TALENT IS THE NEW GOLD, AND CEIPAL THE SOUGHT-AFTER MINE

Think about it. 60%-70% of the expense for a company resides in employee salaries. Needless to say, it constitutes a company’s largest spend. If you don’t know how to productively engage your employees, you are actually leaving a lot of money wasted

Sameer Penakalapati, while working as a software programmer, got thinking about how a project’s success or failure depends on the team working on it. Welcome to ‘talent acquisition’! “I then realised that building teams and talent is something I want to pursue,” said Sameer, who founded Ceipal in 2014.

When there is a job, how do you find the right fit? How do you help a client manage the full time equivalents (FTEs), which measures the workload of an employee? All you need is a solution powered by artificial intelligence. “Searching, sourcing and engaging with the candidates can be done in an automated manner saving you a tremendous amount of time. Various advanced technologies today come with filters narrowing down the list to top 5 or top 10 matches,” said Sameer.

The question now is can Ceipal’s solution overpower human judgement. “Well, this acquisition of talent based on the client’s need is done in a fraction of a minute. We see 50-100 candidates applying for a job. The human eye then will have to peruse the applications of each of those. And if there are more than 2 vacancies, then it’s time consuming. You need a refined list so you can engage with the candidates and judge better,” said Sameer. Ceipal’s forte lies in ensuring a diverse workforce setup. This term ‘diverse workforce’ has a slightly different meaning for different parts of the world, stressed Sameer. In India, diversity is defined by gender balance in an organisation, added Ceipal’s founder and CEO. In the western world, there is ethnic parity to be considered too, he added. “In India, Ceipal helps build a corporate organisation with equal number of men and women being recruited. We track the data through various categories - from departments, employees, jobs, etc. We give insights based on this data. How do we bring qualified talents to fill the gap? That’s where we come in,” explained Sameer.

Ceipal has been constantly innovating to remain one of the leading companies in global HR service delivery software. Actively engaging with customers, understanding their business needs, and enhancing our platform have been the three key elements that have driven the organisation ahead, said Sameer.

Being market leaders, Ceipal sure knows how to hire the best talent for its own growth. However, the best talents are always in demand and that is one of Ceipal’s biggest challenges. “You have to map the organisation’s goals with the talent goals and the individual’s goals. This keeps changing and you need to keep updating this. And that is quite a challenge. That apart, access to capital is another big challenge,” said the founder/CEO.

Ceipal Connect is an event witnessed regularly through all these years. In one of the recent events, Ceipal spoke of expanding with new sessions focused on contingent staffing, direct sourcing, total talent management, and more for suppliers and buyers alike. “There is spectacular growth in the staffing industry, and the need for talent today is ever-growing. Companies are looking to augment their projects and get it delivered faster through their temp workforce. So, there’s huge demand for contingent staffing,” said Sameer.

COVID pandemic has created a huge gap between the talent present in the market and the skills required by the organisation. Upskilling or changing one’s skill set is the post-pandemic trend now, Sameer said, adding that talent is indeed gold.