Tech firm follows style of Google, Apple, to attract 500 employees in bid for regional prominence.
It has taken a little over two years for Kasikorn Business-Technology Group (KBTG) to leapfrog from a startup under Kasikornbank to become a regional tech company that is looking to recruit at least 500 more people this year.
Over the past two years, KBTG has attracted a large group of the IT industry’s ‘cream of the crop’ — both in Thailand and from overseas — creating a lot of waves in Thailand’s tech community. It is determined to expand rapidly and become one of the best regional tech firms, and it believes that recruitment of talented people is the key to achieving that goal.
-KBTG launches Tech Kampus to build national ecosystem for technology and tech talent
-KBTG establishes Kubix, a new company for the digital asset business
Every year since 2017, KBTG has held ‘TechJam Thailand’ events, the goal of which was to find skillful IT personnel. However, the need for new talent has outgrown TechJam Thailand, and it is to be replaced by a more ambitious event called KBTG Inspire.
KBTG’s Head of Branding and Communication, Jutamanee Kayanan, says TechJam Thailand brought benefits in terms of awareness and branding, but it failed to recruit sufficient personnel to support big jumps in KBTG’s corporate growth. KBTG Inspire is seen as the answer, with the event’s focus shifting from competition to recruitment.
“TechJam has been very successful over the past three years, judging from the constant increase in the number of registered participants. A thousand people applied to attend the event, but KBTG failed to recruit them all to become our talented employees,” Jutamanee says.
“Most of those competing at TechJam wanted to win prizes, to become the winners in different categories — data, design or coding. But their motive was not to change jobs, so although the event drew more than 1,000 participants, we could not turn them into KBTG talents.”
The recruitment imperative will be refined and intensified at KBTG Inspire, which may be held twice this year – in late May and again in late September to October. Jutamanee says participants may not want to apply for jobs at the company immediately, but by attending the event, they will become aware of KBTG’s businesses and may be interested in joining it later.
An ‘open house’ option will also be available at KBTG Inspire. Basically, participants will fall into two groups: about 70 per cent will be people that KBTG wants to apply for jobs, and they will be required to submit CVs. The rest will be those who remain unsure about which tech company they want to join.
This latter group may not be completely interested in KBTG, and they may be taking part in the event simply to see what they can do at the company. At KBTG Inspire, they will get a complete picture of KBTG’s approach to its personnel and corporate culture.
Participants may choose to attend career-related workshops of their choice — from the developer’s side or one-on-one mentoring – and this could give them some inspiration or help them to find their preferences. Although they may not apply for jobs at KBTG, the open-house visitors will be left with an impression of the kind of tech firm they want to work for within three to five years.
“This is the first year of KBTG Inspire. It is a very large pilot project. If it succeeds, we will hold the event again and again,” Jutamanee says.
With its focus on recruitment, KBTG Inspire will collect data from applicants once every quarter for an entire year. Each event will have three days of offline activities providing the participants with the entire corporate picture, in the hope of sparking inspiration.
The event will be offline except for activities involving about 20 to 30 very senior positions. This group will attend online interviews and they may choose individually whether to attend the offline aspects of KBTG Inspire.
Job applicants who pass initial tests and get online interviews will be unable to see the actual working environment, and KBTG will be equally unable to judge whether they have personalities suitable for the company.
KBTG Inspire will be able to help fill the vacuum in terms of both IQ and EQ. Testing of intelligence quotient will be conducted routinely, just as it was at TechJam events in the past. For a measure of emotional quotient, the Agile Playground Workshop will reveal a participant’s personality while at work, to determine if they fit their positions.
KBTG aims to recruit 450 to 500 people through KBTG Inspire events this year, and all of the job applications submitted during the events will be recorded.
“Recruiting 450 to 500 people within this year is our highest number so far. The annual recruitments will not be fewer than this number,” Jutamanee says. “We plan to expand to China and Vietnam this year, and in Thailand, we have two hubs at Chaeng Wattana and Sam Yan.”
KBTG Inspire will recruit personnel in the development field, including data, design and coding. With new classifications and rearrangements in each field, applicants will get clear descriptions of the job positions, like data scientist, data researcher, structural engineer, deep-tech engineer, and so on — with a career path for each position. There will also be recruitment of people to work with world-leading technologies like KX and Kubix, and recruitment is open for all KBTG positions — both the Innovation and Support teams, as well as Branding and Marketing.
Jutamanee says a main aspect of organizing KBTG Inspire is creating widespread awareness of the event’s purposes. Participants can be expected to enhance their skills at their current jobs by taking part in the KBTG Inspire workshops, as well as preparing them for future work at KBTG.
The focus will be on recruiting talented people to help strengthen KBTG. Personnel are of paramount importance, Jutamanee says, and finding capable colleagues with qualities of open-mindedness and inspiration is not easy. KBTG Inspire is intended to be the answer.
In the long term, it is envisaged that KBTG Inspire will be organized on a continuous basis. In the past, there were one-day events like DevDay and Boot Camp every one or two weeks for a few positions in particular fields, such as developers.
However, such regular short-term events were a waste of resources for KBTG as the results were generally no better than those of other companies with DevDay and Boot Camp events. The larger KBTG Inspire event seems to encompass Hackathon, covering all of the company’s more than 200 Dev positions, including software engineers, test managers, test engineers, system engineers, data scientists, data engineers and system analysts.
“We are in a process of corporate transformation. All positions are rearranged in line with the change,” Jutamanee says. “Recruitment will involve all levels of beginner, intermediate and high positions. The applicants will clearly see career paths, and junior people will see that they can grow continuously at KBTG.”
She went on to say that the event will allow tech personnel to improve their skills, as the highlights will include top guest speakers from world-class tech firms in Thailand. Participating young talents will see first-hand how good tech firms in Thailand are, and that there is no need for them to find jobs overseas as many tech companies have their flagship offices in Thailand.
“We are creating new workshops, especially for KBTG Inspire. They are meant to inspire, educate and test the abilities of participants, apart from IQ. For instance, the Agile Workshop allows participants to learn about an agile working environment,” Jutamanee says.
“The workshops will impart ideas about teamwork, communications, who are good leaders or good followers, and who is capable of thinking outside of the box. We can determine which jobs are suitable for different groups of people,” she adds.
In the past, recruitment was conducted overseas. If KBTG Inspire proves successful, the company plans to hold similar events in China and Vietnam to recruit new personnel there, Jutamanee reveals.
KBTG has adjusted job positions, creating new titles for a clearer career path in Kubix and DevX. There are also new positions such as Tech Community, for communicating with the public about technologies in terms that are easy to understand. New positions have also been created to connect between the company’s different work divisions after the company’s transformation with additional staff.
Jutamanee points out that working at KBTG is constantly challenging. The staff learn new things all the time, and this aspect of the work is appealing to the company’s personnel. They improve their learning curve every year, and when they feel saturated with their current career field, they can ask for jobs in new fields, through reskilling or upskilling.
“We provide employees with more skills before they switch jobs. The good thing is that people who are bored with their current jobs do not need to resign — they just change jobs within KBTG. Those tired of working in Thailand may ask for a transfer to K-Tech in China or Vietnam,” Jutamanee said.
“KBTG Inspire is modelled after the examples of Google, Apple and Amazon. Their organizations are huge. We have learnt from them how to recruit and keep personnel.”
She says KBTG is looking for people who like challenges because the company is growing very rapidly and is suffering from a shortage of personnel. Its current workforce does not match the company’s rapid growth in the region.
The company offers work-related challenges and opportunities to grow professionally, regardless of seniority. For example, the Khunthong chatbot, which now has more than 600,000 active users a month, was created by a young employee.
Although KBTG operates under Kasikornbank and most of its staff are more than 40 years old, it is nevertheless a modern organization with a youthful corporate culture. People work as if they are siblings, or in a family. Not much adaptation is needed when joining, and there is no culture shock.
For instance, Managing Director Tawan Jithavech worked in the United States for more than a decade before returning to Thailand to join KBTG. “He didn’t suffer from culture shock [at KBTG] because it feels like home here. Everyone is ready to help and support. You don’t get stressed with work despite your workload,” Jutamanee says. “Anyone who is changing jobs should choose a good corporate culture. Despite hard work, a good culture makes you happy – just like at Google.”
KBTG’s strengths as an employer are in its corporate culture and attractive benefits, as well as the opportunity to learn while growing professionally. Jutamanee says there are two main groups of personnel at KBTG.
The first group are energetic young talents who are offered attractive benefits, including a (very high) 13-per-cent company contribution to the provident fund and a spending account with a monthly on-top budget of several thousand baht. The flexible allowances may be spent on prescription medicine instead of hospital visits, or if working from home, on IT equipment or other items, such as a new chair.
The other group are KBTG employees who are looking for security, particularly married people who have their first children and are building a family. The company provides them with insurance policies in which they can choose the beneficiaries, with the option of changing the insurance plan at any time. This offers a balance between life and work.
According to Jutamanee, KBTG’s resignation rate is very low. Most of those who resign are new graduates who are looking for new challenges after working with KBTG for two to three years. However, many people return after leaving the company — some of them less than six months after resigning.
KBTG has many employees who are new graduates and they tend to quit the company after one to three years to study for master’s degrees. However, many of these people return to work at KBTG after their graduation. This is particularly true of the Beacon team and the KPlus design team, who worked on the mission since it was called Project Victoria. As a result, those teams are even stronger today.
While it is difficult to recruit capable people, it is even harder to keep them working for the company. KBTG has a team tasked with resolving personnel problems, and it has a focus group dedicated to holding on to capable people. Personnel reshuffle is very helpful in dealing with such problems, Jutamanee says. It also allows employees to grow professionally if they feel saturated on an existing career path. Changes offer them new challenges and joy, as they are able to reskill and upskill. Many people at KBTG are working in fields unrelated to their university majors after reskilling and upskilling.
“We do not recruit new graduates so that they can work in the same positions for the rest of their lives. We choose them because we can groom them for continuous growth. That is what we look for in job candidates,” Jutamanee says.
“The first thing everyone must have is a positive attitude. This allows you to find a way out of every problem stemming from your work. We place more importance on attitude,” she adds.
When recruiting new employees, KBTG is aware of their capabilities and deficiencies. The company then offers them the opportunity to choose training courses that can turn their weaknesses into strengths.
“These are online third-party courses by SkillLane,” Jutamanee explains. “Everyone can choose any course to improve their skills and the costs are covered by KBTG. We have a culture of encouraging our employees to maintain lifelong learning,” she says.
According to KBTG’s Head of People Experience and Integration, Apiruedee Sinhaseni, the company looks for people who are prepared for corporate and personal changes for their betterment. They must have a growth mindset, positive energy and behavior that fits well with the KBTG culture.
“For someone good at technical matters, they must be real experts. If they are capable and have good management skills, we want them quickly,” Apiruedee says.
KBTG places equal importance on capability and attitude. “We favor capable people, although they may have graduated with other majors [unrelated to IT]. They just need to show their passion in particular areas and the intention to learn and adapt.”
Apiruedee says KBTG aims to see an annual workforce growth of 20 per cent to meet its business expansion. New hirings will be outbound rather than inbound during the Covid-19 situation.
There will be controls on the resignation rate while employees are being encouraged to develop a bond with the company, she says. Staff members are encouraged to move between different teams to boost their potential. A variety of boot camps is also organized to create quality candidates.
KBTG’s Head of Talent Acquisition, Waraporn Kabkham, says the company is focused on hiring new staff in the Application Group. This includes such positions as software engineers, data engineers and business analysts, as well as enterprise architects, project managers and delivery managers responsible for the supervision and delivery of different projects.
“There is also high demand from related divisions, such as Infrastructure, Cyber Security or IT Operation Support. This is because all divisions need to work together to ensure smooth operations,” Waraporn says.
“New positions for new businesses – like KX and Kubix, which involve building digital assets – may have a small share, but they are equally important,” she added. Waraporn concludes that KBTG’s career path is “something very interesting”. “We respond to employees’ demands, both vertically and horizontally. They can also choose to grow either on a management or a specialist path.”
