The Case for Recruitment and Selection Sesha Atkuru

I work in the automotive manufacturing industry. Spending money on marketing and new product designs is highly important to survive. Today’s vehicles are more software driven vehicles compared to vehicles developed a decade back. Over the air software updates are sent to the vehicles that can change the vehicle ground clearance, or simply slow down the vehicle in the case of a theft or call 911 when vehicle crash is detected. These software developers are in high demand in the industry because of their unique skills of combining software with hardware vehicles. Identifying the right talent, recruiting them, providing them benefits and retaining them is costlier than the one-time cost of Super Bowl commercial. While vehicle manufacturing companies’ business focus is more on manufacturing and selling vehicles, headhunters try to grab these experts with tempting offers. Customers do not care how complex the software is or who developed it. Customers only look at the style, color, design of the vehicle and imagine themselves in the place of the Hollywood actors in the Super Bowl commercial.  That commercial pulls the customers to dealerships. That is why automotive companies spend millions of dollars for product design and marketing. For non-visible yet very important software development, automotive companies depend on contracting firms. This is more cost effective compared to hiring. In one recent incident, my company lost billions of dollars because of battery recall in electric vehicle. But it simply recovered that amount from the contracting firm which delivered the faulty product. That is the reason why most automotive industries prefer spending more dollars on commercials, marketing and product design which attracts the customers to buy the product. At the same time, automotive companies spend millions to hire engineers for manufacturing vehicles in the factory. Where to spend money is a business decision