Subhendu Panigrahi
Subhendu is one of the founders of Venturesity, a challenge platform to hire global talent. He has also been an active volunteer in the startup community and contributing to the ecosystem. Subhendu with his peer entrepreneurs runs the most active startup group named Bangalore Startups.
Both companies and potential hires have realized that the traditional means of hiring simply does not work. Hitherto, the process generally goes something like this: Candidates post their resumes on job portal sites and hope that their profile catches a potential employer’s eye. If the company is interested in the candidate, they conduct a series of interviews that do not really enable the candidate to showcase their skills. After all, how does answering a question like “Why are manhole covers round?” help in demonstrating your ability to resolve job related issues?
Also, this model seems to tilt the balance in favor of companies in that prospective hires have to really do the run around in order to get hired.
In an attempt to address this latter issue, various methods have been proposed. One of the more interesting models is the auction model: candidates put up their profile on a recruiting platform, and then top candidates are shortlisted. These applications are then passed on to the companies participating in the auction who bid on candidates they wish to interview. Candidates will be then shown the list of offers and chose one based on their likes. However, this approach, although attractive in that it empowers candidates, does not really resolve the central problem: how do we test the relevant skill set of the candidates?
We have a solution that we believe is attractive both to candidates and potential employers. The idea is simple: prospective candidates choose a problem from our repository that best allows them to demonstrate their strengths, and solve it. The solutions will then be submitted to the companies who will judge them according to predefined judging criteria. Those whose submissions catch the judges’ eye will be shortlisted for HR interviews.
These challenges take the place of the technical round, and this innovative hiring methodology solves two major problems in one stroke: real world skill sets of candidates are adequately tested, and candidates are empowered in that instead of them having to run after employers, employers run after top quality talent. After all, since these problems are challenging, companies know that if a prospective candidate does manage to solve a particular challenge, he or she would make a great addition to their team.
Certain issues remain with this approach, namely the issue of scalability. Other questions that come to mind is whether or not the challenges are open to everyone, the problems related to judging etc. In order to deal with these problems, we hold specialized challenges that are open to selected candidates whose profiles are screened via a combination of technology and manual judgement. Taking advantage of automation and our soon to be patented resume ranking algorithm, we invite those candidates whose profiles are suitable for the challenge at hand to take part. However, for our less specialized challenges, any candidate is welcome to attempt them.
One of our upcoming specialty challenges is our All-Star Android Challenge, in which applicants are required to build/create an android application over a weekend. Further details can be found here.
Going forward, we will introduce more challenges and more events. Be on the lookout for more!
