The digital platform is causing a lot of disruption in the world of hiring—not unlike in many other realms. While the thick appointment supplements of newspapers now belong to a bygone era, the upstart job sites which ate their lunch themselves are facing tough competition from the hungry buzz on social media. Anshul Punhani, Head of Marketing for India, Middle East, South East Asia and Hong Kong at online jobs behemoth Monster.com, however, seems ready to meet the challenges. He believes that technology has made the function of HR “seemingly easy but functionally tougher.” And that the digital age helps capture logical data about the complete lifecycle of an employee and there are several things Monster does “better.”

A marketing pro with around 16 years of experience in consumer and technology marketing, Punhani has previously worked with Videocon, Microsoft, Samsung and JWT, among others. An MBA from Apeejay School of Management, he holds a Six Sigma Green Belt and was the recipient of the Gold Star Award of the Chairman and CEO of Microsoft for 2007, among other accolades. Here are some edited excerpts from an exclusive email interview to Sanjay Gupta for India Digital Review:

Q. How do you think is the digital marketing space in India evolving? What are the things you believe are lacking or could be done better?
India will evolve just like other international markets but at a faster pace. As more committed investments flow into digital marketing, the pressure to deliver better results will lead to more accountability, maybe better creative and engaging work as well. Brands will need to have a unified strategy that will include digital as a core medium for customer conversations and not just a good-to-have. To deliver better results or to maximise every rupee spent, digital marketing service providers will look at using more sophisticated technologies to improve outcomes. Demand for digital marketing will continue to grow in the months and years to come. Content is playing a very critical role and is now the key driver to decide what media vehicles you want to choose. This has given an added advantage to the digital medium.
 
Q. What role does digital play in your marketing efforts in India?
The volume of demand for digital marketing services as a whole has gone up exponentially. Virtually, every brand needs to have an online presence today. For some, it could just be a website and a Facebook page; for others, it’s a complete digital ecosystem. For us at Monster, we being a digital company, it’s the entire ecosystem. A large portion of our marketing effort goes towards digital media.
 
Q. Monster is a company that leveraged online recruitments early on. However, with social competitors such as LinkedIn taking hiring to another level, what has been the strategy of Monster to counter or embrace that?
Monster is the worldwide leader in successfully connecting people to job opportunities. Our promise is to ‘Find Better by Better Access, Better Connections and hence Better Jobs or Better Candidates’. From Web to mobile, we help companies find people with customised solutions, and we use the world’s most advanced technology to match the right people to the right job. Look out for this space for more.
 
Q. With most content consumption and a large chunk of population, especially professionals and knowledge workers, going digital, how is it affecting the way companies approach and get the right talent?
Technology has made the function of HR seemingly easy and at the same time functionally tougher. Varied forms and easy access to information on digital platforms has acted like a double-edged sword. At one end of the spectrum it has broadened the horizon of talent acquisition and employee management and taken its scale of operations to a global level. The digital age helps capture logical data about the complete lifecycle of an employee, making the talent management process transparent and quick. At the other end of the spectrum, search for information and the credibility of information source have become a big task. Another emerging trend is that firms are now required to mandatorily manage a lot of assets and not just the talent process - employer branding and online reputation. These two spokes of the hiring process have taken a big leap and gathered momentum at almost all big hiring firms.
 
The employer brand is that emotional connect with job seekers and employees that plays a big role in redefining the organisation’s proposition as an “Employer of Choice’. In building a great employer brand, the HR function has the biggest role as the custodian of the employee brand and the employee value proposition. It is worthwhile to note that HR drives employer branding in most organisations, and very few involve their marketing departments in the budgeting stages. According to the Employer Branding survey 2014 by Monster.com & People Matters, 78 per cent of companies involve the HR department in employer branding.

Talent strategy is another hot topic for all CEOs. Engagement and retention of key talent in the organisation has to be the personal agenda of every CEO. According to the same survey, 45 per cent of CEOs actively participate in deciding how to spend the employer branding budget. It further revealed that 91 per cent of CEOs believe that their direct participation in talent endeavours acts as a critical factor for meeting growth objectives of the organization.

India’s rapid economic growth trajectory has caused the demand for talent to surpass the supply. The digital platform has opened an array of avenues for the employment sector; it has been a propeller that has evolved the hiring process for senior professionals, flexible jobs for women, specially-abled, retired and soon-to-retire servicemen, to name a few. There is a gap in the ecosystem to provide equal job opportunities. Analysing the situation, Monster India has taken innovative steps towards providing equal opportunities. For instance, Monster.com along with CII launched ciispecialabilityjobs.in – a platform for the specially-abled people to find relevant jobs. Similarly, we have collaborated with the Indian Air Force Placement Cell (IAFPC) to assist Air Warriors—Commissioned officers and warranted officer/ Senior Non-Commissioned officers seek suitable opportunities in the corporate world, post retirement. Organisational diversity will be a key area of focus for Indian organisations in the coming months.

Q. Please share in brief a couple of digital marketing campaigns Monster has done recently or plans to do next and what makes them different or noteworthy?
Over the years we have launched campaigns that provide better job opportunities to both employers and seekers. For instance, the ‘Wake Up’ campaign urged jobseekers to revisit their original professional goals set up when they began work and it then helped them to match up to their goals, pushed them to embark on a journey for a new job through Monster.com. The company’s positioning was to initiate a  move to the next level as ‘luck’ would favour those who look for ‘Better’ and to ‘Find Better’, one needs to ‘Wake Up’ to the new opportunities. The serious message of ‘wake up to the new opportunity’ was communicated in a unique and creative fashion with the use of animation that e-recruitment category in India has never seen. An interesting way to leverage the digital medium was that on Twitter, the brand popularised the hashtag #WakeUp and invited entries from people on how to rouse their campaign's somnolent protagonist who desperately needs to change jobs. It got 370 entries in 12 hours when Monster.com hadn't even started using the brand name in the hashtag.

Another differentiated offering is Monster’s Virtual Career Fair (VCF) which has been received exceptionally well. It has been instrumental in setting a trend in job and candidate search. VCF is a unique, convenient and cost-effective alternative to actual career fairs in a media-rich interactive environment.

Monster TV is yet another initiative that provides an opportunity to create your very own career channel. Here you can find better ways to pursue your passion, live your dreams and get luck on your side with Monster.com.

Q. As a CMO, what are the main challenges you face, especially in being able to optimally tap into the digital medium?
Marketing for any brand, product or service should have a balanced integration with the overall business goal. The face of marketing has tremendously evolved with the digital medium. Impact of digital and social medium in marketing is at two levels.
 
First, it is an enabler in ‘story-telling.’ The media mix decision has become such that it is now based on the type of content you have created or earned, so it can be video, audio and text. However, managing content and controlling messaging across the digital space poses to be more of a challenge than the task of getting the message across to the audience.
 
Second, the adoption of marketing technologies drives efficiencies and effectiveness in the marketing function. Living in the era of the digital space today, organisations across the globe are connected and active on the Internet—and thus, constantly building a larger user network on a daily basis. With the technologies comes data and data in big forms. Managing big data is a constant endeavour and a constant focus area at our end.
 
Q. While the digital medium has made significant inroads into the entry and mid-level employee recruitments, most senior level hirings still happen either through specialist offline exec search firms or referrals. Any comments on how this is likely to change or not change?
There are only two types of jobseekers—those actively looking for a job and those who are passive or not looking for a job—irrespective of the level or experience of the job seeker.

An active senior-level seeker can only be headhunted if they have their profile updated on a jobs board, as that is the only avenue which leads to larger reach and access across the mix, including head hunters. Even a head hunter would typically do searches on a jobs board to know about a potential candidate before pursuing [the opportunity].

Amongst the passive seekers, there are only three segments –
1.    A passive seeker is passive because he is content with his job, in which case we would still advise them to simply keep their profile updated because we at Monster believe there is always a better opportunity out there and you should keep finding better.
2.    A passive seeker is passive because he feels he is on the right career path and does not need to look out, in which case again we would advise them to update their profile because there is a good possibility of missing something you always desired while you were busy with your life.
3.    The seeker is passive because of sheer complacency, in which case they need a wake-up call.
Moreover, mPower Search for recruiters and mPower Jobsearch for job seekers can help make targeted searches based on parameters for fitting jobs and candidates.

Q. Monster now operates in an increasingly competitive market. How has the marketing function or the CMO role been changing in your industry?
 A host of factors, largely digital medium-influenced, are making the life of the CMO increasingly complex. With the increasing ability to mine and analyse data to drive customer preference, product benefits and business revenue management, the marketing function now has a much stronger impact on business performance. The growing personalisation of marketing activity and the shift to online and increasingly customised seeker/employee benefits defines the future of the industry.

It’s no secret that over the past few years, handheld devices have become the main point of entry to the Internet. We’re coping with two worlds right now, and we really need to understand the differences in what interests them and in how they learn about and utilise the services effectively. We have to do old-world marketing and new-world marketing all at the same time, and ensure that our message and methods are consistent across multiple channels and all aligned towards supporting the brand.

Q. Any words of advice you would like to share with other CMOs and the digital marketing community at large?
In the age of digital consumerism, the CMO role tomorrow will need to converge marketing with technology and content. Marketers will need to become more technology savvy—this is not an option but a necessity to be successful in the world of consumer-driven marketing.

Address the importance of understanding the customer’s world: Digital transformation should be appraised by acknowledging the primacy of being of service to the customer. To be able to build a strategy, and then evaluate business processes and marketing technologies to address that strategy, you need to be able to specifically track the various journeys of customers as they encounter your business and in the broader markets that you serve. At each key point along the way, you must identify the dynamics that customers are experiencing in the physical and digital worlds; what they would like to have [or] happen, and how you can optimise that engagement.

Explore the importance of picking and supporting a great team: the CMO needs to be a great orchestrator to set the right organisational structure for digital success (often collaborating with the CEO), as well as pick and nurture the right people.

Sanjay Gupta is an editorial consultant and freelance writer based in Delhi. He can be reached at thinksanjay@gmail.com