Site icon WizardSourcer

Interview with Srinivasa Raju

Jonathan Kidder

I had the opportunity to interview Srinivasa Raju a Sr. General Manager & IT Recruitment Head from Live Connections based in Bangalore. He has been very active in our recruiting community – sharing his advanced Boolean strings and recruiting tools recommendations. I was honored that he would consider getting interviewed by our team at WizardSourcer. I hope you enjoy reading this interview below. 

 

About Srinivasa Raju:

18+ years of total Work experience out of which the last 14 years has been into IT Recruitment as a Manager at various Levels & Functions but primarily in Talent Acquisition deliverables. Before I got into Recruitment, I worked with Mphasis as a Full-time employee for 2.5 years as a Sr. Customer Care Executive between 2004 – 2006. During 2006, EDS purchased a 42% stake in the Company and then in 2008 HP acquired EDS. There were a couple of other Mergers wrt to Mphasis, later on.

 

How I got into Recruitment, had nothing to do with planning and was all coincidence.

During the 2nd half of the year, in 2006 when Mphasis was going through a lot of internal changes, there was uncertainty. At that time, I got a call from a Recruitment Placement Agency and it was for a Key Accounts Manager role for all things related to IT ERP Full time Recruitment. It sounded like a good opinion and also, I was of the opinion that Recruitment can be a long-term Career option and a fruitful one as a couple of my friends were in the Recruitment space and were doing good. Hence, I decided to take up this role and moreover it was a good entry into a Senior role (though it was for a small time Agency) which could possibly lay a foundation for me in the Recruitment field.

 

Since then, I have grown wrt the Seniority of the roles (from a “Key Accounts Manager” to now a “Sr. General Manager / IT Recruitment Head”), capability & tenacity, i had managed Delivery Teams up to 100 PAN India & multi-dimensional functions with various organizations (Full time hiring / Contract Staffing / HR Operations / Vendor Management / Account Management / RPO management / a brief stint working with Software Developers to build Recruitment Automation products / a bit of Business Development wrt onboarding new Logos within a couple of Organizations).

 

While I have spent the majority of my working career with Staffing Companies, I worked with MNC’s like Mphasis & IBM for 3.6 years and a host of RPO engagements on the way. Mentored Recruiting Teams throughout my career and Handled P&L while also directly reporting to CEOs with 3 Staffing Organizations.

 

I currently work for a Full time Staffing Company @ Live Connections as a Sr. General Manager & IT Recruitment Head (a 25-year-old Company). The one good thing about Live Connections, is that it has a Large Clientele base and more importantly is home to some of the Best Clients a Recruitment Team could ask for. All my life I have I have been a resident of Bangalore (renamed to Bengaluru, a few years ago) also known as the “Garden City of India”.

 

Some Value Adds that I bring to the Table

I like experimenting and researching and whenever i do that i normally learn and find new things almost inadvertently and mostly planned. Love sharing information to Sourcing communities and also to learn new things as I am curious and always want to be Creative. I always first try to identify Problems related to Sourcing & Recruitment and then find Solutions to those problems. Over the years as I got better at finding information, I learned that identifying a problem was the difficult part when compared to identifying an actual solution.

 

Apart from the Transactional based activities as a Talent Acquisition Head, i have built my capabilities around these skills:

 

There have been a few Success Stories in my Recruitment career, so far:

At least in my case, I have noticed that almost all Success stories were a result of strategic planning backed by some focused hard work.

 

I mostly don’t source as I have been managing Teams since the last 14 years, but I have a genuine passion towards sourcing, to the art of Candidate engagement and interacting with Hiring managers. However, I have always been hands-on (though on and off) as I wanted to build on my Sourcing & Recruiting capabilities, as I want to the Best Mentor that my Team can possibly have.

 

Success Stories that I can readily remember

ORGANIZATION – FOCUS INFOTECH

I received a Certificate of Appreciation from Mr. Vinayak Dubey (Global Head, Partner Ecosystem – Wipro Technologies) for outstanding contribution towards Sub-Contractor Hiring over a period of 6 months (Apr 12 to Sept 12) across all their vendor base.

 

As a Recruitment Delivery Manager & as an acting Branch Head for Bangalore region, within one year of me joining the Company, with some strategic and targeted work, Bangalore Branch pipped our Head Office in Chennai to Ace on both counts – “Contractor Headcount” as well as “Overall Revenue”.

 

ORGANIZATION – DATACORE TECHNOLOGIES

Dismantled, Client wise Structured Sourcing Teams. Introduced the concept of Domain / Industry Specialization and segregated Sourcing Teams accordingly after analyzing recruiter capabilities and past track records. Probably took a Gamble but it well worth it as it eventually turned out to be the right decision as this re-structuring resulted in far better Quality of CV Submittals and more Closures. More over Candidate Database management became far easier and faster.

 

There was one specific Exclusive Weekend Drive that we did with Cognizant as part of their Full-Time hiring initiative that I distinctly remember. It was for 2 Technologies (broadly classified) – Java & Mainframe and the experience level was between (4 yrs to 15 yrs). With just 5 Recruiters and a lead time of 7 days, we were able to muster over 2300 Total Schedules for the Weekend Drive and by doing a thorough follow-up we could ensure that there were over 900 Footfalls which resulted in over 70+ Final Selections. This till date remains a feat which I have not been able to replicate. It just goes to show that Motivation plays a huge role when compared to Capability alone.

 

ORGANIZATION – MORGENALL MANAGEMENT

Worked closely with in-house Software Development team to build End to End Recruitment Suite powered with additional Features & Automation which saved a lot of time for the Recruitment Team.

 

ORGANIZATION – LIVE CONNECTIONS

Has been partly successful so far, purely because of lack of implementation

I have been Instrumental in Training, re-defining & transforming – Sourcing & Search Strategies for Super Niche & Leadership Hiring, as well as Candidate engagement & Email personalization techniques, to increase Sales Leads Generation by 3X, Time effective Automation, all this through innovative & Zero Cost Solutions for the Organization.

 

“I am not a full time Sourcer but having said that I always nurture the Sourcing bug within me, practice and research on my own in addition to listening to the Legends within the Global Sourcing Community to be the Best I can be, in terms of knowledge & capability.”

 

Lately, I have been sourcing on Senior Leadership roles and successfully closed a Very Senior Global Role with Wells Fargo – for the Head of Wholesale Banking & Data Analytics, which they were trying to fulfill since the last 12 months.

 

When it comes to the Best Timeless Advices that I have received in Context with Sourcing & Recruitment, it has to be Glen Cathey.

My Favorite is Glen’s advice on the different Search methodologies which he coined.

 

The best advice I’ve heard so far this year is…

“The Best way to predict the Future is to create it.” By Peter Drucker

 

My Favorite Tool is Seekout.io

I have been utilizing the Free Version of Seekout for over 7 months now. Seekout is Great to find Emails (Personal + Official) as well as Mobile Numbers. Though I have not used the Paid version of Seekout, I am aware of its Features & Search Options across Platforms which is probably the Best in the Market.

 

About 4 to 5 months ago, Seekout introduced a new version which basically enriched the Google Search Results in a Box which shows the Picture of the LinkedIn User Profile as well as other details like Location, Education, skillsets.

 

When it comes to the Google Search results enrichment, I prefer HIRETUAL over SEEKOUT as Hiretual’s Search Results Box is more robust and captures more information, including the Profile picture, Total Experience, past employment, etc

 

 

Follow these 12 Commandments to Achieve Success in Recruitment :

1) Know your Client & understand how they function if you are working with a Client/Clients.

2) Wherever required, I feel an Intake meeting is mandatory to understand the Job requirement better and more importantly to make the best use of an Intake meeting by asking intelligent Questions to the Hiring Managers after due diligence so that we know exactly what we need to look for in a Candidate and what the Target Companies are.

3) Once you know exactly what expertise you are looking for in a Candidate & the Target company, it becomes easier to formulate a Search and zero in on the Right Talent pool to Speed up the process towards fulfilling the Position.

4) For the Above to function in a smooth manner, as an organization it is important to invest in your Recruitment Team & your Account Management Team by building their Capability index to the required levels to be able to achieve & realize our Targets and Revenue Expectations whilst wooing our clients.

5) As a Leader of the Pack, it becomes important that your organization has a Healthy Work Culture coupled with best Practices to Constantly motivate Employees to go the extra mile.

6) Then it is a matter of providing the Tools and Resources to enable the Recruitment Team to function seamlessly wrt – Sourcing & scouting for People as well as having a Robust ATS System for Candidate Pipelining & Tracking.

7) Effective Candidate Engagement, Personalization & possessing a Sales bent of mind is mandatory for both Account Managers and Recruitment Teams to produce Exceptional outcomes.

8) I personally like to segregate Recruitment Teams based on Domain/Industry Specialization to ensure Best Results.

9) I believe in using Technology to Automate certain tasks like sending emails / Calendar Management whilst using various other Tools to be productive and to complete Tasks in much quicker time frames.

10) It is mandatory to use well formulated Excel trackers to be on top of your Game whilst tracking Transactions seamlessly.

11) Very important to follow best practices that suit your organization the best and an effective Candidate Management process for optimum efficiency with respect to Conversion rates and Successful Requirement Fulfillment Life Cycles.

12) I believe in Daily / Weekly / Monthly Reports to Track progress periodically to ensure we are on the right path towards achieving what was set out to be.

 

My 2021 Resolution Bucket list: ✓

 

I plan to and hope to achieve few things this Year:

1) Be more Health conscious & practice Intermittent Fasting

2) 10000 steps everyday

3) To practice Continuous Learning (Coding happens to be one of them) & Intelligent Integration

4) To Focus & Prioritize Family

5) To become an Entrepreneur / Solopreneur

6) Grow Financially

 

Some of my Favorite Boolean Strings

I currently have over 300 Boolean Strings (and growing) which I have Created and Bookmarked that work on Multiple Platforms and for different roles and purposes. I am a Domain Search & Boolean Search Operator fanatic, always trying to improvise and come up something new & refreshing.

 

It is difficult to pick on one …

There are many complex Boolean strings I have written but these are a few I can think of now:

Title Search on BING to find “Engineering Managers/Heads” in India currently working @ “WALMART”

site:in.linkedin.com/in (instreamset:title:”Engineering Manager” | instreamset:title:”Engineering Head” | instreamset:title:”Head of Engineering” | instreamset:title:”Chief of Engineering” | instreamset:title:”Engineering Director” | instreamset:title:”Director Engineering”) instreamset:title:”walmart”

 

In this GOOGLE Boolean Search, I am targeting “Linkedin User profile links” OR “Linkedin User profile URL’s” OR “github.io Resume Links” OR “github.io Resume URL’s” of “DATA SCIENTISTS” but I am searching for people outside of the Linkedin Domain

(link:linkedin.com/in | intext:”linkedin.com/in” | link:github.io | intext:github.io) (“@gmail.com” AROUND * “data scientist”) (“Data Scientist” AROUND * “experience”|”employment”|”career”) -inurl:linkedin -intitle:sample -intitle:jobs -intitle:samples -intitle:examples -intitle:templates -intitle:course -intitle:courses -intitle:enroll

 

In this GOOGLE Boolean Search, I am doing a Title Search on “Solution Architect” and looking for people on Linkedin for Country India, between 15 to 20 years of Total Experience

site:in.linkedin.com/in intitle:”Solution Architect” (“2000..2021”) (2004|2005|2006 AROUND * Experience) (2000|2001|2002 AROUND 25 Education) -1999 -1998 -1997 -1996 -1995 -1994 -1993 -1992 -1991 -1990 -1989 -1988 -1987 -1986 -1985

 

My thoughts on Corona Virus in general

As long as we are Working from Home and taking Basic Precautionary measures, we are going to be Safe. In India the Un-employment rate in the last 12 months was at its highest in September 2019. The Good News in India is that from Mid of September 2019, the New Covid-19 Cases have been consistently declining.

 

All around the World, Covid-19 has made a Hole into people’s Financial Wellbeing. For this very reason, it is important to plan on Savings and minimize your Expenses in 2021. Apart from taking all Basic precautions, it is important for People to boost their Immunity levels as well as Taking care of their Lungs.

 

The Good News is that since March 2019, across the World, the Air Quality has been way better, Wildlife has been thriving, there has been better Rainfall across, in general. It remains to be seen if the Economy opens up to Regular Working from Office premises, by mid of 2021.

 

What does this mean to Recruiters Worldwide and How should they respond to the Crisis?

During the Pre-Covid days, there was a lot of Talk around – Prioritizing and balancing Work & Personal Life. All of a sudden with the advent of Covid-19, during those first 3 to 6 months, recruiters & employees in general, had mixed emotions and were trying to adapt to the new normal as everyone were suddenly multi-tasking and juggling between both priorities.

 

While we were trying to get into the groove, we as Recruiters/employees, realized that we were ending up spending more hours on work related tasks, than usual.

 

Organizations across, are trying to save Cost & Automate redundant tasks (that don’t need human intervention) with the use of Bots and are planning to Focus on those Aspects which are Crucial for the Success & Development of the Company.

 

That said, Recruiters don’t need to panic because their Jobs will not be taken by Robots. However, to counter this forceful change and to become more productive and more relevant in this New Age of Recruiting & Sourcing, it is crucial that Recruiters embrace Learning/Upskilling and quite literally consciously work towards Transforming themselves into (Growth Hacking Sourcing Recruiters).

 

Recruiters need to focus on these 3 Skills listed below:

If you add the Last skillset to the First 3, you will transform yourself into a Super Power:

1) Automate Mundane Tasks (Sending Emails / Calendar Management / Job Posts, etc.,)

2) Get things done Faster & Smarter (Excel formulae / Chrome Extensions / Productivity Tools)

3) Work towards becoming a Good Internet Sourcer & Researcher

4) These days, it is a Game changing skillset to possess, if a Recruiter can Code (JavaScript & Python)

 

 

You can connect with Srinivasa Raju below:

Sr. General Manager & Recruitment Head – (Banking Captives / Products / Services)

 

Recommended Reading:

Review of Seamless.AI Search Engine Tool

Top AI Recruiting Software Tools to Review

The New Definition of Talent Sourcing

 

Share this…
Follow me
Latest posts by Jonathan Kidder (see all)
Exit mobile version