Recruitment Writeup

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

WRITE-UP ON RECRUITMENT

-Developed By

Kumar Anshuman

E-mail : [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Recruitment refers to the process of attracting, screening, selecting, and onboarding a

qualified person for a job. At the strategic level it may involve the development of an

employer brand which includes an 'employee offering'.

With substantial changes in the political, social, economical and technological changes

throughout the world, recruitment as a standard process has also undergone numerous

changes and modifications.

Through this paper I have tried to reflect the current trends, benchmarking processes,

challenges & issues, comparisoin among various sectors and future recommendations. I

have also presented the standard practices being followed in our previous organizations.

Recruitment Processes and Practices: A Write-up

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CONTENTS

1. CURRENT TRENDS ..................................................................................................................... 2

2. BENCHMARKING PROCESSES ............................................................................................... 6

3. CHALLENGES & ISSUES ..........................................................................................................10

4. COMPARATIVE STUDY ....................................................................................................................14

5. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ......................................................................................................18

6. SUGGESTIONS / RECOMMENDATIONS ...............................................................................20

7. REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................................22


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1. CURRENT TRENDS

The increasing globalisation of the marketplace combined with an ever increasing

shortage of skilled staff and advances in technology have resulted in large scale changes

to recruitment practices throughout the world.

It is apparent that the most significant changes to recruitment involve the development of

professional employment organisations (P.E.O.’s), the use of email and the internet for

sourcing jobs and candidates and the continuing trend towards contractors and temporary

staff.

The recruitment industry is gearing up for these changes by developing strategic alliances

and global partnering to ensure access to the best candidates world wide.

Professionalism, technical competence and the development of world best practice are the

hallmarks of successful recruitment consultancies. Organisations hiring staff continue to

undergo massive change in striving to be competitive and profitable.

Many organisations have moved to outsourcing all of their non-core activities.

P.E.O.’s have emerged to manage multiple employee groups for companies outsourcing

the human resource function. All employees from unskilled positions through to the CEO

can, and are, outsourced.

This concept is quite different to the typical approach used by most temp agencies.

Organisations of any size can benefit from this approach and employees, particularly

those working in smaller companies, have much to gain from the combined benefits that

a P.E.O. can offer as a large employer.

Increasingly, recruitment agencies are moving towards sourcing candidates through

internet job boards enabling recruitment activity to occur in real time. The ability to

recruit internationally has been a huge development and boon for organisations using

these services.

In Asia, the concept of “a job for life” is rapidly becoming a vague memory as large scale

retrenchment occurs and unemployment figures rise. The growth in temporary and

contract positions is a continuing trend and one that is already emerging as a significant

growth area in Australia.


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Unfortunately, in Australia this growth has also brought with it unparalleled growth in the

number of temporary hire firms, many of which lack the professionalism and skills

required.

Top Trends in Talent Acquisition / Recruitment:

There are numerous current trends at leading firms will continue to intensify in the

coming years:

� Referrals — will continue to produce the highest volume and highest quality of

hires. The target percentage of all hires from referrals at top firms will reach 50%

� Live video interviewing — live video interviews will move from the

experimental to become the standard, at least for initial interviews.

� Sustainability — the slowly building expectation of sustainable business

practices among employees and candidates will eventually become an essential

employer brand pillar.

� Retention impacts recruiting — the already increasing rates of turnover among

highly desirable employees will continue to the point where recruiting will have

to be able to scale up its volume to fill the vacancies.

� Candidate selling – the overall recruiting emphasis will continue to shift away

from what is becoming relatively easy — the “finding” of candidates. Instead,

there will be a shift toward the still difficult task of successfully “selling” top

talent who are in high demand.

� Remote work — the growth of technology and the willingness of managers to

accept remote work options will dramatically expand recruiting for remote jobs.

This shift will force recruiting to increase its capability to find and land a higher

percentage of candidates from around the world.

� Volatility and workforce planning – as continuous business volatility becomes

the “new normal,” data-driven workforce planning will become an absolute

requirement. In addition, the increased use (approaching 40%) and the improved

management of contingent workers will become essential to provide the needed

agility and flexibility.


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� Recruiting at industry events — as the economy approves, industry events will

return to popularity. And once again recruiting at these events will become an

essential and effective tool for recruiting top and diverse talent.

� Personalized recruiting — although it is still currently rare, more organizations

will attempt to “personalize” their recruiting and target it to specific extremely

high value targets.

Trends gaining momentum in Talent Acquisition / Recruitment:

� Dominance of Technology: Talent management leaders are investing heavily

supporting execution of talent management initiatives across digital platforms

(increasing peneteration of technology).

� Intense hiring competition returning in selected areas: While growth has

slowed somewhat in China, Australia and Southeast Asia — including India —

they continue to see dramatic demand for skilled talent. In the U.S. and Europe,

demand is still largely limited to certain industries where skills shortages have

been an issue for years.

In high tech inclusive of medical technologies, 2012 saw a significant escalation

in the war for top talent. A whole new breed of tech startups are emerging, each

vying for the best of the best.

� Social media increases its impact by becoming more data-driven": Adapting

social media tools from the business coupled with strong analytics is allowing a

more focused approach that harnesses and directs the effort of all employees on

social media. Talent leaders are increasingly seeing the value of a combination of

internal and external social media approaches for managing and developing talent.

� The need for speed shifts the balance between development and recruiting:

As the speed of change in business continues to increase and the number of firms

that copy the “Apple model” (where firm is continually crossing industry

boundaries) increases, talent managers are critically evaluating the “develop

internally first” approach.

In many cases, recruiting becomes a more viable option because there simply isn’t

time for current employees to develop completely new skills. As a result, the

trend is emerging to continually shift the balance toward recruiting for immediate


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needs and the use of contingent labor for short-duration opportunities and

problems.

� Employee referrals are getting coupled with social media: Talent managers are

beginning to realize that the real strength of social media is relationship-building

by the employees. With proper coordination, employee relationships can easily be

turned into employee referrals. This realization has leaded the shift towards

relying on employees to build social media contacts and relationships. The

strength of these relationships is leading to better assessment and the highest-

quality hires from employee referrals.

� Employer branding returns: Employer branding and building talent

communities are the only long-term strategies in recruiting. True branding is

rarely practiced especially in the cash-strapped function of today, but years of

layoffs, cuts in compensation, and bad press for business in general has forced

firms to invest in true branding. The increased use of social media and frequent

visits to employee criticism sites (like Glassdoor.com), make not managing

employer brand perception a risky proposition. While corporations will never

control their employer brand, they can monitor and influence in a direction that

isn’t catastrophic to recruiting and retention.

� Forward-looking metrics begin to gain importance: Almost all current talent

management and recruiting metrics are backward looking, in that they tell you

what happened in the past. Other business functions like supply chain, production,

and finance have long championed the use of “forward-looking” or predictive

metrics and the time is finally coming when talent management leaders are

shifting their metrics emphasis. Forward-looking metrics can not only improve

decision-making but they can also help to prevent or mitigate future talent

problems.


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2. BENCHMARKING PROCESSES

What are recruitment benchmarks?

Recruitment benchmarks in the selection process set out the acceptable standards that

have been determined as being the minimum for an applicant to be

(a) shortlisted for further consideration and

(b) assessed as suitable for appointment through interview or other selection processes.

These are usually established by people who know the job well (maybe a supervisor or

manager, someone who has held the job, a client or key stakeholder or a combination of

these).

Recruitment benchmarks “flesh out” the selection criteria or the key attributes that are

outlined in the role description by describing what would be expected to be found in an

acceptable (and superior) response from a candidate. They relate directly to the key

attributes required of a successful candidate and link directly to the role responsibilities.

Why should we bother?

Recruitment benchmarks help selection panels be more objective in their decision-

making. One of the greatest values for a selection panel, when agreeing on benchmarks,

is the actual sharing of information, knowledge and expectations that individual panel

members have about what a “good” candidate will look like. This selection panel

exchange about the level of knowledge, skills, experience, abilities and personal qualities

required to do the job well, decided against the requirements set out in the role

description, help the panel reach a shared understanding of the critical elements of the

role and what they need to see in candidates to be confident that they are the best person

for the job. They are “ground tested” for objectivity and fairness through this process –

provided there is open sharing of views and “group think” is avoided.

Recruitment benchmarks provide a wide range of significant benefits:

� help panels be more consistent in their decision-making. (By applying the same

standards to each application, selection panels are less likely to be distracted by

irrelevant information in an application)

� guide selection panels to make consistent decisions about acceptability across a

range of (sometimes quite disparate) candidates.


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� make the rationale for the decision more transparent. (If asked to justify their

decision, the panel can refer to the objective recruitment benchmarks and describe

the extent to which candidates met or exceeded them).

� help facilitate objective feedback for candidates. (Having clear and agreed

standards, the panel can refer to these when providing feedback to candidates and

help candidates identify where their strengths and weaknesses lie, providing

guidance for future learning and self-development).

� enable efficient shortlisting. (This is especially the case where applicant pools are

large. Where there are objective, measurable, “go/no go” benchmarks set for job

requirements, these can be used efficiently to cull down large pools to more

manageable numbers).

� assist in the development of practical and realistic interview questions or other

selection tools such as work tests. (By being specific about the standards or

performance expectations, targeted questions or processes can be developed to

test these).

Sometimes selection panels skip the process of agreeing on, and setting recruitment

benchmarks. This may be because they assume that everyone on the selection panel has a

good idea of what the job is, how it should be done and what a “good” candidate looks

like. However, unless recruitment benchmarks are established, the selection panel runs

the risk of working from different perceptions and expectations of candidate suitability

thereby putting good selection decision-making in jeopardy.

Salient Features of Benchmarking Recruitment Process / Strategy

In order to completely align the recruitment process / strategy with the business plans, so

as to stay ahead of the curve with the leaders in recruiting top talent from the industry, a

set of benchmarked processes should be followed with maximum efficiencies:

Capturing Resumes

� Existing database / resume to be integrated

� Candidate registration on company website

� Job websites

� From advertisements / via email / snail mail

� Campus recruitment

� Employee referrals

� Recruitment vendors

� Job fairs


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Managing Resumes

� Receive and manage responses from all sources

� Create, search, archieve and backup resumes

� Import resumes

� Track history of Candidates

� Check for duplicates

Candidate Communication

� Mail box

� Customary reply

� Tests

� Interviews

� In-process status

� Selection

� Rejection

� On hold

� Conditional closure

� Offer letters

� Other templates

Vendor Management

� Vendor Registration

� Track and evaluate vendor performance

� Create preferred vendor lists

� Send email notifications to preferred vendors

� Status checking

� Account management


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System Administration

� Add / manage users & roles

� Create interview panels

� Manage system settings

� Set up approval chains based on user profiles mapped to business rules

� Control user access across different offices through Logins / Passwords

� Generate MIS reports

Other Key Features

� Generate detailed real-time reports

� Customized alerts and notifications

� Integration with HRIS

Benchmarking Recruitment Processes


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3. CHALLENGES & ISSUES

Companies and HR personnel have made great inroads and improvements in the area of

recruitment and candidate selection over the years. However, the traditional recruitment

process is still costly and time-consuming for both employers and job seekers. The

following are some common problems:-

External Factors:

� Increase in staff mobility due to globalization of business environment

� Multiple candidate sourcing channels due to shortage of talents

� Increased volume of applications due to economic downturn

Complexity of Data:

� Incoming applications in various formats such as mail, fax, email and different

job board formats

� Cumbersome filing and retrieval due to incompatible source of information

Inability to Filter:

� Time-consuming manual screening and reviewing of resumes

Precise Data:

� Job board filtering technology does not provide job specific information

� Candidates are only telling you what they want you to know

� Wasting a substantial amount of time on interviewing unqualified candidates


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Database and Data Mining:

� No centralized database for information storage and retrieval

� No data-mining tool to locate candidates from previous hiring

� Unable to share resources with fellow companies; candidates not suitable for one

subsidiary may be ideal for another

Team Work:

� Lack of collaboration amongst colleagues within the hiring team

Control:

� Difficulty in keeping track of hiring costs and activities

Resulting in...

� Heavy administrative workload in the traditional recruitment process

� Hiring expenses become higher and hiring lead-time is much longer

According to different researcher the different issues and problem of recruitment are

identifies like; reference, prejudice, recruitment timing, delays in recruitment, invalid

standards, environmental influence like; technology, social, economic demand, political,

methods or sources of recruitment, unavailability of skills needed, lack of

independencies, increasing pressure from the applicant, sources of recruitment, culture,

skills and abilities are not directly observed, poor interview, unfamiliarity with job,

emphasis on negative information, personal biases, unfamiliarity with job and hiring

quotas, selection cost, flexibility in recruiting process and premature decision.

The issues & problems faced by private sector and public sector are different in nature.

For example, in public sector environment is major an issue and reference is a least

affecting issue in recruitment. In private sector the major issue is prejudice and least

affecting issue is selection standard.


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In the last few years, the job market has undergone some fundamental changes in terms

of technologies, sources of recruitment, competition in the market etc. In an already

saturated job market, where the practiceslike poaching and raiding are gaining

momentum, HR professionals are constantly facing new challenges in one of their most

important function- recruitment. They have to face and conquer various challenges to

find the best candidates for their organisations.

The major challenges faced by the HR in recruitment are:

� Adaptability to globalization – The HR professionals are expected and required to

keep in tune with the changing times, i.e. the changes taking place across the

globe. HR should maintain the timeliness of the process

� Lack of motivation – Recruitment is considered to be a thankless job. Even if the

organisation is achieving results, HR department or professionals are not thanked

for recruiting the right employees and performers.

� Process analysis – The immediacy and speed of the recruitment process are the

main concerns of the HR in recruitment. The process should be flexible, adaptive

and responsive to the immediate requirements. The recruitment process should

also be cost effective.

� Strategic prioritization – The emerging new systems are both an opportunity as

well as a challenge for the HR professionals. Therefore, reviewing staffing needs

and prioritizing the tasks to meet the changes in the market has become a

challenge for the recruitment professionals.

According to the XpertHR recruitment trends survey, 95% of employers that faced

problems in their recruitment processes over the last year cited the low quality of

candidates applying for posts as a barrier to recruitment.

Employers also reported a lack of applicants, candidates withdrawing their acceptance of

job offers and people failing to appear for interviews as key problems.

Yet, while three-fifths (61%) of employers that faced recruitment challenges last year

listed a lack of applicants as a barrier to hiring, two organisations in five (42%) also said

that receiving too many applications for jobs had caused them problems.


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Overall, 41% of organisations had experienced barriers to recruitment once the post had

been advertised.

Rachel Suff, author of the XpertHR report, commented: "Just because unemployment is

at its highest point for many years does not mean that employers can always recruit

appropriately skilled individuals.

"The increase in unemployment often means an increase in the number of applications for

vacancies, which can make it difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff."

In addition, the survey found that the cost of filling vacancies fell for many employers

over the last year, with 41% of the 94 organisations that took part in the survey reporting

that their cost to hire had decreased, compared with 23% that said their spend had

increased.


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4. COMPARATIVE STUDY

Private vs Public Sector

While most of the practices are standardized across various industries within a sector,

some differences are observed between the practices of Private and Public Sector.

The job selection interview is the most important stage for both types of employers. The

differences identified concern the number of interviews organized with each candidate.

Whereas in public institutions there is usually only one interview with each of the

candidates who meets the minimum job application requirements, in private companies

the candidates usually participate in a series of job selection interviews.

Within the private companies, the CVs screening is more frequently used. On the other

hand, the public institutions report to make use more frequently of the written knowledge

tests. Even if there are not statistical significant differences, in public institutions,

practical tests seem to be more frequently used. Usually they include computer skills

tests, language tests, or other job-related tasks.

Also, standard employment forms and group interviews are more frequently used in

public institutions. On the other hand, the trial period and the cover letter are more

frequently used in private companies.

Compared to private companies, in the public sector the job application procedure is

more complex. While in private companies the employment application usually includes

the CV, the motivation letter and less often some pre-screening written questions the

candidates have to answer when applying, in state institutions the application file is

thicker. The job selection process in public institutions is regulated by the Government. A

vacancy in public institutions can be occupied through a contest or an exam. Some of the

most common documents required upon application are: the contest application form,

CV, legalized copies of identity card or other identity documents, education diplomas,

work experience certificates, criminal record certificate, medical certificate, and any

other job relevant documents. However, with increasing security concerns, private

companies have started demanding all sorts of documents for verification.

Despite the number of applications, the challenges in employee selection for recruiters

from public institutions may be higher compared to those faced by private companies.

Due to the legislative employment constraints, but also to the candidate’s chance to fill a

complaint regarding the fairness of the job selection process (which is a well-known


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possibility for job vacancies in public institutions), the recruitment commission needs to

have clear proof in favor of the final employment decision.

According to the ownership of the employing company, the strongest differences between

private and state employers are related to the usage of written knowledge tests. Whereas

in public institutions the theoretical knowledge test is a more frequent stage used in the

job selection process, it is less used in private companies. The difference can be

explained by the legislative requirements for public institutions to include in the

employment process a written test or/and a practical test. Since for many of the

vacancies, organizing a written test may be more at ease than preparing a practical test,

especially for graduated jobs, most of the employers rather choose the former. Moreover,

in public institutions the candidates’ knowledge on national legislation, but also field and

job specific knowledge is conferred increased importance than in private ones. Referring

to private companies, other studies confirm that private employers do not value to a high

degree the educational indicators in the job selection process, while public employers put

more emphasis on the candidates’ education.

Regarding the rather confined use of the CVs screening in public institutions, several

explanations may be possible. Some organizations blame it on the restrictions imposed by

the national legislation. While in state companies the application file becomes by itself

one of the first screening stages in the employment process, in private companies, the

screening of CVs has the same role of a first screening stage, but done by recruiters.

The frequency of using practical test also seems to differ in public and private companies.

Even if there are not significant statistical differences, in public institutions practical tests

seem to be more frequently used. Usually the practical contest includes computer skills

tests, language tests, or other job-related tasks. The fact that public institutions use the

practical tests more seldom can be again a consequence of the national legislation

requirements. Since the employment process in public institutions has to include a written

test and/or a practical test, seldom institutions include both of them. Moreover, if we refer

to the fact that once employed, the dismissal process is even more difficult in the public

sector, we can understand that the employing commission is encouraged to make the best

hiring decision.

Also, standard employment forms are more frequently used in public institutions. This is

explained by the fact that when referring to this selection stage, public employers relate

to the contest application form, which is again required by the national legislation. On the

other hand, the trial period and the cover letter are more frequently used in private


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companies. Regarding the trial period, both private and public organizations are legally

allowed to use it, respondents from private companies more often indicate dismissals of

the candidates during this period. For many of the private sector respondents, the trial

period is considered to be a selection stage. On the other hand, for public employers

starting again the employment process could seem an inefficient solution.

The opinions concerning the usefulness of the cover letter for the hiring process are

greatly different within both private and public institutions. Still, in the private companies

the cover letters seem to be more appreciated. The main argument brought by the private

employers is that the cover letter helps recruiters to get a first impression about the

candidates’ motivation. Even the fact that the candidate is not able to write a rather

original cover letter and prefers to copy-paste it from the internet models may bring

useful information for the selection process. Furthermore, the reluctance of the public

institutions in valuing the cover latter can be associated with the lack of emphasis during

the selection process on the candidates’ motivation for work.

Regardless of the HR practices implemented, both private and public organizations are

labor-intensive enterprises that strongly depend on the potential and competency of their

employees. Organizations have to implement effective HR strategies in order to get

access to the qualified labor force. One prerequisite in achieving success is to understand

and implement in the personnel selection process the practices that guarantee the hiring

of the best employees.

The traditional selection stages (job selection interviews and CVs screening) are mostly

used by employers, regardless of the ownership type. Stages considered to have a higher

predictive validity are less used by the employing organizations. However, a set of

differences in the hiring practices are identified.


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Small vs Large Organizations

The strongest difference between the two types is the approach. Small organizations have

relatively informal approach. Their employment requirements are usually planned on a

short notice and therefore they target to complete their recruitment process at the earliest.

As a result, on most of the occasions they can not afford the standard process as it takes

relatively more time.

Also the small organizations have a budget limit on each and every operation of theirs

and so they also can not afford the cost which comes with the standard recruitment

procedure.

Large organizations on the other hand plan their recruitment well in advance and so they

tend to follow the standard practices.

One more important difference which exists is that quite often than not employees tend to

migrate from smaller organizations as compared to their larger counterparts. So, it is

really not feasible for the small organizations to invest the same amount of money on

each employee as the large organizations do.


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5. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

I along with my friends have worked in organizations in a variety of different sectors of

India. These range from IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys to

Power Sector companies like Relaince and Vedanta. All of us got jobs through the

campus recruitment process conducted by their respective companies. While comparing

the processes of different firms across differing industries, we have noticed that while the

processes may differ marginally across varied organizations, the core framework of the

recruitment process followed remains mostly the same.

Initially, the company is approached by the placement cell of the educational institute for

recruiting students from the concerned institute. The people responsible for the placement

activities (also students themselves) in essence, “pitch” the college to the company. Once

the company officials give their assent, a date is fixed and the organization’s recruitment

cell arrives at the campus for conducting the requisite process. The key components of a

campus recruitment process include:

Aptitude Test: A written examination lasting anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours,

an aptitude test can range from a test for measuring the basic skills and speed of

candidates to a test for checking the candidate’s awareness of some more advanced

mathematical, English language and other relevant concepts.

Group Discussion: Discussions in which candidates are assemble in a round table of

sorts and given a topic to deliberate on. The candidates are required to present some valid

and relavant points pertaining to the topic and, after reaching a mutual understanding,

come to a conclusion before the stipulated time period allotted to them ends.

Interviews: Interviews may include:

Technical Interview: An interview in which the candidate’s knowledge in the

area of recruitment is tested.

HR Interview: An interview in which the candidate is asked general questions

about his / her self, interests, hobbies so as to become more familiar with him /

her.

Telephone Interview: This can either be a technical or HR Interview conducted

through the phone or over the Internet via Skype.


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A combination of the above processes is followed in campus recruitment processes of

various organizations. For instance TCS’ campus recruitment process consists of an

Aptitude Test, followed by a Technical and an HR Interview. On the other hand, in the

power sector, Reliance uses an Aptitude Test followed by a Group Discussion and

subsequently an HR Interview to recruit students.

The recruitment process is extended further in case a hired employee is outsourced to one

of the company’s client. For instance, in our case, the parent company TCS had sent the

employee to its client, the National Stock Exchange of India. In such a case, the

employee is required to pass through additional recruitment steps before being finally

allotted a project therein. Thus, the employee here was required to undergo a short

interview to gauge his skills and interests for the job. This was followed by another

detailed technical interview in which the employee was expected to have exhaustive

knowledge of the concerned domain. This interview was largely done in preparation for

another interview termed the client interview in which the employee was interviewed by

employees working at the client side itself. Finally, after all these stages, the employee

was allotted the project.


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6. SUGGESTIONS / RECOMMENDATIONS

Although the current recruitment process is quite exhaustive, covering a range of

methods from walk-in or telephonic interviews, to aptitude tests and group discussions,

there still exists, scope for improvement. To be able to identify which areas of the

recruitment process can be improved upon, organizations first need to understand the

recruitment process and its workings. This can be done by auditing the recruitment

process which would look at all the stages in the recruitment process and highlight areas

of excellence as well as potential improvement.

After getting the recruitment strategy reviewed, the organization should evaluate

employee feedback of the same, in effect understanding the candidate’s experience. This

will help them further identify and solidify any gaps or holes in the recruitment strategy

that need attention.

A potential recruit should mainly be judged on two parameters before hiring – eligibility

and suitability. The company should clearly define its eligibility factors – factors that

make a candidate valid for the current job at hand. This could be followed by defining the

minimum and maximum levels of the eligibility criteria thereby creating a range within

which all candidates will be accepted. Next, a scoring system could be developed which

would allow employees to allot an eligibility score for a candidate depending on how

well s / he meets the eligibility criteria.

The next task is to similarly calculate the candidate’s suitability score. This could be

more difficult than calculating eligibility scores because unlike eligibility, suitability

could be difficult to quantify. For instance, self-learning and a high sense of

responsibility might be some qualities that will make a candidate suitable for the job.

Allot a score to the candidate’s self-learning ability might thus prove to be difficult

although it is very much possible. Combining the eligibility and suitability scores will

provide the employees with a quantitative measure of the employee’s performance and

fitness for the job and remove any abstractness from the recruitment.

The campus recruitment process also requires significant improvement. Group

Discussions in the campus recruitment process at times tend to give more weightage to

the amount of stuff spoken by a candidate as opposed to the quality of the material

presented. Such practices instill the mentality of the-more-I-speak-the-greater-I-stand-a-

chance-of-getting-selected in candidates. The group discussion process should be fine

tuned to avoid such practices. It could also entirely be replaced by activity based

processes which call upon an individual or a group of candidates to perform a task and

then gauge them based on how well the task was performed. Or group discussions could


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be replaced by telephonic interviews as is the case with companies like Microsoft,

Amazon and Google. Microsoft even has its own form of interview called Microsoft

Interview in which it screens candidates based on their puzzle solving ability instead of

relying on the typical strengths / weaknesses / goals type questions. This model has also

been adapted by Amazon, Facebook and Google.

Finally, just like students learn from their peers and employees learn from their

colleagues, companies can also look up to other companies when it comes to framing

effective recruitment practices. It’s time companies realized that a recruiting function

can become excellent merely by identifying, copying, and then improving upon what

other firms have already proven to be effective. After all, there is no shame in copying

from the best

Final Thoughts

Each organization has to start somewhere to improve recruiting, hiring, and retention of

valued employees. Over the past several decades, human resources executives have been

steadily increasing their ability to drive business results while positively influencing the

quality of work life among their companies’ employees. As this understanding spreads

around the world, the real challenge will be to drive these insights deeper into integrated

processes competitive advantages will accrue to those companies that maximize the

benefits of strategic human capital management more quickly than the competition can.

For companies that stay ahead of the curve, and the human resources executives that fuel

that success, the rewards will be significant.

In the end, I would conclude with an age old saying:

Sow a thought, reap an action;

Sow an action, reap a habbit;

Sow a habbit, reap a character;

Sow a character, reap the destiny

Employees to an organization are like thoughts to human life; who ultimately craft

the destiny of the organization!!!


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7. REFERENCES

1. Yakubovich and Lup: Stages of the Recruitment Process, Organization Science 17(6),

pp. 710–723, November – December 2006.

2. Ferratt et al.: IT Human Resource Management Configurations and IT Turnover,

Information Systems Research 16(3), pp. 237–255, September 2005.

3. Ann Mills: Why Use Recruitment Benchmarks in Recruitment and Selection?

http://www.meritsolutions.com.au/recruitment-and-selection/why-use-recruitment-

benchmarks-in-recruitment-and-selection, October 11, 2011.

4. Laura Kartus: Recruitment process – how does benchmarking help,

http://www.assessmentsonline.co.za/articles/article_0002.asp.

5. Mathew Baxtor Reynolds: The problem with recruitment for software jobs ... is you,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/sep/23/problem-recruitment-software-

jobs, The Guardian, September 23, 2011.

6. Dr. Shaukat Malik: Issues and Problems Faced by Organizations in Recruitment: A

Case of Telecom Sector in Pakistan, International Journal of Business and Management

Tomorrow, Vol. 2, No. 5.

7. WRC Consultants: Issues and Challenges in the Recruitment and Selection of

Immigrant Workers in Ireland, Employers’ Diversity Network, 2009

8. Vernon J. Storey: Factors, Issues, and Problems in the Recruitment and Retention of

Teachers for Rural Schools, Journal ofResearch in Rural Education, Vol. 9, No.3, 160-

169, Winter, 1993.

9. Pooja Misra, Jaya Gupta: A Comparative Study of Recruitment Process in IT

Companies in India: Aspirant’s Perception, International Journal of Multidisciplinary

Research Vol.1 Issue 6, October 2011.

10. Dan Ofori, Majoreen Aryeetey: Recruitment and Selection Practices in Small and

Medium Enterprises: Perspectives from Ghana, International Journal of Business

Administration, Vol. 2, No. 3, August 2011.

11. Codruta Osoian, Monica Zaharie and Ioan Lazar: Does Ownership Matter?

Employee Selection Practices in Private and Public Sectors. Transylvanian Review of

Administrative Sciences, No. 33 E/2011, pp. 218-232

12. Dr. John Sullivan: 10 Predictions for 2012: The Top Trends in Talent Management and

Recruiting, http://www.ere.net/2011/12/05/10-predictions-for-2012-the-top-trends-in-

talent-management-and-recruiting, December 05, 2011.

13. Dr. John Sullivan: Next Year’s Recruiting Headlines, Trends, and Next Practices,

http://www.ere.net/2012/11/05/next-year’s-recruiting-headlines-trends-and-next-

practices/, November 05, 2012.

14. Dr. Ruchi Chadha: Current Trends Within the Indian Recruitment Market,

http://www.tmp.com/articles/current-trends-within-the-indian-recruitment-market/411/,

August 22, 2010.

15. Harish Batra: Current Recruitment Practices in India,

http://www.indianmanpower.com/imr-news-recruitment-practices-in-india.html, August

20, 2012.

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