Recruitments at Sun Group

Since there are multiple business units within Sun Group, each of these units has its own
recruitment methodologies and processes since their requirements are different. Hence, for
now, we will focus our review on the recruitment strategy of Sun TV Network in detail.

At Sun TV Network, the television media wing of Sun Group, the recruitment process
followed is different for the various hierarchical levels mentioned in the organization
structure. The path followed for recruiting Junior and Middle level employees is different
from that for Senior level and Executive level employees. Let us look at each of these in
detail.

Junior & Middle level

For recruitment of Junior and Middle level employees, Sun TV Network focuses on public
channels and job portals. The public channels include services offered by online recruitment
platforms like Naukari, LinkedIn etc. The organization also has a dedicated Job portal
through which candidates are notified about the job openings. This would facilitate direct
application process of the interested individuals. The applicants may also choose to simply
fill in and upload their CVs on the job portal, in case they did not find suitable openings from
among those listed in the job portal. A special team from the HR department will then
scrutinize the applications before preparing the final shortlists.

Senior Management level

For filling senior management roles and vacancies, the organization has alliance with two
independent agencies specialized in the recruitment services. This strategy is mainly adopted
to take care of two important aspects as mentioned below:

1. Maintaining confidentiality: Since media is highly competitive in terms of labour

availability and retention, Sun TV Network does not use public channels to notify and
invite applications for its senior management level positions. By including an
independent agency, Sun TV Network will be able to maintain anonymity which in a
way helps in hiding key information regarding the skills and competencies required
for the role. This information may be leveraged by its competitors for refining their
own recruitment processes.
2. Hire the best in the industry: Being an independent agency that is specialized in
recruitment, they would be having access to individuals and candidates with
 differentiated skillsets which Sun TV Network might not be able to access on their
own. Hence, the organization could gain access to a wide variety of potential
applicants who would be matching very closely with the job specifications. This
ensures that they have access to the best talents in the industry for all major roles and
thereby gain an upper hand in the highly competitive labour market that the firm is
operating in.

Once the CVs are received from the external agency, the internal HR team at Sun TV
Network carefully evaluate them one by one to find the right fitting individuals for the role.
These handpicked candidates are then invited for the final selection process at Sun TV
Network.

Once the initial resume screening is over, there would be a brief telephonic interview with the
candidate so as to get more information that might not have been readily deductible from the
resume that the candidate had posted. This is also done in order to narrow down the pool of
candidates to be shortlisted for the final round of interviews.

In the personality testing round, the candidates would assess on some very important qualities
that any member of a creative organization should possess – spot thinking, situation-based
questions, inventiveness, eye contact etc. These is a key stage in the selection process where
considerable elimination occurs.

According to Mr. Kannan, most of the job roles that the organization offers can be broadly
categorized as either creativity-oriented or support roles. This is usually the case with almost
all media houses. The creativity-oriented roles focus on developing and publishing content
that would be attention grabbing in order to entice the end users or viewers. It is important
that the organization has a clear upper hand in the industry when it comes to identifying and
employing people to this role. This is especially true for certain niche and specialized roles
which are usually hard to come by. To capture these talents, the organization maintains close
ties with some trusted consultants who have access to such talents. The company would also
enter into negotiations with such talents in order to ensure that they join the team at Sun TV
Network. The organization usually has a well-defined bandwidth structure when it comes to
compensation. However, in cases like these wherein the organization is looking towards
hiring special talents, they would consider offering compensation outside this bandwidth.
One other important point that the Senior Vice President (HR) highlighted on was that most
of the junior level roles at Sun TV Network were reserved for freshers. This is because the
organization strongly believes that it can adequately train and develop these budding minds
from the ground up, so as to bring out the best in them.

While speaking to Mr. Kannan, he also touched upon some aspects of recruitment followed at
one of his former employers, Eicher Motors. At Eicher, the HR team made sure that a certain
percentage of intakes in a year were from premier institutes in the country like XLRI, IIMs,
IITs etc. Eicher also maintains well researched documentation regarding the career path for
these new recruits and also predictions regarding attrition amongst the new recruits in the
coming year. These studies in turn helps the organization plan its recruitment strategy for the
upcoming year.

Now, there was a question posed to us during our presentation – What was the recruitment
strategy that the organization followed?

In order to win over the competitive Television media market, it was necessary for Sun
Network Group to hire the best in the industry for captivating viewers and developing out of
the box content for them. Hence, TV medias like Sun TV was heavily investing on its Human
Resources. It kept most of its recruitments confidential even from its own employees. To get
access to the best talent pool, they approached experienced consultants for recommendations.
Sun TV also had a positive brand equity that was created and cultivated through years of
services and therefore was a dream employer for many job seekers out there. To add to all
these efforts by the organization to attract talent, they were open minded to negotiations to
the extent that they were willing to compromise on the pre-defined pay bands for certain
critical roles. These are some strategies that Sun TV uses in its recruitment process.

Our Recommendations

 According to our understanding through the interaction with Mr. Kannan, the
organization offered very less flexibility in terms of work conditions, holidays etc.
This approach needs to be changed especially at current times were flexibility and
adaptability is key to winning hearts of employees.
 Instead of just focusing on the typical interview process wherein you invite resumes
and shortlist for interviews, Sun TV should introduce and organize a flagship
competition on an annual basis, wherein eligible participants can compete in a real
world setting to showcase their skills and talents. The competition should also have an
 attractive prize component. This coupled with the positive brand equity that the
company holds, it definitely can gain access to a wider job seeking audience.
 It has also been noted from our interaction with Mr. Kannan that there wasn’t any
post-recruitment or post-selection feedback gathered from the candidates who had
applied for the selection process. This is essential for the organization in order to
optimize its recruitment strategy. There should also be a two-way feedback system
whereby the candidates also get to know about their performance in the process and
also improve on their weak areas.

Training & Development

Since Sun TV Network operates in a very creative industry, it usually hires talents from
Visual Communication and Mass Communications background. The newly hired candidates
then undergo a training and development programme for a one-year period. This will be
conducted by current employees who have been working in similar roles within the
organization. In addition to classroom-based training, the new intakes will also be given some
portion of the ongoing live projects so that they develop hands on practical experience on the
subject.

For the support level and management level employees, the evaluation would be done by the
end of the year after careful assessment throughout the year. But in the case of creativity-
oriented roles, even though the training and development phase extends to about one year,
their performance will be evaluated or reviewed every quarter. Throughout the training
period, each of the fresh intakes will be assigned a mentor whom they can approach for any
query or concern related to the job role or the organization in general. This mentor would
mostly be someone who have just passed the training phase sometime back. Hence, they
would be able to best understand the views and concerns of the new intakes from their
standpoint and relate it with their own past.

The evaluation is carried out by the immediate reporting manager in the organization who
would regularly monitor the performance over the one-year period. To ensure that the
candidate is clear with the expectations of the organization, the new joinees are briefed about
the company’s goals and objectives set for the year (which would be revised on a yearly
basis). It is on the basis of these objectives that the new hires are assigned tasks for
completion, and which the reporting managers would be using to evaluate the performance of
the employee. This procedure would make sure that the personal biases and recency effects
are minimized to a great extent.

The evaluators would conduct reviews at the end of every quarter wherein they would share
their feedbacks with the candidates and also check with him or her regarding any issues or
concerns that they have regarding the work at the organization. The new recruits are then
expected to take up the key points in the feedback and work towards correcting or improving
them in the next review cycle. This is the evaluation process followed round the year.

In the final round of evaluation that happens at the end of the year, the performance is
compared with key tasks and expectations that were set at the start of year as mentioned
previously, which was based on the company objectives. The main intention of such a task
setting criteria was to align the individual goals of employees with the vision and goal of the
company that was set by the leadership. The evaluation process also requires the evaluators,
i.e., managers to elaborate on the key strengths and skills that were displayed by the
candidate during the training period. This is very important from the organization point of
view because the final and revised role assignment for the candidate would be done on the
basis of this evaluation. Hence, in this way, the recruits who have successfully completed
training would be assigned roles that would best fit or match the strengths and skills that they
possess. The compensation package would also be arrived at based on this role assignment.
This helps the organization in such a way that it paves way for the best contributions to come
in from each of its employees. In this way, the recruits transition to becoming a permanent
employee in the organization. In the later stages they will be evaluated specifically for
performance appraisal in the organization based on preset KRAs (Key Responsibility Areas).

Our Recommendations

 As already mentioned in the recruitment section, the company displays less flexibility
in work conditions of its employees. This is going to adversely impact the employee
morale in the organization. Training and development initiatives needs to be more
flexible and accessible for all in the organization.
 Leverage technology to the greatest extent possible. This will also help to resolve the
issue of inflexibility to a great extent. Simulations and VR environments can be made
use to provide a glimpse of the real world practical situations and the evaluators can
easily track and monitor the reaction of employees in these situations.
 Another recommendation to the management will be to gather the preferences and
options of the new recruits right before they join the organization, instead of gauging
their strengths at the end of the training period. This is suggested because then the
organization can redesign and align the training and development modules in such a
way that it will be attractive to most of the intakes.
 The one other downfall of the current training and evaluation is the lack of importance
provided to collaboration. From what we understood from the review process, the
candidates are simply evaluated on their personal/individual contributions and
skillsets. Collaborative efforts and team spirit also need to be given due importance
taking into account the highly creative industry that the organization is operating in.
 The other noticeable flaw in the current training and development system is its
emphasis on one-way feedback. Focusing just on evaluating the candidates and
providing them review feedback is not going to bring a fruitful outcome. The
organization also needs to invite feedback from employees regarding whether certain
tasks were challenging, whether there were any inter personal conflicts etc. This will
provide the organization with a chance to review their training strategies and make
any improvements or changes to the same.
 Look into the outside world while allocating tasks for the training and development
period. Television and media is a highly competitive industry and so it is important to
understand what is happening in the market so that they can easily recognize the
changes in trend. Hence based on our findings, we can allocate tasks based on the
skills and developments that we feel would be important in the future and so be
prepared.
 Sun TV Network should also invest in developing a centralized database for keeping
track of skills, trainings and competencies possessed by its employees. This would
help the organization in two ways:
o Help identify employees who require training and assistance in certain key
areas which may be important for the organization in order to stay
competitive.
o Help easily identify the employees who possess certain key skills for assisting
in a particular project or task of a different team.