Caliber8, a Singapore-based recruitment firm led by young founders and focusing on maritime, accounting and finance, is looking to disrupt the traditional hiring methodologies with the utilisation of ever-changing technology to address the new trends in the market.
Brijesh Mongia, head of maritime at Caliber8, sees a lot of technology-driven companies investing in the maritime industry to help them streamline processes, improve efficiency, and provide risk management tools.
“Although maritime has been a very traditional industry, it has seen innovation and digitalisation in recent times and this will be the driving factor for businesses going forward,” Mongia says, adding that the company has quickly adapted to the new trends in digitalisation and are partnering with technology companies to find the best maritime talent suited to their products and services.
“Consultants at Caliber8 work closely with senior leadership teams of our clients and provide talent solutions matching their requirements. This often means looking at non-traditional hiring methodologies as previous similar system experience may not be prevalent in the market,” Mongia continues.
The maritime recruitment industry has faced substantial challenges aligning to the new trends. Mongia reckons hiring talents from a limited pool of locally based niche professionals has been one of the major issues faced by growing organisations and it has led to the need for industry-specific training and constantly upgrading skillsets.
“The pandemic has made several roles redundant resulting in the increased unemployment rate and more supply of candidates than demand. Also, with limited job opportunities, one needs to put their best foot forward when it comes to acing an interview and grabbing an opportunity,” Mongia says and he believes in today’s turbulent times and in the future recruiters need to be innovative with a long-term approach to finding talent.
“All they need to do is utilise technology and keep their finger on the pulse of industry developments. As, businesses will need recruiters more, and recruiters will be called on to do more: to engage passive candidates inundated by offers; to analyse talent data and advise leaders; to tease out long-term business results and forecast future hiring needs; to master new technologies and to build new types of teams,” Mongia maintains.
