How To Be A Part Of The Analytics Team At Genpact

While we have earlier covered how to crack interviews at Mu Sigma and Fractal Analytics, which were very well received, we bring to you an insight on analytics hiring at one of the largest global professional services firm, Genpact, highlighting the criteria and the overall recruitment process. Focused on delivering digital transformation by putting digital inputs and data to work, Genpact integrates lean principles, design thinking, analytics and digital technologies with domain and industry expertise to deliver disruptive business outcomes. The company began its journey in 1997 as a business unit within General Electric, which later in 2005 became an independent company to bring their process expertise and unique DNA in Lean management to clients beyond GE. The company, which became a publicly traded company in 2007 has expanded from 19,000+ employees and annual revenues of US $491.90 million to 77,000+ employees and annual revenues of US$2.57 billion as of December 31, 2016.

Why Genpact Analytics?

These huge numbers are reasons enough for the firm to be a favourite destination for analytics professionals to have their hands on, in their analytics functioning. To get a deeper understanding on the same, AIM interacted with Vaishali Pachchhapurkar, the head of HR for the analytics business at Genpact, who begins with saying that analytics is an integral part of their digital transformational services, which combines consulting, digital and analytics services, and runs as a horizontal functioning across the key industry verticals at Genpact. “This is primarily to ensure strong leverage of industry domain with technical expertise, which is core to our way of working”, she shared. Pacchharpukar said that they have innovation labs in India (Bangalore) and the U.S. (Palo Alto), which facilitate collaboration and innovation with clients and industry experts. “The labs combine process-centric digital technologies, design thinking, data and analytics, and deep domain expertise to transform enterprises end to end, from the front to back office”, she adds.

Skillsets at Genpact Analytics -

After a note on the structure of analytics group at Genpact, we got her digging on to the kind of knowledge and skill sets that they look for while hiring their workforce. She noted that Genpact hires across multiple domains/skills in analytics, some of which are-

• Advanced analytical modelling / Data Science/ Risk Model development & validation
• Data engineering, visualisation & programming skills – Big data, Hadoop, Machine Learning, R/SAS, Python, SQL, among others
• Research – Primary/secondary, Investment, Equity, Social media

Genpact looks for all these skills combined with a strong domain expertise. PhD/ Masters in Economics or Statistics/ M.Tech / MBA/ C.A./ M.Sc are a few qualifications that they look for to cater to the needs of various industry domains like banking & financial services, hi-tech & manufacturing services, capital markets, insurance, retail, healthcare, among others. “Above all, we look for people who are curious and open to learning and taking risks. Those are important behaviours to ensure cultural fitment”, pointed Pacchharpukar.

Initiatives by Genpact in filling up the analytics talent gap -

In an earlier interview with Rohit Tandon, senior vice president and business leader of Genpact’s Analytics and Research business, he had shared that as an analytics organisation, a key challenge is the availability of analytics talent. “Everyone looks for that unique unicorn of a person who has data science skills, technology skills, and relevant industry domain knowledge to intelligently apply the analytics. Such talent is hard to find and therefore Genpact has proactively launched initiatives such as the Risk Academy that works with academic institutions to customise the curriculum and create industry-ready talent”, he had said. Echoing on the same lines, Pacchharpukar said that rapid digitization and explosion in data presents both challenges as well as opportunities. “One such challenge is the sharp rise in demand for analytics talent”, she said. In this war of ‘build talent vs buy talent’, the company addresses it by running various internal training programs that enable people with good quantitative & statistical aptitude to get trained on the latest analytics tools & techniques. Genpact conceptualized the “University Partnerships” in 2012 to develop a repeatable, reliable & sustainable supply chain of industry ready-talent in the analytics domain. Their partnership with the global academic institutes have helped them create a sustainable pool of talent supply. Genpact has tied up with several universities and training partners in India such as ICFAI Hyderabad, Calcutta University, Jadavpur University, Amrita University, IISC and UpGrad, to work on building the right talent. They also have a global reach with some of the leading universities in the US (Rutgers), UK (Heriot Watt, University of Edinburgh) & Australia (University of Melbourne) as well as institutes like GARP, AIWMI & ICCP. The fact that Genpact has been recognized in several forums including HFS research for its efforts in building analytics talent, speaks of its dedication in getting the right talent hired.

Hiring process at Genpact -

On being asked about how a typical hiring process looks like at Genpact, Pacchharpukar said that they have a robust hiring process honed over years of experience, to ensure that right talent is hired. It starts with the process of forecasting demand to ensure that there are no surprises and works in parallel with skills and competency mapping of their employees. “Based on that, we decide a sourcing strategy and once the talent is in, we conduct a series of evaluation checks before moving to the offer and background check stage”, she said. She also added that talent is sourced both internally (through redeployments, promotions and job rotations) and externally through social media, job boards, employee referrals, campus, walk-ins and search partners. So, everyone who’s looking for a job at Genpact has a fair chance of applying through these channels. On a concluding note she states the obvious that the industry is at the helm of digital disruption and hence is it obvious that analytics talent will be in demand for many more years. “In this new age, it is very important to stay updated and up skilled with the latest technologies. As an organisation, we commit to creating an environment that fosters learning but it is up to the individual to have that fire in the belly to grab the opportunities”, she said in the closing.