Employers and Job Seekers Converge into One Platform
the HRM
With the subsiding of the Covid-19 pandemic, organizations in Nepal that shelved their new recruitment plans for the last two years are again on a hiring spree.
As companies increasingly look out for new talents, Growth Sellers organized the second edition of Growth Job Fair 2022 on June 11 in Kathmandu which was attended by more than three dozen recruiters.
As a bridge between employers and job seekers, the Growth Job Fair provided a platform for youths who are looking to join the job market or seeking new job opportunities. Employers also benefitted from the Job Fair as they were able to connect with a large pool of potential employees without having to do any advertisement and much less investment.
For young job aspirants, there was a wide range of options as the fair had representation from the country’s leading private sector organizations ranging from manufacturing, hospitality, IT, trading, and automobile sectors.
The one-day event was inaugurated by Anil Kumar Upadhyaya, President of the Nepal Bankers’ Association. Addressing the event, Upadhyaya shared his experience and career journey in brief. He also stressed the importance of educational institutions in helping students to set the right frame for their career growth.
Mohan Ojha, Managing Director at Growth Sellers Pvt Ltd shared his experience in the job market, the importance of gaining knowledge and skills through courses outside of the college curriculum, and maintaining a learning attitude.
A special panel discussion titled ‘College to Corporate’ was also organized in which HR heads of leading organizations discussed various topics related to hiring processes, what fresh graduates require to be prepared for interviews, and meeting the expectations of students.
The panel discussion was moderated by Mohan Thapa, Chief Human Resources Officer at JCB Nepal, with Neha Joshi, Head -HR & Admin, Dish Media Network, Surendra Subedi, Principal, Kathmandu Model College, Lekhnath Poudel, Head-HR, Shangri-la Development Bank and Pramod Thakur, HR Manager, Hyatt Palace Hotel participating as speakers.
The discussion began with Thapa talking about the transition phase of students from their academic to professional journey. He asked the panel about the challenges the students and employers face in finding jobs and acquiring talents.
Speaking on the occasion, Poudel said the real journey starts once the students enter the job market. “For this, the students need to understand themselves first, the set of skills they have or lack of it, their personality, and keeping the right attitude,” he said. He was of the view that stability has been a major concern for employers. “They [employers] also need to understand the importance of investing in the training and development of employees to help them gain a new set of skills,” mentioned Poudel.
Giving an example of Dish Home, Joshi talked about how the company’s HR department focuses on hiring fresh graduates. According to her, almost 75 percent of the managers at Dish Home today are the people who had joined them during their initial days of running a call center. “The work culture of Dish Home is not considering any work small or big. This is the attitude fresh graduates should have while joining any organization,” she said, adding, “The fresh graduates should be open to learning and gaining experience as much as possible from as many places/departments as possible.”
Talking about the programs that colleges should implement to develop skills, Subedi said there are still many educational institutions that are yet to implement skill development programs for their students. “Many institutions are still focused on the completion of courses only rather than the overall development of students,” he opined.
Pramod Thakur of Hyatt Place gave an outline of the scope of the hospitality industry. According to Thakur, graduates can join the hospitality industry without a background in the same field but they should have the right attitude and be open to learning. “Effective communication is one of the skills that everyone should work on and sharpen,” he said, adding, “The other important aspect is developing the skill of critical analysis that students of today need to focus on.”
Moderator Thapa asked the speakers about the priority their organizations give to the learning and development of employees. In response, Poudel mentioned that banks are increasingly providing in-house training to their staff.
He gave an example of Shangrila Development Bank where the bank has taken the initiative of running technical and practical sessions for 10 days for recruits before they join the bank. “The training has been an effective initiation for the recruits,” he said.
According to him, Shangrila Development Bank keep their Management Trainee (MT) in the head office in the beginning because they felt that initial molding is important.
Joshi added that Dish Home focused on enhancing the technical knowledge/skill of their team members and introduced a mini-MBA course to their team. According to her, Dish Home has always focused on hiring fresh graduates and believes in molding their professional journey. She feels that majority of the fresh graduates do not understand the importance of internships and take it very lightly.
Giving her own example of how the principal of her college introduced the concept of internship at the beginning of the bachelor’s level and how it helped her in her career, Joshi emphasized the need for internships and urged the educational institutions to work on it. “They [educational institutions] should motivate students to grab the internship opportunities as it helps them a lot in understanding job nature, organization and the market as a whole.
