All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lydia: Welcome to the All-In Recruitment podcast by Manatal, where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels on YouTube and Spotify to stay tuned for weekly episodes. I’m your host, Lydia. This week, we have Herman Cahyadi of Gojek. Welcome to the show, Herman, and thanks for joining us.
Herman: Thank you for having me.
Redefining Talent: Everyone’s a Star in the Right Role
Lydia: So Herman, you have been in the talent space for some time. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Herman: I think it’s not just about talent. My DNA is more about people and their importance. I love people because they are unique. The way you connect with them, please them, and understand them is what makes things unique for me. That’s why I love Human Resources. I love talking about people, understanding them, and so on. I may not be very good at connecting with people, but I love understanding them. That makes it something valuable to me.
Trying to understand how people think, how they act, and how to develop them into something is important. So, it’s not just about people. When we narrow it down, it becomes more about talent. These are the people who can grow with us. But again, talent is very unique. When you compare it with the average employee and talent, the problem is that we always look for talent from our own perspective.
Just because we call a group of people ‘talent’ doesn’t mean that the others are not talented. They could be talented in certain situations, certain types of work, or certain company situations.
That’s why I say that when we call someone a talent, everyone is a talent. It’s just a matter of whether you are working in the right situation and at the right place. If you are, you will shine and become a talent.
Creating Competitive Advantage through HR and Business Synergy
Lydia: You’re now the Head of People, Transformation Office. So what does that entail, Herman? What are your areas of focus?
Herman: We think that Human Resources only knows about people. But when you become an HR professional, how can you try to understand the business? That’s the reason when at some point [in your life], you become a human resource professional when you try to understand the business. That’s why I’m adding my portfolio to the Transformation Office because you’re not only learning one ‘subject’ of the business. When you do the transformation, you see quite a lot of the business spectrum, like how the top leaders thought, and how you can manage and connect the dots from one business to another. Again, remember that a business is a business but the one who runs it is a person.
Having said that, how do you combine Human Resources and transformation and make it something unique? As a Human Resources professional, we start thinking about how to link the business and also how to link your talent and your own people to do the work and achieve the target.
In my scope, because I’ve been concentrating on working in the HR area, when you try to understand the business and involve yourself in management-level discussions about the business, sometimes you don’t understand about 80% of what they’re talking about. You probably only understand about 30%. But as an HRBP or HR professional, you still need to understand, not deeply, but at least how the business works, the terminology, and how the system and operations work.
It will be easier for you to pinpoint a way of working, how to identify who is the talent, and who is performing better compared to others. How can you create a competitive advantage for that one?
This function is unique because you have combined HR and transformation, not just to transform the people, but also to transform the business. That’s the drill that I’m working on right now. It’s a part of my journey, a part of my development. I can’t say it’s very easy. But again, at some point, you need to understand and learn about the business. It’s not just about knowing, but you need to understand more.
It’s very difficult because there are too many variables around it. That’s why I said that coming back to the HR perspective, then how do you as an HR try to understand not just the employee, but also the customers' needs? The stakeholders are totally different, but stakeholders cannot bond with the company. You need to create a kind of engagement with the company based on the product that we have. So, that’s the challenge.
Lydia: It's a delicate balance, isn't it?
Herman: Exactly. What I’m trying to say is that we are always thinking about the employee. But when you’re thinking about the customer, the engagement remains the same. However, how to engage the employee and how to engage the customer is totally different. Now, you need to balance it.
Transforming Business Through People
Lydia: Does that mean, as you said earlier, that the company itself, as an employee, already has its DNA set in terms of the company culture? How do you see that as being separate? The transformation culture versus the internal culture? Or do you see that as eventually combining and becoming one?
Herman: Well, at some point, you should be able to combine the two. I know there’s a lot of discussion about this, and someone hearing this might disagree with my words.
But what I’m trying to say is that the employee culture, or the company culture, is actually about bringing the company into one perspective to achieve the vision or mission of the company. That’s very clear.
But then, the second part is when you have the customer. The customer is not just about fulfilling what they need. We also need to think about how to transform ourselves to understand the customer’s needs. What we provide to them as part of the service actually becomes our own DNA and forms our own community.
Probably the right way to say it is that the community is like affiliates. In one community, you have a variety of people who find our culture, but we have a common understanding of this kind of community. So, I think the difference, the hard part, is actually how to create a community of our own service within our own company. That’s the thinking.
Lydia: That becomes a subset culture where it drives everything else. It drives the business needs.
Herman: Exactly. Based on my previous experience, when I was working with some banks in Malaysia, one of the cultural aspects I learned from them was how to humanize the business itself into the community. What I learned from the previous bank where I worked is that even though I’m more focused on financial services, it’s actually about how to integrate these financial services into the community.
We serve the community itself, and we have different communities. Then, as a bank, we are tied to serving them from different communities and different angles. I feel that because we serve them as a community and also meet their needs, that’s the way we are at the heart of the customer. As the employee, or as the one who is actually providing the service, we need to change ourselves.
The need is not because of us; it actually needs to become the business. Then, coming back to the HR professional, you need to start thinking that the culture we are creating is not just for the company, but it’s also about how to build our own culture into the outside world. People might say, “Oh, that’s Gojek culture,” or “That’s the culture of that company,” and they become our own uniqueness. It becomes our own branding, a part of something that people can see us as.
“This person must be from this company,” because it’s very unique. It’s something that cannot be combined with another company. That’s the real brand. And also, the real transformation that we need to do is to create an anvil.
Navigating the Tech Turbulence to Cultivate Long-Term Talent
Lydia: Now, in terms of looking into long-term needs, I would imagine this would be a sort of long-term projection as to what sort of development you might need for people in the transformative environment. So, are there any specific areas that you’re looking at in terms of developing the existing talent to achieve these kinds of goals?
Herman: If I look at this from the perspective of a tech company, where I’ve been working for the last five years after spending quite a lot of time in the financial sector, I see that tech companies are very hard to work with. The pace of work is quite fast, we are constantly changing, and we still compete with technology itself.
Imagine that your phone is very new every month, sometimes you just want to buy another phone because it’s progressing so rapidly. But then, if you see the progression of the phone itself, every time they come out with a new product, they are trying to fulfill the needs of the customer. Obviously, when we create a product, we serve the purpose of the customer. But then when technology becomes more advanced, we are actually trying to help the customer make their life easier, simplify the process, make it more user-friendly, and also try to create a product that they can use on a daily basis.
But if you think about it, the process behind that involves a lot of people putting their minds and hearts into that kind of product. Right now, to develop the older tech people because of this movement, innovation, strategy, and also trying to understand the customer and doing the research and everything, something to develop is not just about the skill itself.
For me, I think the ones who are actually working in tech, are already thinking about what’s next and what improvements they can make, what innovations they can do, how to deal with innovation, and also with the way they need to do things. I think everybody in the tech company, as far as I know, they already done that. But one thing they are forgetting about is that it’s okay to fail.
What it means is that sometimes it’s not the thing that we are thinking, the way that the things that we want to achieve and everything, someone fails during the journey, and during that time they forget how to recover from their break. Because sometimes they break down because of failure. But most of the time that I see, during this time of error, people forget how to survive in this kind of situation.
For me, that’s the most important thing that we need to develop in our own people, especially in tech, which is living with technology itself. It’s very easy to innovate, and very easy to create a good product. But during that time, how many times, how many hours do they spend time for that one? How many times they actually did break down? How many times have they said that this is not the work that they wanted to do, this is the thing that impacts their well-being?
Impacting the world is one thing, but the most important thing is how you survive in this kind of situation. There’s so much that needs to be developed in this type of era. People forget how to survive because it’s different from the old-timers. Because before we had phones, I didn’t know what kind of good technology was at that time. Because I’m coming from a time before ATMs. There were no headphones, I’m learning to use the internet during my time. But before that, I needed to write a letter.
Nowadays, communication is almost instantaneous, less than a second. We’ve already gotten through, we’ve already received a message, and sometimes it becomes faster. However, what I see as necessary is the development of survival mode. I believe the company already understands the common aspects of developing individual talent. For me, I don’t see any difference. The only thing that differs is seeing what kind of subjects or things our employees already possess. We just need to fill in the gaps, but we also have to teach them how to survive in this kind of situation. Remember, the pace will create exhaustion very easily. How can they survive in this situation? That’s the thing we need to do to develop our own talent.
Navigating Talent Acquisition in the Digital Era
Lydia: This is a foundational element that everyone needs, especially in times of volatility. We’ve seen it arise during the pandemic, and there have been so many changes in technology. Also, when looking at the people function itself and Talent Acquisition, it’s more about the people function rather than the entire company. This leads me to the team itself. The impact of digitalization, rapid changes in technology, and the need for more data, analytics, and insights into these things are also evident. So, how do you think this has changed the role of a Talent Acquisition Professional or someone in the people space?
Herman: This is a unique aspect that I believe many HR professionals need to do. If you imagine, technology can help us find the right fit for our company. For selection, AI can assist in finding the right candidate. However, there are also problems in this area. For example, if I want to find a marketing person, how can I do that in the system itself? It depends on whether the candidate has put the right competency or the right words into their digital CV or text.
For me, it’s very easy to serve the person because they’ve written something. If the candidate writes the right things about themselves in their biodata, the system makes it very easy for us to find them quickly. But the question is, how can they write the right competency that they have? On our side, how can we ensure that the person is equal to the things they’ve written in their system? This is still a challenge. This helps us to find a candidate, but sometimes from our perspective, it’s just garbage.
For example, someone can write that they’re very good at Human Resources and everything else, but their experience is only one or two years, and they’re moving from one company to another with the same title. They’re just working on the same thing over and over again. So, the problem for us is how to ensure that the person we’re looking at isn’t just garbage data. That’s the challenge we have right now. The system that we provide at this point in time is good to help us find a resource.
The thing we don’t have right now is a way to ensure this data is valid based on what they already have. Do we need to have a certificate of death? And do we understand if this person is very good in HR? Right now, we don’t have that. There are two channels, but for the first time, we have this kind of data in the system, which is very good. You can play around with the third-party sourcing about this one. It’s very easy to find, just like typing, you will have quite a lot of results. But many times, it’s just like you said, “Is it true?” It’s not, because we compared it with when we did the interview. I don’t think he’s ready to write competency and adopt, we don’t feel that he has the competency. That is one thing.
But then it needs to evolve over time. I talked a lot with the party about this one, but the thing that they have, how you would need to develop your own system that we can be happy with, is quite a bit. It will be useful for us. That’s the second part if you’re looking for a resource. It’s actually the process itself. If we take the candidate out of the equation, but if you see from the process perspective, it’s pumping us quite a lot. It’s very effective, it’s very efficient, and we don’t spend quite a lot of time finding a candidate until we onboard the person. The system can help us, the system can tell us, and teach us, and also can be processed by the tools.
So, from quite a lot of people that we have using that kind of technology, it’s heartless people, and fewer people can help us to think about the strategy added into doing the admin input system, it’s fine, it’s all right. But from the process perspective, it’s very effective. It’s very efficient, it’s very good. Not just the process. But also, if you sequence into under false perspective, it’s very good. That’s something we can sell to the management that by using this kind of system, it will be saving our own money quite a bit.
But something that we always forget, because the multiple is one, is based on the financial, is actually our own loss cost is only calculated for one year. But then how we see costs is that probably it’s very expensive at the beginning, but actually, if you see the long term, it will be more cost-saving for the company. If you want to implement any kind of technology on your own, probably the investment at the beginning is quite expensive. But you see the long term, it will be great. So, those are the two things that I see from the TA perspective and also related to the technology that we have right now.
Go Beyond Checklist when Recruiting
Lydia: As you said, it elevates the role of a Talent Acquisition Professional or someone in the people’s space to become more strategic. They also assess the data they get from the technology and understand what the real challenge is. It’s interesting to see how you’ve given feedback to the service provider to enhance the product. It’s nice to see the sort of partnership you have. That’s great.
In terms of your experience, you’ve clearly seen nearly 20 years in recruitment, not just recruitment but in the people space. You’ve also transitioned across different industries, and now you’ve moved into a transformation perspective. This is very interesting to see, especially when you’re looking at developing the needs of the people. You’re really going to the foundational aspects of what it takes to move people from one space to a different kind of mindset.
So, what advice would you give someone who’s starting out in recruitment today?
Herman: If I could give one piece of advice to recruiters, it would be this; Recruiting is not just about filling a position. It’s about understanding people. When you become a recruiter, you start to see things from a different perspective. You’re not just choosing from a list of people.
I’ve noticed that many recruiters approach an interview like a checklist. They’re looking for specific qualifications or traits. For example, they might want someone with a master’s degree or someone with operational skills. They might prefer someone who is friendly. But an interview isn’t just about ticking boxes on a checklist.
As a recruiter, yes, you have a checklist to help you understand the candidate and the position. But the most important thing is to learn about the person. You need to see what’s best about them and how they might fit into different situations and positions.
Imagine if you only considered a candidate for one job. You might miss out on a lot of benefits. When you interview someone for one position, they might be very good at another position that you didn’t consider. If you only use a checklist to choose people, you might miss out on these opportunities.
That’s the advice I would give to recruiters. It’s not just about the job. It’s about understanding the person.
Lydia: This has been a great discussion, especially from the perspective of seeing transformation through the lens of the people function. We’ve delved deep into what it takes to align both the business needs and the people’s needs within an organization that is growing and transforming. We’ve also discussed the various challenges that arise along the way. I’m curious about the one key ingredient that will propel you to the next phase.
Thank you so much for your time and your insightful contributions today. You’ve been really generous. For those listening who would like to connect with you later, could you please share your contact details?
Herman: If you want to connect with me, you can contact me at hcahyadi.id@gmail.com. I’m open to helping in any way that I can.
Lydia: So thanks again, Herman. It’s been wonderful to have you on the show. We have been in conversation with Herman Cahyadi of Gojek. Thank you for joining us this week and remember to subscribe to stay tuned for more weekly episodes of All-In Recruitment.
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