Recruitment Drives Vs The normal process
recruiter...@gmail.com
Friday nights used to be pleasant a few years ago. Recruiting has
changed seasons so fast and so drastically that I find it quite
fascinating to think about how the times have changed.
The beginning of this millennia people were scavenging for jobs. They
either had offers or they did not. The ones that had offers had been
given joining dates years from then. That's true, I remember my
college seniors of the 2000 batch that were asked to join in July
2002! Later, people started getting jobs with a little effort. I
remember a discussion I had sometime back with a colleague of mine who
started his career with a struggle, where he scrounged for jobs,
running from one street to another, even volunteering to work as a
developer for free of cost. He landed up with a job in 2002, and
earned Rs.1500/- per month. He moved on to a consulting firm (which
were doing relatively pretty well then) and started earning enough to
be independant of his parents. The company closed and he was absorbed
by his client, my present employer. He, effectively, has worked only
in two companies in his 7 years of experience. He was addressing his
concerns about not having been able to hire for a position for 2
months inspite of 4 offers being made so far.
Our usual process of hiring involves two levels of technical
discussions and one HR discussion followed by a psychometric test
(plus the initial detailed talk with the recruiter, and a discussion
with a Director before making an offer). Typically the entire process
is an activity of 6 hours spread out over three days, where the third
day is for handing over the offer letter in person and detailing about
the post-recuitment process. The interviews usually start at 3 PM on
weekdays, and are carried forward to the next possible working day to
continue, and if possible, close it.
This is what I mean by "The normal process". This has become a rather
painful process because of the situation the company has come into
recently. Well, in simpler terms, we have fallen into a vicious cycle
of not having the abilty to increase the interview band-width
(shortage of interviewers), and not being able to hire (potential
interviewers). The time that the interviewers are able to dedicate has
become even more restricted because of the shortage of staff (again
falling into the same cycle of having not been able to increase the
bandwidth of interviewers and developers, alike), their work-loads
have increased further.
To break this problem, we have started to dedicate a few hours to
interviewing. The focus, is to bring in only those that would be worth
hiring. (Please note: I work for a product development company that,
not being immodest, hires nothing but the best. The company is in the
200-300 range of headcount, and is not well-known in India). With the
previous sentence "The focus,....", I mean that there is no benefit of
doubt being given to candidates that seem average or just above
average. There are tests that every candidate has to take,
irrespective of level at which they are being interviewed for (hence,
you can eliminate all those 5-7 years experience "wanna-be leads" that
would not want to write codes or solve problems!), and hence yielding
just the good guys and no average ones for interviewing.
>> Please share your thoughts in this strategy, if there be any other ways that you think would let me identify the good, I would love to try it out as well.
So, what is happening with this approach is that without having the
panelists invest too much of time, we are able to derive at having
only potential hires being interviewed at the first level. This has
helped us bringing down the hit rate of 1/100 to 1/20 to 1/5. So,
effectively the time that the interviewers (at the first level) spend
has been reduced 20 folds! Wow! thats great. My manager has been happy
with the strategy and its results, and the directors with the quality
of people we have been talking to.
Tomorrow is another day ahead where I was supposed to call in 8 people
for interviewing (as was my target for this week), but am calling in
only 4 (because I did not just want to give the benefit of doubt and
have the interviewers stay back till post-lunch just to talk and to
reject candidates.
Let me know your thoughts about this.
Peace, Love and Empathy.
[PS: I have been recruiting only for product development companies
always, and have never hired more than 10 people in a month. This time
around, I am supposed to hire 19 people this month. Every weekend has
helped me with an average of 3 offers and weekdays the traditional 2
or so. All suggestions about improving would be very helpful for all
of us. I would like to feature about networking in the next write,
please let me know if anybody else has plans already to cover the same]
Lets Network
recruiter...@gmail.com
Further more, I have had 7 offers in 12 interviews over this week, of
which 3 happened of the 6 candidates we met today, and 4 in 6
candidates we met over the weekdays. I thought I should share this
with you all. Please give me more suggestions to improve further.
Peace, Lover & Empathy
On Mar 7, 6:03 am, "Lets Network" <letzresou...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> The strategy that you've adopted out of your experience is truly
> commendable. I am also of the view that as a recruiter/hr we must endeavor
> to do the basic screenings right and sieve out the not so good from the good
> and let the panels get to interview only those that would feature on the top
> half of the draw. But to bring down your hit rates from 1/200 to 1/5 is
> truly amazing and I thank you for sharing with the group on your experience.
> Keep sharing!
>
> Rgds,
> Joe Neitham
> IT Recruiter - Singaporewww.letznetwork.blogspot.com
>
> On 3/3/07, recruiter.freela...@gmail.com <recruiter.freela...@gmail.com>
> > please let me know if anybody else has plans already to cover the same]- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -