Monika Saxena, Chief Strategy Officer, Revfin says in oder to tackle the lack of appropriate knowledge and training amongst freshers, the company is hiring interns in their final year and mentoring them in-house for independent roles they can take after graduation.
What are the key general skills that you look to hire freshers?
While hiring freshers, we are always looking for candidates with the ability and willingness to learn quickly and incorporate new learnings in their daily and first-time tasks. They should also be open to adapting to our organisation’s changing environments and work processes. We also test the candidates’ ability to process information, understand its essence and draw logical conclusions. They should be in tune with what they aspire to, where they see themselves a few years later. We also expect them to be honest and transparent with us.
What skills and qualities do you look for in employees on the shop floor?
We look for specialised skills while hiring in the operations and technology department, which primarily includes software development, underwriting, collection, etc.
When hiring new talent, which are the various streams of education/qualification that can apply to your company?
We are a fintech company, which means a candidate willing to join us should know about the domains of Finance, Operations & Technology. However, RevFin, as an organisation has adopted a hiring philosophy where we are giving out a clear statement that qualification is no bar. For us, skill and experience hold major significance along with values and attitude that the person will bring into the organisation.
What are the challenges you face when hiring new talent?
There is nothing specific, but like most organisations we have identified the problem of lack of knowledge and skills among the fresh graduates. This can be attributed to disrupted education during the pandemic. Finding the talent can be further challenging in the technology domain and to address this concern, we are hiring interns in their final year of engineering courses and training/mentoring them in-house for independent roles they can take after graduation.
Do you think there is a gap between academia and industry?
Yes, a gap does exist between academia and industry. But, it can be bridged at the academic level by reviewing the curriculum, faculty profile and style of teaching and learning. Meanwhile, industry players can do their bit by offering internships, conducting talks/ lectures by experts, giving opportunities for live projects, contests etc.
What are you doing to attract, train and retain young professionals?
We are focusing more on on-campus hiring to infuse a young and fresh perspective into our organisation. Meanwhile, we are also relying on hiring through social media and references. For training, we have opened up internship opportunities at RevFin to give the freshers first-hand experience of a booming
What is your hiring target for FY2023?
We are targeting to hire 150 more employees by the end of FY2023
Are there any additional training programs or courses that you have incorporated to upskill your existing workforce?
Yes, we do plan several training programs however, we believe in the philosophy of self-learning. For instance, in our technical training, we allow the newly recruited individuals to take enough time to self-learn as it is more exploratory and in-depth.
How do you plan to retain your hardworking employees? Is fiscal incentives the only way to motivate employees?
Well, we offer fiscal incentives at RevFin, but more than motivating them, we offer them to recognise their efforts at the workplace. Our approach to retaining our hardworking employees is a bit different. Our employees feel motivated when they can easily reach out to our company’s founder and get an opportunity to work with him and learn from him. We also draw out a very clear and robust growth plan for our top and hardworking professionals and even give them the responsibility of mentoring new talent. We follow an exciting Reward & Recognition policy where employees are recognised in monthly town halls and other events. We even nominate them for their participation in different networking events and have an internal job posting process in place that allows them to apply for other relevant job profiles within our organisation.
What are the policies laid down to ensure work-life balance for your employees?
We as an organisation vigorously promote work-life integration, allowing our employees to enjoy the balance they need. Some of our most-favoured work policies and HR practices include
flexible working options (WFH & WFO), refraining from tracking working hours through log-in or biometrics as we operate with the values ownership and honesty; ample engagement activities like Fridays dedicated to ‘Dil Se fun’ activities day and no restriction on leave limits for senior leadership.
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