EasyRecruit Plus: Anand Bhushan on Transforming HR with Tech-Driven Solutions

StartupTalky presents Recap'23, a series of in-depth interviews where we engage with founders and industry leaders to explore their growth in 2023 and their predictions for the future.

The HR (Human Resources) industry helps businesses care for their people. It involves finding and hiring new employees, ensuring everyone gets along, and helping with training and performance. HR professionals also use technology to do their jobs better. They focus on creating a happy workplace and ensuring everyone feels good at work.

The global HR market is set to reach $38.17 billion by 2027, driven by over 380,000 businesses and nearly one million HR employees. With an annual growth rate of 12.8%, the HR industry is outpacing the US market average, reflecting its growing importance on a global scale.

In a recent Recap'23 interview, we at StartupTalky had the privilege of connecting with Anand Bhushan, CEO of EasyRecruit Plus, Lexicon Centre of MSME Excellence, and EduCrack. We explored how the brand operates in the HR sector, uncovering the unique strategies employed by EasyRecruit Plus in the industry.

StartupTalky: What service does EasyRecruit+ provide? What was the motivation/vision with which you started?

Anand Bhushan: EasyRecruit+ is an initiative to support recruiters from companies in shortlisting the right applicants with the right aptitude, technical knowledge, and good cognitive skills who also have a verified background. This will enable recruiters to boost overall productivity and efficiency while also saving them significant time and allowing them to hire individuals with high potential in their respective organizations. Over a period of time, it will also show up in company productivity as the quality of hires goes up.

We are offering a comprehensive range of tools and packages. Our packages include three modern and advanced tools -

• ATT - Aptitude & Technical Testing: ATT helps recruiters test and assess applicants based on their normal mathematical abilities, reasoning capabilities, general English, data interpretation, and domain skills and abilities. These tests can also be customized by the Organization based on its own objectives. 
• IntAna - AI-based Interview: IntAna helps recruiters with advanced interview dynamics like - verbal, non-verbal & sentiment analysis of the candidates. The verbal analysis helps in understanding communication skills, speaking, articulation rate, and approach. The non-verbal analysis covers attention, confidence, engagement, expressions, and positive as well as negative emotions. The sentiment analysis captures around 10+ general emotions, 80+ mini-emotions, and 150+ micro-emotions so that recruiters can conduct a thorough screening process and save valuable time at hand. Based on this test, a comparative score is generated.
• iBG -Background Check: iBG helps recruiters with the shortlisted candidates' resume verifications and includes their Address verification, Professional Reference, Educational Qualification checks, Employment Performance Verification, Criminal database verification and a few other verifications as per the needs of the Organization.

In addition, we have added one more service name, HTD: During my stints in senior leadership in various industries, I have seen my HR managers struggling with the initial screening for hiring and, at times, have seen good candidates not being shortlisted because of non-standardized screening. Recruiters face several difficulties and have to spend a significant amount of their time vetting prospects, having them technically examined, or getting background checks on candidates. Shortlisting applicants with the proper attitude, cognition, engagement, and communication skills for a specific job description with a verified background is made easier and more efficient with EasyRecruit+.

StartupTalky: What new services have been added in the past year? What is/are the USP/s of EasyRecruit+ service?

Anand Bhushan: During our interactions with the Industry Leaders, the fact that I already knew was reiterated once again that although there are applicants in multiples for an open position, paradoxically, it also remains a fact that employable candidates with the aptitude and skill set remain few. Another challenge being faced by the Industry is finding and training employees in Junior Management and front-line positions, where the requirement is zero to 3 years of experience. Looking at these challenges, EasyRecruit Plus has added another service to its portfolio called HTD. In HTD, we recruit candidates on behalf of the Clients, make them undergo a Training Programme, do the certification, and then the candidates join the Principals. 

The salient feature of our services is that being tech-enabled and AI-enabled, IntAna and ATT are reliable, objective, and biased and offer time-saving to the HR Teams. The HTD programs free the HR teams from other activities, while EasyRecruit Plus works on its strengths and does the candidate selection and training.

StartupTalky: How has the HR industry changed in recent years and how has EasyRecruit+ adapted to these changes?

Anand Bhushan: The industry has been evolving continuously; however, the pace has increased manifold in the last four years. Recruiters are finding that with new and disruptive technical and business advancements, job skills needed in the current roles are showing increasingly shorter life, and as a result, the candidates getting hired are neither 100% ready for the current job nor ready skill-wise for future requirements. Secondly, the  Recruiters are now going out of their traditional talent pools and exploring other avenues. Colleges and  Institutions are being looked upon for skilled resources, and accordingly, recruitment tools are being created to tap this pool. In the last three years, Working from home has made the candidates undertake virtual lessons and upskill themselves. Another important change that is happening is that the real good candidates have become very choosey about the Companies they join, and thus the HR has to come up with increasingly better Value Propositions for the employees. The outlook post-pandemic seems to be pretty good. The economy has started bouncing back, and although there are fears of a global slowdown, I feel India will come out unscathed. The job market is going to boom with the start-ups that are coming in and mature industries taking in more manpower. The signs are that India could be a major manufacturing and service hub, and that is going to add to the positive outcomes.

EasyRecruit Plus realizing the changing landscape of recruitment and candidate’s skill set, has also entered a new service to their portfolio by recruiting and training candidates on behalf of Clients, so they get Day Zero trained professionals on the first day of their On the Job training. This is going to ease a lot of the burden on the recruitment HRs in the organizations and add value to the candidates for better hires.

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StartupTalky: How do you stay up-to-date on the latest trends and developments in the HR industry?

Anand Bhushan: Industry Expert's meetings, attending the HR meets and summits, etc, as well as participating in job fairs, TPO interactions, CEO meetings, Internet, Best Prax being followed in Industries etc, are a few ways we try to understand the latest trends and developments in the Industry.

StartupTalky: What were the most significant challenges EasyRecruit+ faced in the past year, and how did you overcome them?

Anand Bhushan: Making the HR leaders believe the usage of tech and AI-enabled platforms for recruitment has been one of the biggest challenges. They very well understand the benefits but are reluctant to try out because of so much noise about AI and the fact that there is a thought at the back of their minds that it may lead to a reduction in HR manpower going forward. Consistent discussions, showing them that it will free the HR for the value-added work by freeing them from mundane tasks and offering to take the recruitment and training of the front line, which is quite cumbersome, are helping us overcome these challenges.

StartupTalky: Good service is something everyone is talking about in the service industry. How do you ensure that the clients of EasyRecruit+ are happy?

Anand Bhushan: Promising only what we can deliver and delivering the service with impeccable quality and within costs and timelines are the only ways you can keep your clients happy. There’s no other mantra for it. We follow this to the T.

StartupTalky: What are the different strategies you use for marketing? Tell us about any growth hack that you pulled off.

Anand Bhushan: So far, we have been relying on personal contacts and word-of-mouth publicity, a few appearances in HR meetings, and write-ups on a few platforms. Now, we are venturing into social media marketing and will soon be actively participating in industry forums of different levels as well as hosting them.

StartupTalky: Foreign clients- this is what most of the service-based companies are looking for. What has been your experience?

Anand Bhushan: So far, we have not ventured into this. However, we are keeping our options open for an opportunity as and when it arises.

StartupTalky: What opportunities do you see for future growth in the HR industry in India and the world? What kind of difference in market behaviour have you seen between India and the world?

Anand Bhushan: With the Indian economy bouncing back and stability in the socio-political situation, the Country’s job market is bound to grow. The only shadow we see currently is in the IT and IT-enabled services, which get impacted due to Global sentiments and showdown. However, with other sectors pulling on, the overall job market seems to be buoyant over the next few years. The market behaviour of India is more positive as compared to the World’s market because of the fact of India’s higher growth per annum actual and projected compared to other markets. 

StartupTalky: What lessons did your team learn in the past year, and how will these inform your future plans and strategies?

Anand Bhushan: Educating the Customer is very important. Taking feedback on whether the Client’s understanding is the same as ours. Incorporating these in our future plans in a more rigorous manner in planning out the new services is already on.

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StartupTalky: How do you plan to expand the customers, service offerings, and team base in the future?

Anand Bhushan: For now, we are going to concentrate on the four services we have, including the HTD we have started. HTD requires a lot of focus to execute flawlessly, and making the systems and processes more robust is going to be our endeavour. Once that is done we will try to replicate the success with more number of such clients, who are already identified and initial talks started.

StartupTalky: One tip that you would like to share with another Service company founder?

Anand Bhushan: There is never a shortcut to success. It’s going to be a long haul. Strategies get overturned, revamped, and re-executed, but you have to be resilient once you have chosen a way forward, which your research has shown to be the right path. And finally. Never ignore your gut instinct.

StartupTalky extends its gratitude to Mr. Anand Bhushan for dedicating his valuable time and generously sharing his insights with all of us.

Explore more Recap'23 Interviews here.