EP138: Maersk - How to Tailor Talent Strategies for Global Markets

All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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Lydia: Welcome to the All In Recruitment podcast by Manatal, where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels on YouTube and Spotify to stay tuned for our weekly episodes. I'm your host, Lydia, and joining us today is Gautam Shetty of Maersk. Thank you for joining us, Gautam.

Gautam: Thank you, Lydia, for the opportunity to be on your podcast.

Proactive Talent Strategy

Lydia: So you have had extensive experience in the talent space, Gautam. What are some key transitions that have shaped your perspective on talent acquisition?

Gautam: It has been almost 20 years since I have been in talent acquisition. So, I think there are a whole number of things which have shaped my transitions, right? Like, my philosophy for talent acquisition has been living in the moment and adapting to change constantly. When I started as a talent acquisition professional 20 years ago, it felt like I was doing a lot of stuff manually, which meant that when we would post something in the newspaper, people would respond with physical copies of their resumes. And then the entire philosophy changed. People started looking for jobs on job portals, and [talent acquisition professionals] found talent on job portals. From there, it moved on to hiring passive talent from different portals that came up in the market. And then finally, today it is all about creating an ecosystem to find talent and going to the place where talent is available, right? So, I think the transitions have been many, but my philosophy has been simple; it is constantly changing, and to live in the moment.

I think we have moved on to being talent partners. And why I say that is that recruitment could have been very administrative. It could have been just looking at resumes and processing resumes, and trying to see if they fit into the role. Whereas now we are being talent partners and it is about creating an ecosystem. Why I say creating an ecosystem is that if you look at companies today, diversity is one of their core values, and they want to make sure that there is equal diversity in the workplace. So, they build ecosystems, go into schools and colleges, fund education, and then bring that talent into the organization. So, I feel we are now much more proactive than we were before. We have to think through. We have to partner with businesses and make sure there is a talent strategy, not just for today, but for tomorrow as well.

Lydia: This also means that talent acquisition partners or business partners to the business would need to be very attuned to the business needs and direction of that business. And to have that sight towards the kind of talent that you need in the future.

Gautam: And that is also a part of our jobs today. It is not about thinking of just your current position, but what the business needs in the future. So it is a very important part of our roles today to partner with the business and the vantage point for talent acquisition is not to think from a talent acquisition standpoint, but mostly from the business standpoint.

Lydia: So you oversee several regions in this role, right? APAC, Africa, and Latin America for talent acquisition. What are some areas you are prioritizing at the moment?

Gautam: I think it is different in different regions. For example, in the UAE, it is probably Emiratization; in Saudi Arabia, Saudization; in Africa, early careers; and in some of the regions, like Latin America, where logistics hubs are being built, I think it is mostly hiring for our frontline workforce. So, that is something that we are doing. 

But my main focus, whichever region it is, is mostly candidate and hiring manager experience. I think that is key to our roles, and that is going to set you apart from other organizations. The better your candidate experience, the more word of mouth, the better talent pool you will get, and the faster and easier hiring happens with a better experience.

Partnering with Hiring Managers

Lydia: You mentioned a very important one, which is the hiring manager experience. What exactly are the gaps that you are trying to address here?

Gautam: So, I think that is, like in many of my previous experiences, a partnership with the hiring manager and you do not work in silos. You work together primarily because you need to understand the business enough. Your hiring manager needs to understand what the talent demography looks like and then you go after the kind of talent you want to build in the organization. 

We have moved away from just skill-based talent hiring to fungible talent, like looking at the learnability of your candidates so that they can adjust to the changing business needs. I think that partnership is super important, and making sure that you collaborate with your hiring manager, giving them the right experience, showing them the right data, showing them what is available in the market, and showing them what other organizations are doing will set you apart.

Lydia: So, how do you adapt these strategies across different regions?

Gautam: I think my strategy is standardization globally, but there is also an element of localization, for understanding the demography of talent is super important. 

While the mix of talent on your teams could vary in countries, people are people anywhere you go. Their needs are going to be very similar. Their aspirations are going to be very similar. Their purposes are going to be very similar, but the kind of environment that you have built out in many of these organizations is very different. So, you need to cater to those nuances. And that is important when you create your talent strategy.

And I think your talent strategy needs to look at what kind of combination of people are going to be available in your workforce, and how you, maybe, in a country like the Philippines, would look at a Gen Z and a Gen X kind of talent to be in the workforce. So, what are you going to do to attract that kind of workforce? Are you going to index more upon your early career strategy? Are you going to advertise on a different social media platform to attract these kinds of people? So, I think your talent strategies in each of these places need to be different. But your processes can be more standard, and emphasis on giving the right experience to people is key anywhere you go.

Lydia: So, seeing as the strategies or the variables in different countries can be very different because of the dynamics there. How do you keep yourself updated to have that kind of market insight into the talent that is available in that region?

How do you keep yourself knowledgeable or just on top of it in these regions?

Gautam: I think it is just being there and understanding and talking to people in the market to build your network. It is super important in each of these areas to understand the legalities of some of these countries. So, I think, networking is key.

You also need to know what your competition is doing. You need to understand what other companies are doing to manage stuff around Emiratization, Saudization, early careers, all of that. You need to follow best practices, do a lot of meetups, collaborate, and network.

So that's key to managing some of these talent strategies in different countries.

Humanizing the Employer Brand

Lydia: So, moving on to employee branding, which is one of the areas that you are looking into as well. What is your approach to keeping a brand that is a well-known and well-established global employer brand? How do you keep that fresh while you still honor its heritage that comes with it?

Gautam: I think staying true to your core values and your employee value proposition is going to be the main thing. At Maersk, our values are almost one hundred years old, so we are building on those core values. 

I think humanizing your brand is going to be core for people to relate to you as a brand. In my experience at Maersk, in the past, when we were hiring, we would advertise our containers, our cranes, our terminals, and that kind of most visible, right? And the kind of talent we would get was mostly males because it felt like a very masculine brand. Then we said, “Hey, this job is not just for men, but also for women.” So, we brought in a lot more imagery of women and what women could do at work. 

A lot of employee advocacy was happening by some of our women team members and that helped us build a different brand image for Maersk. So, if you are looking at attracting a certain persona in the market, you need to change your entire outlook and branding strategy towards attracting those people. 

The biggest thing is humanizing the entire experience, making sure people relate to it, and making sure that the generations or the kind of personas you want to attract, you cater to them a little bit more.

Lydia: So in this sense, moving in that direction to humanize it and using a lot of employee advocacy to be the brand champion. In your experience, is there a channel or a way of branding that attracts more people? Is it the main global brand or the employer brand itself with the company, or is it through more organic posting by employees? Or do they have the same weight?

Gautam: I think, and this is what it is, right? Like, this is out of my experience. And I will tell you, if a recruiter writes to a candidate, the response from the candidate is almost 80 percent of the time less than when your business writes to them, right? 

If your business is pitching a proposal for a job to your candidate, then most of the time, 80 percent of the time, a candidate will respond to you. Similarly, with employee advocacy, if you have inspiring leaders, you would attract a lot more talent. I just feel that when people start relating to the authenticity of your content, if you are talking about a day in the life of an employee and if the employee is able to tell them exactly what the good things are and the bad things of working in a certain company, people relate to it. And I think that authenticity attracts a lot more people.

Humanly Technical Recruitment

Lydia: Now, in terms of technology, we are seeing so many changes, as you spoke about earlier, the different phases in recruitment and talent acquisition, where technology has had an impact, what technologies have you found to be effective when it comes to managing these talent acquisition functions across such a broad geographical scope?

Gautam: I would like to answer this a little differently. So, I think we are humanly technical as well as technically human. I feel we need to trend towards being humanly technical, and that is the role of the people function. 

I would base my answer on that lens. I just feel we use a lot of tools. We use applicant tracking systems, we use social media to brand. Of course, everybody is hopping on artificial intelligence to help us get better results. But I completely think that you use all of this because it can help administratively. But what is uniquely human, which is networking, courage, and empathy, all of that still needs to be a part of the journey. The human part, which you bring across when you talk to your candidates, needs to be the human part. It is super important, and that is what attracts candidates rather than the technology. Use technology for the more administrative things and I feel that is going to create a better impact. 

If there is something mundane that is repetitive, like scheduling and all of those things, use technology, make life easier. Like, you just want to send a bunch of advertising or marketing stuff, use technology. But when it comes to human touch, there is nothing that can replace human touch.

Stay Agile with Strategy

Lydia: For talent leaders looking into handling multiple regions or about to handle multiple regions like you do, what would be your top three pieces of advice?

Gautam: So I think understanding talent and the demography in the space that you're going to work is going to be super important. You need to network, collaborate, and find out what the market looks like. Understanding the legalities of the market is also super important. I think the most important part of this is constantly changing your talent strategy because as you understand, you have to make the strategy change, right? So be ready to keep changing in whichever market you go to. So I think that's going to be the core for anybody who is taking up a new region.

Lydia: And changing these strategies would mean you have to convince or manage the stakeholders inside your organization as well.

Gautam: Absolutely and that is not going to be easy when you move into a new country or region. Understanding the demography is easy, but putting it to work is extremely difficult. So, constantly partnering with your businesses is vital. That is why I kept saying that talent partnering is what we do today and not just recruitment or hiring, and that is when you will kind of take them together on the journey, and that is when they will also understand. 

So, it is important that you understand that you partner with your business and, together, change your talent strategy. I think every hiring manager or every business is okay if it is going to help them achieve what they want So, I think the partnering piece, while it sounds difficult, if you are able to convince them about the end goal, I think everybody will be convinced.

Lydia: Now, we have spoken about all the different shifts in talent acquisition. For someone who is just starting out in this space today, what words of advice would you give them?

Gautam: I think, talent acquisition is a core amalgamation of sales and services. For anybody joining the workforce, or even for my existing recruiters, I usually say my favorite quote. It says, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

So I think experiences are core. If you make your candidates feel great, if you make your hiring managers feel great, you are here to stay. That is the core for any talent acquisition person. They need to concentrate on how they make people feel.

Lydia: Gautam, it has been a pleasure to have you on the show, and thanks again for this valuable time and all the insights that you shared generously today. So for those who are listening in, usually this is the time where you drop your contact details, where can they find you?

Gautam: You can find me most active on LinkedIn. So, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I might be slightly delayed, but I will for sure respond to you.

Lydia: We have been in conversation with Gautam Shetty of Maersk. Thank you for joining us and stay tuned for more weekly episodes from All In Recruitment.