What Ericsson looks for in candidates when hiring

While hiring leaders or managers, Ericsson expects them to exhibit the value of cooperation and collaboration, above everything else.

Since 5G, or fifth-generation mobile network, holds the key to the future, telecom major Ericsson is looking at exploring this entire landscape, like it did when 3G and 4G were coming in.

In India, which is a major part the company’s operations, Ericsson said it has been able to build talent repositories to meet domestic as well as global 5G demand.

“India offers us the flexibility to build a lot of technologies that are coming in now. We are looking at how to power our skill repositories with the needs of the next generation and not just for here and now,” Priyanka Anand, VP and Head of HR, South East Asia, Oceana & India, Ericsson, told Moneycontrol.

The Swedish telecom gear maker has scaled up production capacity and operations with its partner Jabil in Pune to meet the needs of 5G network deployment in India. It will lead to the hiring of 2,000 new employees at Jabil, and this will be completed in 3-4 months.

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As of 2021, Ericsson had over 26,000 employees in South-East Asia, Oceania and India.

At Ericsson, there is a surge in demand for data analysts, data scientists, AI professionals, machine learning experts, and people who can do network slicing, cloud etc.

The company’s strategy is to make full use of these technologies by using a mix of its existing workforce, and by tying up with universities to hire talents from campuses, and also from the open market.

Not just technical skills

Apart from technical skills, Ericsson lays great emphasis and importance on professionalism, integrity, and work ethics, which are pretty much its values.

“We very clearly don't hire just for proven competence, we also hire for potential. We look at the attitude, intent to learn, experiences and what competence it will bring to the table and learning experiences,” Anand said.

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While hiring leaders or managers, Ericsson expects them to exhibit the value of cooperation and collaboration, above everything else. When the company hires people, the recruitment teams assess them via some scenarios based on their roles to identify commitments to tasks.

Further, they check the candidates’ compatibility with the team or in other scenarios look at the talent that complements the larger team. “It is extremely important because we don't want individuals who can succeed, we want individuals who can work with the team and make the team successful and hence Ericsson successful,” the HR leader said.

In a nutshell, there are five crucial values prospective managers need to exhibit: encouraging a speak-up environment, courageous decision-making, embracing successes and failures with the same spirit, valuing collaboration over individual success, and finally, staying empathetic despite a high-pressure environment.