I came across Tomorrow’s Company’s view on the 'hunt for talent' and felt that it resonated deeply with my own experience when I was working in the corporate world. As a former Investment Banker and prior to that with a leading consulting firm, I do feel that while organisations, leading ones, take a lot of care to recruit the right talent, the search and the focus is almost always myopic.

 

I have been a part of the recruitment process at some of the firms I worked with and sensed that the emphasis was always on selecting candidates with 'drive'. While that is a necessity, I felt that this was one-sided in its approach. The male principle or the 'yang' if you will, took precedence over everything else and somewhere in the din, the female principle or the 'yin' got just lost. As a result, most firms may end up being 'male' bastions and even the females within such organisations start dressing/acting/directing as males would.

 

Creativity, or the lack of it, was apparent in many a candidate and I felt that it just hampered the organisation and its teams, to be holistic and complete in their performance.

 

I have spent some time, looking up firms where such a balance does exist and I find that such environments are refreshing to work in, have a higher care for their socio-cultural environment and always seem to be bustling with newer ideas of changing the world. What we need is a balanced organisation where the energies are in harmony, equal male and equal female, the balance yin and yang. Such an environment stimulates creativity, nurtures trust and builds the foundation for future leaders to be groomed

 

The entire HR approach to recruitment needs to be altered and perhaps that is where all the effort needs to be put in, that of enlightening the new breed of HR managers and CEOs on the merits of a balanced approach to recruitment.
 

We are in times where the status quo or the past is many a time irrelevant and needs to be looked at with fresh eyes - with a fresh perspective.

 

Rohan is the CEO of Indian Ocean Ventures, a real estate focused advisory and investment firm. He is an ex-Goldman Sachs investment banker, having been with the firm as an Executive Director in London & New York. He was with the Goldman Sachs Strategic Group (GSSG) within the investment Banking Division, an elite think tank that advised the firms investing clients on aspects related to wealth creation. Rohan Narse  has 17 years of working experience across India, Europe, USA and Asia and has an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Rohan was with KPMG and before that, with Coopers & Lybrand, consulting clients on strategic issues related to their business. Prior to that, Rohan was with the Tata Industries in Mumbai, India.