Raqmiyat’s Abhijeet Sanyal on how enterprises should rethink hiring processes amid COVID-19

Abhijeet Sanyal, Vice President – Technology Staffing Services at Raqmiyat, says hiring has taken on a new paradigm post the COVID-19 pandemic.

How would you describe the state of work, post the pandemic? What has changed?

From BC and AD, the world now has a new way of comparing eras. PC (pre-corona) / DC (during corona) and PC (post corona). If someone says its business as usual for him then that may not be the actual fact. The way the world used to work has changed and so has Raqmiyat and its businesses. This pandemic has re-emphasised the need for a higher degree of adoption of digital transformation across the organisations and getting their organisations safe from the vulnerability of cyber-attacks. The pandemic has seen a surge in malware attacks and phishing attempts many folds and hence at Raqmiyat, we have the right engineers who can have your work environment secure and help the organisations through rightful consultation.

How has hiring changed post the pandemic? What are companies looking for, now?

Well in this geography, when the majority of workforce are expats, this pandemic has changed the dynamics completely. With countries closing their borders and skilled engineers unable to travel, it was a real challenge for us to find the right fit within the country. We had to rework our hiring methodologies and changed the way we hire talent in this geography. We had to design a strategy whereby we can attract talent from within the country without impacting our delivery commitments. What was a real challenge in March has become the new norm in August and the team has beautifully adapted to the new norms.

As far as staffing solutions are concerned, what is your hiring process like?

I have always maintained that the real strength of Raqmiyat’s staffing solutions lies in the well-oiled delivery and recruitment engine. My delivery team which is based out of our offshore centre in India has a mix of experienced and talented recruiters who are trained to find technocrats. They are trained to ask the right questions from job seekers and are trained to find passive job seekers. We don’t believe in complicating our hiring processes and have kept it simple to meet the demands on time.

Once the recruiter does the basic screening of the profile, the profile moves to the delivery lead who does a detailed interview which then moves to the third stage of filtration with the in- house technical panel. This panel typically consists of Raqmiyat engineers who are working for Raqmiyat in different projects across the Emirates. We are very serious about what kinds of profiles we present to our customers and each profile that lands at the customer’s inbox would have gone through a minimum of three stages of filtration process so that reduces the hiring time of the customer. This is our unique proposition and not many can match us in this mechanism.

What are the sectors you hire people for? What is the demand for workers like at this point, in those sectors?

Traditionally, Raqmiyat has focused primarily on two sectors – the government sector and the banking sector. These two continue to be the sweet spot for us. However, there is a focused approach in the healthcare sector. Aviation was also one such sector where there was a lot of focus but the pandemic changed all of that. Thankfully for us, both government and banking sectors are part of essential services and hence we don’t see much of a dip in the demand for such sectors. We shall continue to nurture these two sectors with continuous investments in our sales and delivery teams.

What will hiring look like in the future? Will the same trend continue?

I strongly believe hiring will certainly change in the post-pandemic era. Professionals will need to upgrade themselves to keep up with the changing dimensions. Reskilling and upskilling must be the focus of experienced professionals otherwise they will find themselves falling behind in the race. Then again, some jobs will permanently vanish from the horizon and there will be an increase in demand for AI and ML skills. However, the need to hire a quality workforce will always be there. It is just that the job seeker should possess the right skill required for the new era.