind of talent lies and what geography, and it gives you a lot of data to analyze upon and, form your own talent attraction. So, that is something which we have been obviously using.

Anchor: So, employee empowerment, social hiring, and data driven hiring you would say. Digitalization is probably the hottest topic that is there in the industry today? on that aspect, how do you think companies have changed their approach or have evolved over the last decade? There is a specific reason why I ask last decade. It's not very long ago that technology entered our daily lives as well. If we look back at 2010 it is when we started using WhatsApp for the first time. And today I don't think any of us remember how it was before WhatsApp existed.

Nishant: So, since you mentioned 2010 and you drew the reference of WhatsApp, we can take that as a point where even non-techies or even the masses also started using digital phones and apps. Today we are in a time where even blue-collar staff are also using various kinds of apps. They had smartphones with them a decade ago. This scenario may not have been there yet. I have moved from hotels to real estate and then to e-commerce right, right now. So, some of the sectors who earlier believe that, okay, this is not for us. They have started using technology now, not choosing technology is not an option anymore. Some may realize it earlier than others. So, the resistance is coming down. Everyone has to believe in it now. Another myth that used to be there is that it is limited to only the white-collar people or people who have a certain educational background. That myth is also broken.

Anchor: Now, moving on to a segment where we want to understand a little more about you and how you have been over the years in the career, right.

What is one thing you think has changed about you from the day you started your career to now?

Nishant: So, I started with hotels. There's a lot of focus, towards soft skills, people skills. So, those were some of the core strengths. I started from a completely guest centric profile. I was a non-techie. So, from there having moved on to HR and then like I said that not adopting technology is not an option anymore, especially for an HR person. So, that was my learning curve, over the last more than a decade now.

Anchor: What's one book that you would recommend your reportees to read.

Nishant: So, this is one book, which I recommend to everyone is ‘Who moved my Cheese’. Very simple for people who are not much into reading, they can pick it up.

Anchor: Okay, great, the last thing, what is one resolution you've taken for 2021?

Nishant: I am going be working on my own and the entire team's wellness fitness is something which has been on top of my mind.

Anchor: Okay, great. Thank you so much for joining us, it was a pleasure hosting you and thank you for sharing.

Pleasure talking to you.