Career Club Live with Bob Goodwin
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Career Club Live with Bob Goodwin
CHRO of Genpact - Piyush Mehta - Career Club Live
Unlock the secrets behind Genpact’s remarkable transformation with host, Bob Goodwin, and guest, Piyush Mehta, the CHRO of Genpact, as he recounts the company's journey from General Electric’s back-office entity to a global leader in business process management. This episode sheds light on Genpact’s strategic evolution, focusing on their shift from process expertise to delivering comprehensive outcomes and services for Fortune 500 clients. Piyush reveals innovative approaches in talent acquisition and retention, especially in developing markets, and discusses the core drivers of employee motivation, scalable talent strategies, and the cutting-edge tools like Amber and Genome enhancing engagement and learning.
I know you're gonna find it. You gotta keep on at it. Hello everybody, this is Bob Goodwin, president of Career Club, and welcome to another episode of Career Club Live. Before we get started, I would like to encourage any of our HR professional or talent acquisition professionals who happen to be watching or listening to please check out our newest initiative that we call Journey Forward a way of building the candidate experience and enhancing the employer brand by providing differentiated resources to candidates who may not be moving forward in the talent process for a particular role, but one that you would like to continue to build a relationship with. Again. You can learn more about that at careerclub journey forward.
Bob Goodwin:So I am really, really pleased speaking of HR professionals for today's guest. I'm going to read this because this background is pretty cool. We've got the privilege of hosting Piyush Mehta, the CHRO of Genpact, a global leader in digitally powered business process management and services. Piyush, with his extensive experience in driving human capital strategies across global organizations, has really been at the forefront of transforming workplace cultures to thrive in the digital era. Today, he's going to be sharing his invaluable insights on the evolution of HR, the role of technology in enhancing employee experience and the strategies GenPact employs to nurture talent and leadership in an ever-changing business landscape. So with that I'm looking forward to delving into the mind of one of the industry's most forward-thinking leaders, piyush Mehta. And with that, piyush welcome, mehta Welcome.
Piyush Mehta:Thank you, Bob. Real pleasure to be on this podcast with you and thank you for the good words that you said in my introduction. It's a pleasure to share what we are learning and what we continue to learn as we go along.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, no, absolutely and. I benefited so much from our initial conversation and look forward to building on that. And, like I said, I know that listeners are just going to really appreciate what you guys have built. The learning that you've gotten through, the exercises that you've gone through and just your business acumen is really, really great. So with that we've got more content probably than time. So if we can jump into it, that would be great sure thing Bob fire away cool.
Bob Goodwin:So for those who are not as familiar with Genpact, do you mind just kind of explain a little bit about the the history of Genpact? You know kind of how your business model has transformed, how you guys have grown through the years sure, bob?
Piyush Mehta:so look, genpact is a global professional services and solutions firm. We focus on delivering outcomes to our Fortune 500 clients. We are, at this point of time, 125,000 plus employees across 30 countries, and we are defined by our purpose, which is the relentless pursuit of a world that works better for people. So that's about where we are today. Now, we started actually as a company which was about process, expertise and domain uh, and as a back office for the general electric company uh, at General Electric Company at the turn of the century so, you know, 25 years old In 2005, we spun off into an independent company and subsequently we became, we went public and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. So, you know, many things, as you would imagine, remain constant from our early days, which is our focus on clients, our deep domain expertise. But over a period of time, we've also evolved from a business process company predominantly to focusing on outcomes, solutions and professional services for our clients.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, so I mean 125,000, global, 30 countries. Trick question where is the home office?
Piyush Mehta:So, interestingly, bob, we don't have a home office. We have, you know, and I want to say this we've been a virtual headquartered company for pretty much the last 12 years, so even before it was not fashionable to not have headquarters. So we have our leaders distributed across the world to where our clients are, uh, or where the relevant stakeholders are. So, for example, we have our largest employee base in india, so I'm based in india, but, uh, our ceo and most of our client facing leaders and our commercial leaders are based in the developed markets, uh, largely in the US and the UK, where our clients are.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, and so when you guys spun off from GE, what was the approximate employee headcount?
Piyush Mehta:I want to say it was approximately, probably 10,000 ish when we separated from GE.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, and so one of the things that I thought was fascinating that, as you guys grew and the needs of your clients expanded and you guys kept getting bigger and bigger, what was the talent acquisition strategy? And you guys continue to be in a high growth mode, how have you kind of been able to keep the talent? Because you're in a people intensive business, how do you, how do you recruit and keep the talent.
Piyush Mehta:So that's probably one of the most important questions, which is related to our growth and getting to where we are as an organization and our future as well. Bob, think about the talent question as to how do we fuel our growth as being fundamental to our existence. Now, the way we've thought about it always is that it is always going to be more about build as opposed to buy. Now let's. A part of this is you starts off with our DNA. When we started, like I told you in the you know 2000 timeframe, this industry didn't exist and we were growing like gangbusters. So the only opportunity we, the only constraint we had to growth was, you know, great quality talent. And while high potential talent for sure existed in very large numbers in the developing markets, which is where we grew out of think about India, think about China, think about Eastern Europe you know there was massive supply of high potential talent, but to be able to train them and equip them to from being high potential to high performance was a massive challenge that we had and it was probably the biggest constraint we had to growth. We built a training and an upskilling uh engine that uh I think uh in many ways led to our being able to scale and be successful as an organization. So the idea was ready talent is not available in the market. Create an engine in the organization which is able to transform as we hire talent at the entry level and build them into high performance talent. So training and the re-skilling engine became fundamental to our success and our growth and that's been our belief all along.
Piyush Mehta:So do we hire people from outside at lateral levels? The answer is yes. Okay, is that important for us? The answer is absolutely yes. As we think about new technologies, you know seeding talent in the organization and so on and so forth. But the bulk of our talent needs are fulfilled by building talent, growing talent and investing talent, and therefore the internal marketplace, which gets talent ready from an upskilling perspective, and the internal talent marketplace from the perspective of demand, and being able to marry that with algorithms that take ready talent and then bring them into bigger roles that we need for our growth is an absolutely fundamental part of our talent strategy and one of the reasons I was so excited to have you on because again it sounds like per usual, you guys were ahead of the curve on something because it's the half-life of skills, you know, keeps diminishing.
Bob Goodwin:Having it in your DNA to be able to re-skill, up-skill and repurpose talent to where it's most needed, you know, is just that's not going away. It's like a Moore's law kind of a thing. It's just going to keep spinning faster and faster and faster. And it sounds like, you know, it sounds like it's evident that you guys have built the model to have optimized that.
Piyush Mehta:Bob, you said it way better than I could ever say it. You know we have kind of patented the line of half-life of skills is three to five years and you know our entire re-skilling strategy is built on that and that is one of the key parts of our talent strategy and our overall organization strategy.
Bob Goodwin:So just a slight detour, but it makes me think about a couple of things. One is you know, two, three, four, five years ago, tech companies you know were in this talent war and seriously overpaying for talent and over hiring for talent, and then that led to, well, one overpaying but two, then a bunch of layoffs, and it sounds like there's some built-in insurance in your system that kind of doesn't necessitate you having to overpay for talent. You can buy the hypo talent. You can acquire that, and I love how you said that turn high potential into high performance and then be able to redeploy it as market needs dictate, instead of this sort of slashing of talent when it's like, well, well, we don't have to slash it, we just need to either upskill it, reskill it and redeploy it, and it keeps you out of these weird boom and bust cycles yeah, so you know again.
Piyush Mehta:Uh, you are spot on with that approach. Look, let's start with the fundamental thesis behind all of this, which is, you know, growth and for the organization to grow is the most fundamental need for you know, establishing a powerful talent strategy, because growth is a great problem to have and once you have growth, all the other problems are great problems to have. So I would say it needs to start with and we've been blessed as an organization, knock on wood, as to having grown every single year of our existence and once you have that kind of engine pulling the business forward, everything else, from a talent perspective, is able to fall in place. Okay, so that's number one.
Piyush Mehta:Number two, I think look, it's really important to have a clear view on why people want to come to work.
Piyush Mehta:You know, and we have a reasonably strong point of view on this I don't claim to suggest for a moment that it's the absolute right view, but we are convinced that it is the right approach going forward, and once we are clear about that, I think it establishes, it puts all our talent programs and our talent agenda in perspective. So think about the four reasons as to why people come to work, as want to work for a great company, want to work for great leaders, want great rewards and want a great career. Ok, and I don't think this has changed ever since I started my career, which is 35 years back. I think, fundamentally, people are looking for the same four things and if we are clear about that as to this is the employee value proposition of why people are coming to work and our programs and our agenda is built around scalably and it's important that I say scalably and sustainably building the value proposition around being a great company, around having great leaders, around having fair and reasonable awards and having great careers, then I think we have a winning proposition.
Bob Goodwin:No. So thank you for that segue, because that's where I wanted to go. You kind of kicked off in your description of Genpak as being a purpose-driven company, and so this is excellent. What I like about that, too, is it allows for different value propositions for talent, so not everybody has to buy into every single one of those all the time. They just need to buy into one of them at any given time to continue to have high motivation to contribute and and to grow in their career at genpak. So question for you, because you've got the benefit of both time geographic perspective is do you see any of those value propositions? And again, it's purpose, it's rewards, it's the quality of management or leadership and career development. Do you see those? Any geographical differences, regional differences in the world?
Piyush Mehta:No, actually I don't Look. I think that's a great question. I think these are the basic needs as to why people come for, come to work in any part of the world. Now, what changes, bob, is many times the context right, competition options available. Um, you know, the nuances of geography sometimes change those contexts. Right, the relative dominance of technology, the you know beyond a point, the demographic profile of the people, although in many cases, my view is that, you know, the impact of demographic profile is overstated.
Piyush Mehta:Okay, because I think, irrespective of generation, people do look for these things, the enablers for some of these things. Or, you know, let's take, for example, technology. What is the play of technology in all of this? Right, I think today the newer generations are more comfortable with a higher impact of technology on these four fundamental variables, and there's a difference there.
Piyush Mehta:Okay, so those are the nuances that come into play, but fundamentally it is the same four things, and I think it's really important that, as HR practitioners, build talent strategies. This is the North Star that we are navigating to in our own respective context, in the context of the North Star that we are navigating to in our own respective context, in the context of the geographies that we work in the context of the industry that we are a part of, in terms of the competitive landscapes that we are working out of, in terms of the macro conditions around us. You know, what's the extent of wage inflation, what's the demand for a particular skill set? Those are all, at a point of time, specific levers which drive this, but it is these four things which should be the North Star.
Bob Goodwin:Well, I'll be very honest, it's one of the big takeaways that I've had from our conversation is just the one identifying those, but to the durability and the universality of those qualities, and I think what that allows you to do is truly have a strategy that's built on those, instead of a project chasing things that might change over time. The durable notion of those four key pillars is, I just think, vital. Yeah.
Piyush Mehta:Sorry, bob, I don't mean to speak over you, but I think there's a vital point to be made there, which is you hit upon, you picked up something that I said and reinforced it, which is it has to be scalable and it has to be sustainable. So think about one of the things we caution ourselves on is, you know, the the as we look at trends and as we look at changes that are coming up on the horizon. It is, you know, it is the primary role of leaders to be able to look around corners, uh, and figure out what's coming at us. But equally, I think it is our responsibility as leaders corners and figure out what's coming at us. But equally, I think it is our responsibility as leaders to also figure out what's flavor of the month and what's not. So, as I think about building talent strategies, it is really important to be aware of what is going to be sustainable and what is flavor of the month. So I'll give you an example be aware of what is going to be sustainable and what is flavor of the month. So I'll give you an example.
Piyush Mehta:You know, a few years back, during COVID, one of the things that got talked about often was silent quitting, and there were various names that was given to it. The reality is that, look I mean silent quitting indicated that you have a percentage of your population, at any point of time, which could vary between 15 to 30 percent of your workforce, which is not engaged and therefore is passive. Now, you know, there were reams and reams of articles written at one point of time on how this was a new trend. Actually, it wasn't. I mean, we've known through years, through engagement surveys, for decades now, that there is always a population in an organization which is not engaged and therefore this was not something that was new, but, you know, it just became something very fashionable to talk about. I'll give you another example.
Piyush Mehta:You know the trend a few years back which was about, you know, we don't want to rate people in a particular way because we believe that rating people puts them in compartments and therefore, you know, doing away with performance ratings, which is, you know, in itself a very noble, I would say, objective. The reality, however, is organizations still continue to pay bonus and organizations still continue to discriminate, rightfully, or distinguish between strong performance and not so strong performance when they pay out bonus. Right, no organization goes out and says that we pay the same bonus to. Right, no organization goes out and says that we pay the same bonus to everybody and therefore then you are different in how you are rewarding performance. So that's not consistent In my view.
Piyush Mehta:We're doing away with performance ratings because there's some level of lack of consistency between the two. So, whether for right or wrong and this is a controversial point that I'm making I think it's important for us, as practitioners, to distinguish between what is scalable, consistent and an established trend going forward, as opposed to something that's flavor of the month yeah no, I appreciate that to something that's flavor of the month yeah no, I appreciate that.
Bob Goodwin:And you know we're inundated with news and social media and all these things like you say, whether it's silent, quitting or whatever that like. Oh well, we, I need to pay attention to this because I've seen an article on this, you know, 150 times in the last month. It must be a thing. And you use the term North Star earlier and it's like OK, I'll take that data point, let me see how this aligns with the North Star it does or it doesn't and then have the clarity to be able to say, no, that's actually not strategic. Or, like you say, just kind of basically call BS on it and go that's not a thing or it's always been a thing. You just put a fancy term on it to drive clicks. But let's call it what it is flavor of the month.
Bob Goodwin:So I appreciate that distinction and taking a stand on something which I always appreciate. When people say this is controversial, I start going yes, because that means you're going to actually take a stand on something out of conviction. So I think that's cool. I want to talk about technology, because this really becomes the cool intersection of if you've got these North Stars but you're a very technology forward, technology enabled company. How do you guys and I want to talk about things like Amber and Genome, how they actually help advance and deliver on those value propositions?
Piyush Mehta:deliver on those value propositions, sure thing. So, look, our fundamental belief is that technology is a massive, massive enabler of being able to drive the fulfillment of talent needs of an organization. It is a massive enabler and, look, that's not rocket science. I mean, it's pretty well established now. So you referred to amber.
Piyush Mehta:Amber is our always on employee engagement um platform. Um, it is an ai driven chatbot that reaches out to employees real time across the company. So 125 000 plus employees, uh, being in touch real time um, with an engagement tool that helps us establish how people are feeling at any point of time. And, you know, with the power of data and being able to link it to geography the business one is a part of, you know how long you've been in the company, tenure, the manager that you work for, your gender, etc. It is able to provide us massive insights in real time.
Piyush Mehta:And the good news is that, you know, I mentioned it's an AI-driven chatbot AI driven chatbot. So the chatbot, as it reaches out to individuals, is able to drive the dialogue based on the responses and the specific things which the individual is saying. So it's not a standard set of questions that the engine puts forth to the employee that the engine puts forth to the employee and it helps us keep a real-time pulse on employee engagement, morale and sentiment real-time. Interestingly, we think that this is such a powerful tool to employee productivity that it is the only non-financial metric that goes into the bonus pool for the top 120 people in the company, including the CEO and the leadership team. So the bonus pool of the top 120 people has three metrics. Two of them are financial um, you know, revenue and margin and the third one is employee engagement as men, as measured by Amber. So that's how important it is for us wow, do the finding?
Bob Goodwin:do the findings um root back or to the, the four pillars of how connected you feel to the purpose, rewards management, your career development?
Piyush Mehta:You know again, spot on, bob, you're doing this so well. It is, like I said, it's the North Star, right. So think about the engagement that Amber has with employees. The entire engagement, the questions and the responses are built around exactly those four things how close do you feel to the purpose of the organization? How close do you feel, or what is your view on the quality of your supervisor and the quality of leadership? And it builds on those things. By the way, it's a two to three minute interaction that the tool has with the employee, but it gives us really powerful insights.
Bob Goodwin:That's cool. And then um, can you talk about genome for a minute?
Piyush Mehta:yes, so look, genome is um, our learning platform. Um, it is um. So you know a few things. Um, genome was built uh, ongoing, entirely virtual across all our learning. In GenPact.
Piyush Mehta:Our view was based on the fact that knowledge and access to knowledge is freely available in the world. However, there is a very important context to that learning and that knowledge that exists out there, and therefore I could go to the internet and pretty much learn whatever I want. But the important thing is that the context of GenPact, which is a B2B professional services and solutions organization, is very different from the context of, let's say, a B2C organization, and therefore there is a contextual element to every bit of knowledge that exists out there for it to become relevant for our employees. So that's number one. Number two is when you take something virtual like learning, it allows you massive scale, it allows you access across geographies, it allows you the ability to access knowledge way, way faster than, let's say, a classroom approach would be. What you lose out, however, is the collective nature of learning people learning together. So genome established both these things an organizational context to all the knowledge that exists out there and the ability to learn collectively. We basically took what is now 90 plus skills and over 600 subject matter experts in the company. We nominated them as gurus for these 90 skills and we built a learning infrastructure where these gurus were able to access material across the universe and contextualize that over a period of time to the needs of GenPact of time, to the needs of Genpact. And then we allowed free access of 125,000 people to these 90 plus skills and allowed them to upskill themselves in these. Now these skills continue to be redefined over a period of time, the subject matter experts continue to rotate.
Piyush Mehta:But just to give you an idea of the scale of this, for the fourth consecutive year, our global workforce completed approximately 10 million learning hours on Genome. So it allows us to reskill at scale and address new capabilities at speed. You know I want to stress on that, bob, because I think it's really important we took at that point in time when we built this, our innovation leader for the company and I out of our day jobs for three months conceptualize, architect, think and build what is now Genome and the 10 million hours of learning on Genome that we talk about. So it was a massive commitment that we made from an organization point of view to get here. I'll give you some idea of how we are able to scale with this.
Piyush Mehta:You know, we launched Gen AI as one of the 90 skills that we talked about last year and our objective was how do we just familiarize people with Gen AI at the basic level? Ok, this is not making them experts. Over a four month period, we had 40,000 people learning on what Gen AI was at a basic level of proficiency. Today, we have 80,000 people learning the skill. So you know, that's the kind of scale and speed it's able to give us.
Bob Goodwin:Wow Does, based on you, know where an individual employee is in his or her career and development, the skills that they've acquired, maybe the skills they've identified that they would like to acquire, but also the needs of the business? Does Genome or does a human make recommendations of Piyush? We would recommend these next 10 courses for you or to develop more skills in these areas. So does it proactively recommend or do I choose what I want to learn more about?
Piyush Mehta:You have both options you can choose and to that extent, we've democratized learning. You know, an individual can choose from those 90 skill sets what they want to pick up. But we also have built the capability to the point that you're making, where we are leveraging something called AI Guru, which assesses their skills and proficiency levels, which are extracted from their bios and then their genome learning data, and then our capability frameworks to recommend learning paths based on employees' roles and business needs. So great question it is actually both.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, I'm rarely accused of an original idea, Piyush, so I'm not surprised that that's what you guys are working on, because it just makes sense that that's what you would be doing and kind of then tied to your internal talent market and then like where do we see gaps and how can we get certain groups of people up to speed to start to fill these gaps so we can meet the future needs of the internal marketplace. So that makes tons of sense to me. I want to, because we're about 30 minutes in and there's a couple other key areas that I would love to move into, if that's okay with you. Sure, Bob, yeah, so if anybody goes and Googles you, they'll see that you speak at conferences, you do interviews, that you are very much a thought leader in the wacky world of HR and technology.
Bob Goodwin:During the pandemic, that was a very obviously catalytic event, because suddenly the world went virtual and organizations had to figure out how do we do this. Like you said, you guys kind of grew up natively remote, so that was less of a struggle, I assume. But what it did do is it brought CHROs right next to the CEO every day to help us figure this thing out. For some people that window opened or that door opened maybe is a better metaphor and they ran through it, and for others it was open for a while but it's closed again. What advice would you give other CHROs to build on the gains that they got, or maybe how to reenergize?
Piyush Mehta:Yeah. So, bob, I smile because you know it's. It's interesting. I I see the question posed often about you know HR having a seat at the table. You know CHROs being close to. How do you get close to CEOs, et cetera, et cetera.
Piyush Mehta:Look, I have to tell you, I'm first of all in. I am a bad person to ask that question too, because I've always been fortunate in that respect and I think, to a large extent, our business model, the fact that you know we we were a new industry which didn't exist 20 years back. We grew like gangbusters. Therefore, bringing the right talent in place was the single biggest constraint to growing. Our business helped establish, uh, you know, the talent agenda as one of our key strategic challenges and levers. So you know, our hr teams never had to, uh, engage in the discussion about having a seat at the table. Are we close to business? Et cetera, et cetera. Business loved us, business pulled us in. This was as much a business challenge as it was a talent and an HR challenge Number one. So I've always had the benefit of never having I mean, it was considered totally, totally table stakes and barely entered our thought dimensions as to, you know, should we have a place at the table. Now, that said, look, my view to this is very simple. The responsibility for having a place at the table rests squarely on us as HR people, people and as talent practitioners. We need to understand business. We need to uh put business challenges as the key challenges that we need to solve for, and everything that we do uh needs to be in the service of solving business challenges.
Piyush Mehta:Now, look, that's easily said many times, that's a cliche, but I know I will tell you. I'll give you a simple example. You know, think about one of my roles before I came to GE and Genpak was working in a company where you know, we had to build a hiring tool to hire great frontline salespeople. And in building that hiring tool, I spent six months on doing research on what were the right competencies to hire frontline sales people for, uh or what you know what. What were the competencies that tool you needed to be built on? And the reality is that if I had done meaningful internet research, I would have come up with the competencies that a frontline hiring person needs to have in about two days as opposed to six months of research and gotten it 90% right, and I could have spent the balance five months and 28 days in building a tool that would execute well and hire really well, as opposed to, you know, spending time on that quote unquote, reasonably meaningless research in the context of what we were trying to do.
Piyush Mehta:And I think those are the examples of where we need to step back as HR practitioners and say you know, it doesn't always need to be about perfection. Focus really hard on execution, let business needs be your North star and if you're really solving business challenges out there, there is no reason why business won't love you. So I, you know, I why business won't love you. So I, you know I actually think this is amazingly simple and I think you know it is important that we don't preoccupy ourselves with this. More importantly, go out there and help business solve the challenges.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, it's interesting because, first of all, I agree with you, you know it's focusing on the business and while that is cliche, apparently it's devilishly hard for some people to get to that place and it seems like you know that the seat at the table cliche again is more, it's not an aspiration, it's a result, like if you are contributing to the business and you're not just a policy and police, you're a procedures police and there is a function of that, I mean compliance and there's legal things and stuff like that has to be paid attention to. But at the same time, if you're just focused on the businesses, you said you were you, you were benefited from the fact that that was core to the very beginning of the company was cracking the code on this. But do you see, ai is maybe a new door to, to re-energize a chro that wants to reorient themselves and their, their team, to be more integrated into the business.
Piyush Mehta:Yeah, I'd be careful as I go there. Look, I already made the point earlier that advances in technology and changes in technology are a very, very powerful catalyst for, you know, moving up the value chain, delivering with speed, catering to business needs all incredible enablers. That said, I think it's important to identify again scale and sustainability in what we are going after, bob, as opposed to spreading it thin and trying to layer everything and anything that we do with AI without necessarily understanding where it's going.
Bob Goodwin:Well, that's back to you, that's back to the North Star concept, right 100%?
Piyush Mehta:Does the?
Bob Goodwin:technology align, because you're right. I mean, this is like the perfect use case for flavor of the day or flavor of the year, kind of a thing. And well, we're just buying AI, we're just trying to figure anything out that's got AI attached to it that may or may not be directly aligned to the business's North Star, and in that case it becomes a red herring, not an enabler 100% correct.
Piyush Mehta:So, in the examples that I talked about, I would say that if I were to step back and say where am I going to apply the benefits of AI, the areas I would reach out to first are, you know, for example, employee engagement. It allows us to stay in touch with 127,000 employees scalably, therefore, and sustainably. I think that's a great application of AI, you know, in training and skilling, because that is super critical to the future the current and the future of our business. So, again, I would say that applying AI in that particular space will give us massive leverage. Those are some of the things you know. We hire 45,000 employees a year. You know, if I could figure out a way in which I can leverage AI to be able to hire better, hire faster, create a better experience for the people we are interacting with through the hiring process, that's a fantastic application of AI. So I would say it's important to focus on what is going to be able to be the right areas for scale.
Bob Goodwin:Perfect focus on what is going to be able to be the right areas for scale, Perfect, Okay, I want to just change into one more topic here and I'm looking forward to this piece which is career advice. Obviously, at Career Club, we're working, you know, a lot with job seekers, and I always love to make sure that we're able to provide them with the benefit of some very successful people in the career advice. So the first thing I wanted to ask you about is when you're hiring or promoting talent Piyush, what are some of the core qualities or attributes that you're looking for?
Piyush Mehta:I would say you know the, the hunger, the it's, you know, you it's, it's um, one could use various terms for it. What's the energy a person brings to the job? What's the hunger a person brings to the job? What's the drive a person brings to the job? What's the curiosity? Look, I think those become hugely important. Our view has been that we can teach people pretty much everything else, but you can't teach people to be energized and can't teach people energy and can't teach people hunger and drive and curiosity. So people don't have that. Then we have a challenge. It's a key attribute for us, bob.
Bob Goodwin:And real quickly on that. Is that something that you intuit or is that something that you can directly interview for? I think it's both.
Piyush Mehta:It's evident from the kinds of things a person has done in their career and when you're hiring fresh, even in their earlier career, it's evident from the conversations, it's evident from everything else. It's not that difficult to figure, and so it's both Interview and Intude.
Bob Goodwin:Okay, and then. So let's call that passion. What else do you look for?
Piyush Mehta:Look in today's world then enables the entire learning and contribution that an individual is able to do and make so to us. You know that part and the you know with that. You know when I'm saying that it includes collaboration, it includes the ability to work in teams, all of that right. So I think those two then become very powerful combinations for what we want to look at as we grow people and build people.
Bob Goodwin:Conversely and I'm just thinking of this question on the fly what are things that would be huge turnoffs for you like deal breaker? I'm out. It would be huge turn offs for you like deal breaker.
Piyush Mehta:I'm out Entitlement. I am owed this A lack of positive attitude. Pessimists, people with low energy, people with no drive to learn.
Bob Goodwin:Gosh, I want to jump all over like three of those things immediately. It's funny when I'm speaking with people who might be, you know, feel like they're subject to ageism bias. I'm like that may be true, there may be people who who have that bias, but there's things that you can do that that will either contribute or counteract that, and one of them is bringing energy right. So, because the bias would be you're out of gas, like you're tired, you're old, you can't do it anymore, it's like no, bring the energy.
Bob Goodwin:The second thing is on curiosity and continuing to learn and being able to show, which is pick on chat GPT, because that's easy, and like being able to show let's just pick on chat gpt, because that's easy. And like being able to show proficiency and interest and continuing to learn and when, when we can dispel and have practical examples and, like you say, also the ability to just intuit this person's curious, they're motivated, they're positive, you know, they're high energy, like those are the kinds of qualities that people are looking for and whether you're 25 or 55, if you're bringing those qualities for the right company, for the right manager, you're going to be an attractive candidate.
Piyush Mehta:I totally agree.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, so what is the best career advice you've been given, if something comes to mind, yes, it is.
Piyush Mehta:You know, build deep, deep business acumen. If you want to work in the corporate world and you know work, work with business. Make sure you understand business better than or as well as the stakeholders you are working with. It will allow you to serve them much better. It will allow you to engage with them much better. I mean, you know just simple things that, uh, I think of when I, when I you know, uh, when, when HR people ask me for advice in my team.
Piyush Mehta:Do you understand a P&L? Do you understand the commercials of the business? Do you understand how the business makes money? Do you understand how the business is going to grow? Do you understand what you know as you break the P&L down into what are the important components? Do you understand how you know, as you break the P&L down into what are the important components? Do you understand how you know money gets made? All of those things become super, super important. And then moving up the value chain, you know, do you understand how this works for your clients? Do you understand the P&L of your client? Do you understand how the client makes money? Do you understand what your business is trying to do for your client? I just think understanding and developing deep business acumen is fundamental to being successful in any role in a corporate.
Bob Goodwin:But, very importantly, in the HR function, yeah. So it's funny because when we're working with candidates and you read a resume and all it's got is basically what the scope of their responsibilities were Right, They've kind of bulletized their job description as what they did at company X. I'm like no, the language of business is numbers. How did you contribute to the business and sort of the three main value buckets? Did you help the company make money, save money or mitigate risk? Can you dimensionalize your contribution in one or more of those ways? And to your point about business acumen, it's shocking how often people cannot do that.
Piyush Mehta:That's so. Well said, bob, that's so well said.
Bob Goodwin:So last, last question If you could go back and talk to 25-year-old Piyush so I know that hasn't been that long ago, but if you could, with the benefit of hindsight, what counsel would you give 25-year-old Piyush?
Piyush Mehta:Yeah, I've thought about that one before. I've been asked that one before. Bob, and at the risk of this may come across as arrogant, I want to tell you it's not come across as I haven't learned. That's not the case. I would do exactly as I've done through the last 30 years since you talk about when I was 25, exactly the same way, because I think I've had an opportunity to learn. I think I've had an opportunity to learn. I think I've had an opportunity to work with some great people. I think I've made some great big mistakes. I think people have indulged me a lot. I've had more than my share of luck being at the right place at the right time. So I won't change anything.
Bob Goodwin:Yeah, but that's interesting because in one way, it's kind of a different question, because, like, do you have any regrets over your career? Well, that answer is no, but what you just described were some things that you have learned that I think that you could communicate to somebody else, which is you know again, continue to learn, take chances, be open to making mistakes, but you got to learn from them, right? Sounds like you've had some great mentors who have quote, indulged you. And then the point that you made on the previous question just about continuing to drive your business, acumen to be able to drive the performance of the business.
Piyush Mehta:So, yeah, so let me add one more, bob, in that case, look, I think, in that case, what I would add is I wish I had learned to communicate better, because I think the power of being able to communicate one to many with a point of view and to enable learning through that is just huge. Back is just huge. And I think, you know, I wish I had learned and focused on communicating much better, because I think it would have, it would have enabled me much better.
Bob Goodwin:Awesome, piyush, amazing. I knew this was gonna be a home run and you exceeded my expectations, so thank you very, very much. If people want to learn more about GenPact, what's the best way for them to do that?
Piyush Mehta:Well, they can go to our website and engage with the organization there. They can then follow the links there and reach out to us for relevant stuff. That's the best way to do this, awesome.
Bob Goodwin:Well, kish, thank you very much Again. What I love about the depth and quality of your insights is they're built on the back of performance and a track record, and that these aren't just highfalutin ideas, but these are things that you guys, as you say, have put into practice at scale and sustainably, and so I've just benefited tremendously from this, and I hope our viewers and listeners have as well. So, with that, thank you very much For folks that have listened and watched. Thank you very much for taking a few minutes out of your day today, and we hope to see you on the next episode of Career Club. Live Again, piyush, thank you.
Piyush Mehta:Thanks, bob, thanks for your patience. I mean, you know, the 45 minutes plus of conversation does require a lot of patience to be able to listen to me. More importantly, look a disclaimer that I think is important If I have given you the impression that we've solved for it all, we haven't. We are on a journey, we are learning as we are going along, okay, and we are making mistakes and we are learning from those mistakes and hopefully it's a virtuous cycle where a virtuous cycle where we are refunneling what we are learning from and the mistakes we make. So if you have a point of view and you have thoughts on what we could do differently to the folks out there who are engaging with this podcast, we'd love to hear back from you. And thanks so much once again, bob.
Bob Goodwin:Awesome, thank you very much. Okay, thanks again, everybody, and we'll see you on the next episode.
