Transcription
This is a global skills podcast. Conversations that shape the future of work and learning. We're exploring how we close the skills gap and build a future where everyone has the chance to thrive. From education to business, connecting people, ideas, and opportunities [music] that drive change. It's about collaboration, curiosity, and creating real impact today. Because every skill learned brings us one step closer to a more inclusive world. The Global Skills Podcast, where learning [music] and opportunity come together.
Sonel, it is really good to have you on the Global Skills Podcast. You're very welcome.
>> Thank you, Anessa. Lovely to be here.
>> So, we are focused completely on skills and you specifically work in consulting, tech, banking, and finance. But before we get into the work that you do with Capgeemini, I would love to know a little bit about your story because you're in the UK right now, but you're not originally from the UK. Can you tell me about your journey?
>> Yeah, absolutely. Um, I'm from India. I've been born, brought up in India. I've worked there for a couple of years. Um I did my masters in HR which is MBA and then I joined an organization and then moved from there to Vipro which is also a fairly large IT consulting organization. I was there for 15 years and that's when I moved to the UK and I've always been in recruitment. I've done different areas within recruitment, leadership hiring, early careers both in India as well as in the UK. is I've been in the UK now for more than a decade and I moved to Capgeemini for 4 and a half years before u worked for the banking and financial services business of Cap Gemini still in recruitment I would say recruitment is really in my blood because it's been always uh being here but yes um I think having a flavor of uh two different parts of the globe and especially the tech and the IT which is something which which is huge in India and globally I think it's been sort quite insightful and interesting and at this point of time in my remate I hire for Capgeemini. I manage and lead their Cap Gemini financial services business with the UK. I think uh being really at the heart of all the action in financial services business where I think we see all the the economic downturn as well as recovery happen first. They always lead the you can say industry. I think it's it's so far been very interesting.
I I remember being in recruitment. I felt like the space that you're in, it was always the indicator of what's going to happen in talent acquisition.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can see clearly like when trends come up and what's going down, you will feel that first happening you know with us. It's a clear indicator of how you know the world is shaping, the economy is shaping. So yeah, I agree with you. I would love to know because a lot of the audience are from Europe and actually the the US and maybe we'll extend into India having an audience from India but from your perspective what are the differences between sort of talent acquisition the whole process in India versus Europe that you've experienced.
So I think India is one is India is scale. I think all companies would set up their or let's say not all but most of the companies and I can talk more about tech which has been my sort of pedigree so far have their offshore development centers back in India. So I think that's more for scale and the talent. Um so I would say volume volume defines India clearly defines India all all at all levels. So uh there's there's a huge hit and IT market there. people are skilled in latest technology. So which gives us a huge edge for the kind of skills that we hire for our customers. So I think the scale the volume very high tech and IT skills that really defines India. I think in some other areas it could be sometimes a bit chaotic as well with the dynamics that are there with the number of options that people have. So we do see things like you know people having too many offers dropping out. So some some of them are not so great aspects but I think they're part of the whole process. UK whereas I think especially from tech is a smaller market compared to India um which we see and I think some of the areas still see evolution of the skills which is not as huge scale. So there are definitely instances where we struggle to find people in the UK and I think people in India are quite open to be mobile versus UK where I think they would prefer something which is near where they stay or where they reside. I think there are more of preferences geographical preferences which are there. Overall UK is a great IT market as well. It's really really come up a long way from the days when we used to struggle. I remember 10 years back to hire some of the skills. Today we have so many students who have graduated from their STEM education and become those skills which we were looking at hiring at a point of time in the UK. So yeah, definitely two different flavors out there.
>> And do you think higher education in the UK are starting to do a better job in giving young people the skills that industry need or or there's still rooms for improvement? And if so, I know you currently don't work on on the early talent, but colleagues saying, "What else if we have any people from higher education listening in in Capgeemini is a phenomenal brand when it comes to an employer? What advice would you give to higher educators moving forward?"
>> Yeah, we definitely hire every year. We have a very well hiring program empower Accelerate, which is on our websites and you know, everyone can have a look at what is part of these programs. We have a very well incubate incubated program which stands for about 2 years when people join. So all that is our part of what we do. I think what we see in the intake and while I don't manage and oversee directly but work with those teams I think u the higher education what the kind of talent that we are seeing is absolutely amazing the kind of kind of in certain areas I mean the kind of confidence level the kind of communication that we see early adoption of lot of tools like their presentation skills even the way we do these programs for the GCSE students as well having their a couple of weeks with us and I see that even they are so good at you know making those decks presenting how they would work among themselves. So I think that's really a sea change from what we used to see years before. When it comes to specific skills, I think it would be great if now we can see that you know AI for example is has made way more faster than probably we would realize into all our lives whether it's our personal lives or our work lives. I think the by how it's going to navigate and how it's going to change the landscape that is a context which I think if it starts getting to the education levels that would really be great. The other thing is there is probably more more tech that is required. We struggle with students who are not into STEM right there that there is a smaller population that we see which is choosing STEM and more to choose non- STEM education, arts, humanities and everything else. I think given that we have such a large tech landscape and tech is going to drive every other sector right everything is driven by technology whether it is healthcare retail so I think it would be great if we could have something more lucrative for people to do STEM education that could really change the game.
I agree and even from a diversity and inclusion perspective. We we did an interesting project with the university on STEM and they rightly identified that more girls teenage girls were not seeing a STEM career >> as a as a good career route or they didn't fully understand all the transversal career paths they could go. So, as I mentioned, we we've been working on this global skills exchange. And from that, we were able to show them the skills that you're acquiring in school, the skills you could acquire if you do take STEM education, and here are all the career paths, and here's the earning potential. And it was like light bulbs going off for them and giving them the tool to play around themselves. And the outcome was a 25% increase in STEM applicants just by letting them know. Yeah. Do you think it could have a positive impact on diversity inclusion if if we could do more education on this?
>> Absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean all of us being recruiters, we do have other than obviously our KPIs and charter that we need to do a percentage of diversity. I think genuinely we do want more uh women more different ethnic diversities to be in STEM. You can say it's like the core of an economy right the stem you know the engineers the people who are going to define how the world is going to operate you know literally if I can say so it is so important that we have more and more women even back maybe in India things may have changed I'm a bit not 100% updated with what what are the trends right now but at a point of time we had the similar challenge back there that women would choose to study more of arts more of uh humanities and more men would choose more employees would opt for math, science, these kind of subject. I think it may have changed over a period of time, but definitely we have still a huge room to improve. Yeah.
>> And I guess it's understanding how much AI has aided the hard skills that you might need to do STEM because the more human skills we can articulate that we have and demonstrate that we have it just it makes it easier for the employer. But are you finding that with such change in skills like vibe coding, it didn't really exist in mainstream 18 months ago, 24 months ago. Are you finding that there's a little bit of a disconnect between hiring managers expectations, supply of talent, recruitment, what they're looking for in terms of is it seamless, is it as inclusive process as it can be based on all of these new skills that are flooding the market.
You know if I can be very honest with you I think nobody right now has really hang of what is actually happening. AI has suddenly made its presence everywhere. I think I was just thinking about it a couple of days before that you know years before decades before a technology would be available to certain individuals who would have an access to it. Today the technology is available to every human being every person right for example a each of us has got something from access to we can just go to tangy we can just do any hundreds of other softwares that are there what's happened is the adoption has become so quick that we do not know the difference between who is really just using it and who's actually an expert in it so that is the first problem the second is AI is while everybody's talking about it the adoption is still slow we still see that you know actually AI I how it is going to change the business process, how it is going to bring the efficiency, how it is going to transform an existing business process. That adoption is still slow but the aspiration is pretty high. All our customers want to be there. Now the articulation of the blueprint of it and the people who are equipped and skilled to really make that blueprint come to life are not 100% out there. So what's happening is that we we want to articulate we are articulating what we want to let's say hire but we actually are not really sometimes finding those people and on the supply side we see that you know everybody has started writing AI in their resume every second individual is writing AI right this is it's like you know the recruiters also are like okay this individual has AI let's push it to the hiring manager the hiring managers are not too sure either I think it is a subject which is slowly getting you know we're getting our arms around it we're not 100% there. Hence, there would be a lot of back and forth and I'm quite sure everybody who's listening to this would secretly in their heart agree to it that yes, no, we don't we haven't got there. So, there's a lot of back and forth uh when like when we get the job descriptions exactly what is what are those AI skills, right? Do you want people to have like large language models experience? Do you want people to have ML? Do you want them to? So, I think that articulation is still in process. So I would say we're still a bit thin. We need to still get more context and see what is happening. So yes, there's quite a bit back and forth about what we are looking for, the kind of people that we are getting. People on their resumes are also not 100% sure of what exact AI capability they are bringing to the table. It would take some time to get this. That's my personal view and probably the view from what we do on a daily basis. Yeah.
>> In terms of finding people with AI. It's a really good point and I think for educators listening in whether they're higher education or vocational educators, this is a huge opportunity to not just do microAI courses or even master AI but to be able to actually stand behind authenticating the skills. Okay, they did this qualification or just this micro credential course. here are the skills h capgeemini recruiter so that they know okay they did that course but these are the skills that they have and now that aligns with what the hiring manager needs that that's missing and it actually hasn't changed since I was in recruitment we're still kind of working off the keyword to job title match
>> some of the things could probably be a little trilling find prompt engineers right those who specialize in prompt but rest is that you know should have knowledge of AI even I have knowledge of AI can go to chat GP and type something but I'm sure for a different job you might need a different level of an understanding and that understanding could just be familiarity is it something that one needs to understand technically how to implement AI or an agentic AI into a business model those deep articulation will take I think some time it will evolve because we can clearly see that all our customers are I mean the conversations on AI are very very you can say they're leading conversations in AI very profound so 100% this is at least for I don't know how long. This will definitely be something that everyone will be talking about and wanting people who understand it enough.
>> So, I'd be very interested to know your opinion on this. Having been to recently the in-house recruiter live event where we we got chatting in in London. What was coming back again and again was that okay talent acquisition can't operate in silo anymore. It has to start working closer with talent management. We can't just bring the best people in, shake their hand on on boarding and then say good luck. There has to be more of a cohesive approach to well, how do we identify the skills of people coming in and how do we further invest in them so that they can be with us for years and and progress through the organization and maybe not everyone wants to go up, maybe they want to go sidewards and how facilitate that. So what what sort of processes have you put in place with with Capgeemini and what what do you see the future around this for your organization but even for others that you work with?
>> Yeah. So I think that's very interesting topic and I kind of resonate with you and trying to recall also yeah some of those talks that we heard in in the HR event. We are probably one is we are feeder and we are also getting the feed from the HR. So we feed them what is going on in the industry what we see we speak to candidates and I feel every conversation with the candidate is a huge information mind you understand so much about what they want what they are doing what their organizations probably are also investing in terms of their upskilling right so this becomes also one some feeder for the talent management team that this is what probably market is talking about so I think that gives them an input of how they would want to manage some of these topics with the workforce That's I think one other feeder that we get from them. Let's say for example attrition right where do we see who is leaving for example women attrition sometimes is is high right so it's like kind of an alarm okay we have a particular attrition that is I'm not talking specifically cap gemini but I'm just giving an example the other thing I think which personally I would also get from them is what do we see with respect to the movement of skills the people getting upskilled right I don't have an access immediate access to that data so I do get an insight into from our learning and development teams and the HR like What are we upskilling people on? How are the upskilled people rising? And I'll give you an example. There is a large percentage of people and this is purely in tech world who want to progress their career as architects, right? They could be solution architects. They could be an enterprise architect because it's like something that they would have to study hard. They have to do certifications and get there. That probably becomes a path for their career progress. And we also know from a recruitment side, it is very difficult to find architects in the market. Now is that a pivotal moment for someone who has taken that particular career path. So I think here the intersection of learning of and how we would really retain these architects because once you lose them it's like a talent drain from the company. These are possibly the examples which I'll give you very practical ones which we do to see that you know each of us how we are being a feeder for this valuable data insight and how we are using that insight to probably make a more robust within the organization.
It it does and I think that a example of the solution architect it does remind me of I used to work on roles where you know people would have to be very technical and have the Benelux languages so it just felt like mission impossible and it and it's the same with that but you are right and sometimes people don't even know that that's an option for them to transfer. Not every employer is that giving in terms of career pathways but I think an organization that really stands back and and thinks well we all go through different life cycles. how I was in my 20s versus when I became a mom I'm like night and day as to what you're prepared to do office hours and you know and um and I think it's a shame when organizations lose people because maybe they don't feel like they have the skills or the culture is not a match anymore um and what do you feel about the future of talent acquisition you know with more of it automating you know and I'll just bring up the point you mentioned about India because I thought it was really interesting you said about the candidates, you know, they kind of I guess in a way they're because they're applying for so many jobs, they're turning jobs down. It sounds like being a talent acquisition specialist in India is probably a very hard job. Do you see that kind of increasing in Europe and the UK because it's just so easy to click apply, generate a CV like are you seeing that shift and yeah, what is the future for talent acquisition?
I think um yeah it's something that you know keep pondering every now and then about like what's the future only AI will come back to you if you Google right now what's the future of health exist I'm sure you'll get an answer about AI doing something now I think from a recruiter point of view definitely AI is there to stay we can't escape from that in Cam Gemini like we are using AI on top of our ATS we have AI searches and I'm sure many other organizations are using some fabous ATS with so much of AI capability embedded. I think all that is is driving efficiency but it's important for I think recruiters to think how relevant they would be on task which more or less would be done very efficiently by AI and it's just a matter of time that we would end up having the whole narrative about that AI is not a job um AI might take the job which actually is very repetitive and in recruitment we do have some of jobs so whether it is maybe trying to just source and make pipelines or whether it's interviewing so I think if the recruiters would have to think through. There are many trends which I personally see and I think the previous question of yours the partnership with the business and how to be more business relevant. I think that is what the business would look at from talent acquisition. So it can't just be like just give me the requisitions just give me the roles I find new people and you know feed it to you. I don't think that's going to be really there. I think it would be a 360° approach that we would have to take. The other thing I think is that recruiters who are going to actually master AI and make AI work for them are going to be more efficient, are going to be much smarter versus the ones who would probably run away and say, "No, you know what? I'm still relevant, but AI can't do what not. I I don't think the narrative would or they would really have the chance for that narrative." So, I think I see my team as well, some of the recruiters are very smartly adopted AI, right? And you can see the turnaround time time of finding applications, not having too much debate on job description, pick the core skills, build everything else on your own, uh flush out those emails to the candidates who are interested. And the ones who have actually got the AI working for them are I think the smarter people. So I think the future of talent also would be how to be friends with AI and not you know be like AI is taking my job. how to kind of get out of that narrative that I'm gonna take my job is gonna help me do my job better. So I think that would be a big shift. Not sure how it's going to evolve because I think it is every day evolving. So that's what I see some of the main things about DA. The last one I think the the market is going to evolve as well and which is evolving to which obviously we don't exist as a recruiter separately we exist with the market and its dynamics given that the market is going to undergo based on how e economics go right and it's very unpredictable these days with all the things that are happening across the world I think the recruiter will also have to paint and see that you know how we are navigating those changes whether it is AI making like we are all AI candidates people don't have AI or they have lot of AI on their resume versus as you said too many options right now I think the market is is okay it is not it's not the co times like after co has some kind of a bubble burst I think we're not in that situation so there would be situations where I think there will be too many candidates to less jobs or vice versa and I think recruiters will then have to accordingly pivot so I would summarize in saying one thing which I use very often in all my other conversations is contextual thinking and I find that a huge skill personally in not the recruiters spotted every other candidate in that is something which AI can't do for you right understand the context like I work for the FS business I know how bank buying pattern is and I do know what my business does and what exactly the kind of now that contextual thinking is something which AI might not really help you think a recruiter will have to bring marrying the market the trends as well as what your business needs
>> yeah I think you've hit the nail on the head and what I'm hearing is overall like just being a transactional recruiter are filling positions not going to cut it anymore. You have to bring more business value. And it's actually up to you to identify, well, what skills gap do you have? What extra business value can you bring? And look, I've always championed talent acquisition specialists, even when you're at the dinner party and they say, what do you do? And recruitment, you know, it's it's I I think they play a very important role. And okay, there are some great recruiters and there's not so great recruiters, but really, you're bringing in the future asset into companies. And if you nail it and you work with talent management, these people can add serious value. So the role is a very important one, but it's I think using AI to step up and out and say, look, let me the future. Uh, you know, let me tell you what you're going to need. I know I I've got my finger on the pulse. Um, I've got one final question that I ask all the guests. Well, it's actually two questions and you just pick one that you want to answer. Okay. Question one is, what skill do you have and did you have when you were younger that you just are not using anymore that you'd love to start using again? Or if you were to give advice to someone who's young or maybe they're mid-career and they're worried about their job and they're thinking I need a skill and it doesn't have to be a hard skill, it's a soft skill. You choose what skill is most important do you feel in this current climate to sort of future proof your career?
Okay, I think I'll pick question number two. I would say that people any and again I won't sp while my mind is oriented towards tech but I would generally say that you know the ability to analyze data is very very important and I see that lacking in people like me think right we will go and learn AI but if I'm going to give you a data to analyze and say how do you make some sense of it and it is something which is for every every individual if you can please anyone who's looking at pivoting their career or even progressing in their career look at how you can become better in analyzing data, understanding data set, interpreting data set, something which you've done maybe back in our school but like expanded 10x a bit more, take up a course. I think that is such a huge asset because the moment you're going to take up your job and just just look at recruiters, right? I think my life I breathe spreadsheets every day like eat, drink, look at spreadsheets like what are my metric, what's my input data, right? How much percentages? People love this basic skill. So I would say if you are in your career where you are probably trying to launch or pivot. I think if you have this in your resume other things are something which organizations might just teach you but um it's it's going to be a huge tool. It's going to be a huge ammunition in your armory if you can really understand uh data insights.
I think that's really good advice and nothing stopping someone just starting a course and even adding it to their profile to say look I'm do doing the course it's it's in flight and then it could optimize and give them the edge over someone else. So son, thank you so so much for coming on. You gave really good insight and for me understanding more the journey for someone from India to the UK and then beyond that banking and finance and cap Jenna it's an amazing employer brand given that but you're in a unique place because you're looking internally and that of your customers. So I just thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you so much and I thought it was lovely meeting you here sharing my insights and I'm really happy if anyone wants to have any more conversations or pick up something from your audience. I think you're doing a great job by getting these questions to larger audience right because some of them we just read articles but it's different when we start extending notes and feeling that some of us are or other most of us are probably in the same boat uh sharing the same thing. So, thank you so much for getting me here and really really enjoy that chat.
>> I'll make sure to include the details just below. Thanks again, Zel. Bye.
>> Thank you. [music]
>> Whether you're leading a business, shaping education, planning your next career move, or just starting out, you're part of a global conversation about how we learn, work, and grow. If you've enjoyed this episode, remember to subscribe [music] so you never miss what's next. And for early access to new episodes, first invites to events, and a chance to connect with others driving [music] real change, join the community at globalskillspodcast.com. Because the future of skills belongs [music] to all of us.