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Find TimesJobs.com’s career articles, expert advice and tips @www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com, Jobs & Career section

PAGE 6 n April Hiring Trends

PAGE 8 n Interview: Pam Halligan, GE Digital

A TechGig.com survey points towards the growing lure and usefulness of coding contests among employees and employers

FROM CODING TO

HIRING

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TechGig.com survey

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CODEATHONS Building brand, spotting talent

Apeksha Kaushik, TimesJobs.com

CODING contests or codeathons have gained popularity

among employers as well as job seekers in the tech domain in India. While these competitions have emerged as one of the most effective ways for organisations to access top technology talent, for professionals, these act as a way to up-skill, get recognition, build a personal brand and bag better jobs. In this new study, TechGig.com gets deeper into the growing lure and usefulness of codeathons. The study surveys both employees and employers to understand their perspective on codeathons.

Majority of technology professionals are upbeat about taking part in coding contests to showcase their skills and bag jobs, and for employers, codeathons have become a great branding and hiring tool

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Scenario AAccording to a TechGig.com survey of employees, nearly 40 per cent of the respondents said they have participated in codeathons at some point in their career. Of these, 55 per cent respondents were male and 35 per cent were female.While the participation ratio may be skewed towards male professionals, enthusiasm is picking up among female coders too with the growing popularity of codeathons. When asked if they are willing to participate in future codeathons, 65 per cent respondents said yes. Of these, 68 per cent were male coders and 70 per cent were female coders.In fact, TechGig.com Code Gladiators, India’s largest coding contest now in its third edition, has seen continuous increase in participation of women coders. TechGig’s Geek Goddess, a women-only coding contest held this year, saw massive participation.

Preference Corporate codeathons are the most popular type of coding contests, according to 40 per cent respondents. These contests can be internal gatherings of employees to develop new products.Niche codeathons are the second-most preferred type of contests, liked by nearly 30 per cent respondents. They offer platforms for development for mobile apps, operating system variations, web and video game upgradations.Nearly 18 per cent respondents also voted for language/framework codeathons where they develop applications in specified programming

languages or frameworks such as JavaScript or HTML5.Single applications, where improvement or upgrade of a specific language, operating or management system is done, was liked by nearly 12 per cent respondents, finds the survey.

Benefits Most (33%) respondents said that the desire to learn and upskill is the biggest reason for them to participate in codeathons while 26 per cent said recognition among peers, seniors and industry leaders were the key reasons to

get into these contests, according to the TechGig survey. About 20 per cent respondents said participating in codeathons helped them unlock job opportunities. Nearly 30 per cent participants claimed to have received job offers based on their performance in codeathons, finds the survey.

Limitations Nearly 38% respondents cited busy work schedule while 36% rued disinterest on the part of their managers as the main reasons for not being able to participate in codeathons. Interestingly, about 16 per cent respondents said they are not competent enough to participate in coding contests while 10 per cent said they are simply not interested in taking part in such competitions, reveals the survey.

Busy schedule

Not competent enough

Not keen on participating

Manager not keen/doesn’t approve

Have you ever got a job offer after taking part in codeathons?

30% 70%

< EMPLOYEE >

NoYes

Learning

33%

To unlock job opportunities

Win prizes

Networking

20%

10%

Recognition26%

Why do you participate in codeathons?

8%

3%

Just for fun

Why do you not participate in codeathons?

What are the most popular types of codeathons?Corporate: 40% internal gatherings of employees of individual companies to promote or develop new products

Niche: 30% platform for development of mobile apps, operating system variations, web and video game upgradation

Language/framework: 18% development of apps in a specified languages or frameworks such as JavaScript or HTML5

Single application: 12% improve specific language, operating or management system

38%

36%16%

10%

Have you ever participated in codeathons?

Yes No40% 60%

Male 55% Female 35%YES

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Scenario Coding contests are fast gaining popularity as a recruiting tool among technology companies in India. The level of participation is also encouraging, with 38 per cent employers claiming in the TechGig survey that techies are enthusiastic about participating in such contests. Nearly 42 per cent organisations said the level of participation of employees in their conding contests is satisfactory, according to the survey.In terms of gender, organisations said male coders are more enthusiastic compared to female coders when ti comes to codeathons. However, things are changing with an increase in the number of women coders in IT organisations.

Preference Similar to the responses from employees, most employers also think that corporate codeathons are the most popular type of coding contests followed by language/framework codeathons.

Benefits Employers see branding as the biggest benefit of codeathons. Nearly 36 per cent employers feel coding contests help build and strengthen organisational brands. Besides, 32 per cent said it helps in putting in place a better recruitment process.

Nearly 22 per cent organisations said codeathons offer an innovative platform to engage employees in the long run while 10 per cent voted for the inventiveness these contests bring to the table. Nearly 48 per cent employers said that 5-10 per cent participants receive job offers through codeathons while 38 per cent said that on average, up to 5 per cent participants find new opportunities due to these contests.

LimitationsThough the acceptance of codeathons is rising among companies and techies, several roadblocks hinder the expansion of these contests. The biggest roadblock, according to more than 50 per cent of the surveyed organisations, is technical constraint – to build and implement the programme. About 40 per cent organisations pointed towards budgetary constraints as the biggest hindrance in conduction codeathons while 5 per cent cited disinterest on the part of the management and participants as a major limitation, according to the TechGig survey.

How do you rate participation level in codeathons?

What is the key benefit of conducting codeathons?

Share of participants who receive job offers via codeathons?

42%

<EMPLOYER>

38% 20%Satisfactory Low Enthusiastic

What are the most popular types of codeathons?Corporate: 51% internal gatherings of employees of individual companies to promote or develop new products

Language/framework: 28% development of apps in a specified languages or frameworks such as JavaScript or HTML5

Niche: 13% platform for development of mobile apps, operating system variations, web and video game upgradation

Single application: 8% improve specific language, operating or management system

36%

32%

22%

10%

Branding

Engagement

Recruitement

Innovation

Less than 5%

10-20%

38%

12%5-10%

More than 20%

48%

2%

What is the biggest roadblock in conducting codeathons?

Technical constraints (to build

& implement)

55%

Budgetary constraints

40%

Disinterest on management’s part

Low interest from participants

4%

1%

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TimesJobs.com Bureau

TO GIVE emphasis on women empowerment and the government’ s Make in India initiative, Delhi Management Association

(DMA) in association with Indus Business Academy, Greater Noida, organised the 6th Women Entrepreneurship Conference in New Delhi on March 17. Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Kalraj Mishra was the chief guest and classical danseuse Sonal Mansingh was the guest of honour at the event. Ravindra Nath, CMD, NSIC, conceptualised the event. In his inaugural address, Mishra spoke about various women entrepreneurship schemes run by his ministry and the Central government. He also shared that the government has taken many other decisions and initiatives to help and support the women entrepreneurs under the Make in India mission. Sonal Mansingh said women should be proud of their talent and not consider themselves as inferior. On this occasion, successful women entrepreneurs such as Sudha Gupta, chairperson, Mother’s Pride; Anjina Rajagopal of Sai Kripa

Foundation; Richa Anirudh, Bharti Taneja of Alps Ltd.; Neeru Sharma of Infibeam; Pabi Ben; Dr Veena Swarup, director-HR of Engineers India; Nita Mehta and Rashi Bajaj were awarded by the minister with “Prashasti Samman” for their contribution to women entrepreneurship and employment generation. The second session of the event was based on ‘Funds and Funding: New vistas in financing’ where speakers talked about the advantages and disadvantages of traditional and modern sources of funds and funding. The session was chaired by Dr Shikha Sharma, founder and managing director, Nutri-Health Systems Private. The other panellists were Sanjay Goyal, general manager, SIDBI; Shailesh Vikram Singh, executive director, SeedFund; Seema Singh, general

manager, Bhartiya Mahila Bank, and Shruti Agarwal, CFO, Felix. PN Sharma, chairman, Singer India, chaired the third session on ‘ Managing cross financial dimensions in a dynamic ecosystem’ . Raman Uberoi, COO, Crisil; Manish Arora, president and country head-Business Banking, Yes Bank, Dr ES Rao, CEO, IIFCL, IDF Asset Management Co. Ltd; Anubha Prasad, DGM, SIDBI, and Guarang Dixit, senior general manager (Fin.), NSIC, were the other panellists. The experts discussed about managing cross-financial dimensions such as effective tax planning; insurance and investment planning in a dynamic ecosystem. The conference was well received by the delegates representing women entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs-in-the-making from different backgrounds. The session ended with a vote of thanks by Dr Ekta Saxena, programme convener and head of corporate relations, IBA, Greater Noida.

The conference was coordinated by Rajan Pandhi, director, DMA and sponsored by NSIC, SIDBI and PFC and supported by NFCG-Ministry of Corporate Affairs, TimesJobs.com and TiE among others.

Helping women take the entrepreneurial plunge6th Women Entrepreneurship Conference, New Delhi

The experts spoke about managing cross-financial dimensions such as effective tax planning; insurance and investment in a dynamic ecosystem

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Demand rise for senior professionals amid a stagnant market

EXPERIENCE WISE BREAK-UP

-1%<2 years

-5%2-5 years

-9%5-10 years

-3%10-20 years

-1%>20 years

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS 3%

Automobile-15%Travel &

hospitality

-10%Healthcare

9%Retail

7%BFSI

PROFILE ANALYSIS

2%Entertainment/

media/journalism

-21%Medical

professionals

-15%Hospitality

-12%Administration

-11%BFSI

LOCATION WISE INDICES

8%Vadodara & Kerala

2%Gujarat

-11%Pune

-7%Delhi NCR

RecruiteX data for April 2016 trends based on month-over-month analysis

-9%Nov 2015

2%Dec 2015

-7%Apr 2016

-3%Jan 2016

6%Feb 2016

-5%Mar 2016

TimesJobs.com Bureau

SOCIETY for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the world’s largest association devoted to

human resource management, held the second edition of ‘SHRM India HR Technology Conference & Exposition’ in Mumbai from April 20-21.

The two-day conference brought together more than 650 delegates, including mid and senior-level HR professionals and corporate leaders from organizations across all sectors. The gathering also presented an opportunity for the delegates to discuss innovative ways to bridge the gap between HR and technology, and how to leverage the best of technology as an effective enabler in HR.

SHRM Tech 2016 lay the stage for not just setting the context of the various technologies that can enhance the intended goals of HR, but also as to how it can be leveraged to the maximum. Global trends like Blind CVs and Artificial Intelligence were deliberated upon, and an interesting ‘gamification’ trend was seen as evolving globally. Every aspect of the technology and HR mix was identified and extensively discussed.

Two notable launches were made during the conference this year. One, the special launch of the Vendor Community Platform by SHRM India and Start Board, which will provide access to a

dynamic and growing community of credible partners, apart from a host of multiple utilities. At the same time, the platform will create a unique opportunity for service providers to showcase themselves to the HR community.

The other important launch at the conference was ‘Workplace Stress: Impact and Outcome: An India Study, 2016’, a joint study by SHRM and CGP (Chestnut Global Partners). This study is the first of its kind in India that attempts to measure the impact of stress on the organisations’ top line and highlights the areas of concern at all levels.

The key focus of the conference was on the rapidly evolving workplaces and exponential technology advancements. Some of the speakers included Jason Averbook, CEO, Thought Leader & author; Viresh Oberaoi, founder CEO and MD, Mjunction Services; Dr Sumit D Chowdhury, founder CEO of Gaia Smart Cities; Yuvraj Baghwala, VP- HR, Genpact; Kevin Freitas, director, global recruiting & rewards, InMobi; Yashwant Mahadik, executive VP and global CHRO, Sun Pharma; Pradeep Mukerjee, former CEO and country head, Mercer Consulting; Unmesh Pawar, global MD, talent acquisition, Accenture; Jaspreet Bakshi, senior VP, HR & regional head-HR, People Services India; George Oommen, director-HR, Technology & Process Consulting; Sameer Khanna, VP and head of HR India, Ericsson; Manu Narang, VP,

HR, American Express; Vikas Joshi, senior director, HR Transformation, PepsiCo Asia, Middle East & North Africa; Sunder Ramachandran, head, training function, Pfizer India and Abhijit Bhaduri, chief learning officer, Wipro Ltd.

In his keynote address, Averbook stressed upon the need for HR to “up its game” on strategy, process, data and storytelling. There is a need for HR to re-focus on how it looks at itself and its customers and the need for people, processes and technology to work together, he said.

“While technology has always been considered as one of the tools of the HR domain, the SHRM Tech conference offered a platform to brainstorm and minutely assess the impact of technology on the top line of companies, simultaneously throwing a light on key HR Tech trends shaping up globally,” said Achal Khanna, CEO, SHRM India.

Viresh Oberoi, founder CEO & MD, mjunction, in his session, highlighted how with a focus on problem-solving and innovative use of IT, mjunction changed the way commodities are sold.

The conference also witnessed some expert led demo sessions. One of the sessions ‘Redefining Talent Acquisition in an Era of Industry Convergence’ showcased IBM Kenexa’s sciences, social, collaboration and analytics-backed talent acquisition solutions.

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Leveraging technology as effective HR enabler

SHRM India HR Tech Conference 2016, Mumbai

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Copyright ©2016 Times Business Solutions (A division of Times Internet Ltd). All rights reserved.

Being a digital industrial company, how do you identify and hire the right fit in context to ever-changing digital skills requirement?Our skills requirement is that of a typical software development company. This includes software developers, product managers, and data analysts and data scientists. But, moreover we are looking for candidates who have mission based approach towards work, are outcome focused, can work with teams and deliver faster as per customers’ requirements. We go to universities to look for talent who can fit our lean and agile culture and wants to work in a start-up setup within a large enterprise like GE. Also, we hire those people who are willing to make an impact in technology intensive industries such as Healthcare, Oil and Gas, Power Generation and Transmission, Transportation and Software. And, most importantly they should love the work they do. As a HR leader, what are your top digital priorities? Recruiting the best talent is on my mind every day even when I am sleeping. We have been channelising our efforts towards transforming into a lean and agile organisation. Owing to the disruption in the technology industry, we are always on our feet to train, re-skill, and up-skill our workforce. Staying updated, staying relevant is the differentiator for an organisation like us to create a compelling proposition for our existing and future employees. How is your organisation harnessing the power of digital workforce?Harnessing the true potential of talent in the digital world requires a high level of collaboration, agility in decision-making, active knowledge sharing and people owning end-to-end responsibilities. This all has to be done to reap tangible business benefits. AT GE Digital, we allow employees to work on flexible teams, in exciting technology environments,

such as our upcoming state of the art Digital Technology Hub in Bangalore. Being a 124-year-old startup working in varied sectors ranging from aviation to software, our people enjoy the option of working on projects from all corners of the world. We let our people know how their contribution is impacting and adding value to the larger technology chain. This way, we have been able to allow fantastic flow of best practices from one sector to another and deliver better results for our customers. How does external and internal digital change impact employees, organisations and their customers?We have to operate in an agile fashion, enable fast decision-making, collaborate and learn quickly to deliver faster to imbibe the change. To meet customers’ requirements, we have to move faster to create an impact sooner with clear measurable value additions. Using IT as a pivot, how can companies transform their approach to talent and recruiting? For a digital-industrial organisation such as GE Digital, how has IT in HR turned out to be a game-changer?The answer to this is by making talent recruitment itself digital. Being a digital company, we have applied the principles of software development to talent acquisition. We are using analytics as the pivot in all hiring-related decisions. This helps us move quickly in recruitment by staying updated on crucial market intelligence and insights and doing competition analysis. Thus, the power of analytics enables us to brand ourselves better and move in an agile fashion. How are you enabling your leaders to balance the needs of a multigenerational digital workforce?GE Digital actively works with its leaders to create a flat organisational structure and enable horizontal growth. To balance the needs of a multigenerational digital workforce, leaders have to

stay connected with the workforce to empower them and promote a collaborative work environment. Our leaders support the team, enhance their capabilities with right opportunities, and accelerate their growth by removing roadblocks from their path. As part of our new culture orientation, GE Beliefs drives the performance of the company and the actions of our people. These beliefs are: customers determine our success; stay lean to go fast; learn and adapt to win; empower and inspire each other and deliver results in an uncertain world.You are planning to hire a significant number of employees within IT over the next few years. What kind of skills would you look for in these digital workers?Bangalore is a very progressive market for GE Digital. We plan to hire significant number of employees at this facility. We are actively looking for people in software development, data science and analytics and product development domain. Apart from technical knowledge, what we look for in our digital workers is high learning orientation, risk-taking capability, go-getter attitude and the ability to amplify their learning with a focus on organisational excellence. What are the essential traits of a next generation digital workplace 2020?It is essential for the next generation digital workplace 2020 to create an open and collaborative work environment which has minimum layers between employees and leaders. The vertical nature of organisations has to go away to have a free flow of information and exchange ideas to drive innovation. The next generation workplace will allow its high performers to move from team to team for improved knowledge sharing. And most importantly, they have to be nimble to be change agents.

(As told to Neha Singh Verma)

‘We’re on our feet to train, re-skill our workforce’

INTERVIEW: Pam Halligan, Senior HR Leader-IT, GE Digital