How to hire the most suitable candidate with least effort and time

Effective Recruiting

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• Keep company’s job portal updated with latest open positions.• Try to hire directly from in-house recruitment team that could be trained.• Make impressive, compact, specific and complete JD + company profile.• Post jobs to all possible sites and keep them up-to-date.• Keep a complete database of selected / not-selected candidates.• Always inform in JD, when can a candidate re-apply for job? Add this information in rejection

e-mails and them willingness to stay in touch through social sites.• Conduct some educational, career counselling seminars etc. and invite not selected

candidates too. It could be classroom, online or webcasts etc.• Mention company website and social networking links in job related e-mails.• Be open for interview process feedback for areas of improvement.• Keep a presentation ready for approaching educational institutes and third party recruiters.

Attract

• Once selected, whether a candidate accepts offer or doesn’t join, maintain a minimal touch through festival/birthday/anniversary e-mails (even if they are auto generated) and mention point of contact and website links to keep communication open from their side.

• Above should be true for ex-employees. • There could be a separate body in company looking after alumni and yet to join

candidates.• Always answer queries on high priority and hence it’s better to have a team rather than

an individual looking after maintaining relationships with distant relatives who are not part of company’s family yet or any more.

• Alumni might join as part-time or contract employees or trainers occasionally. They can also be rewarded for referrals and invited for company’s annual party or leadership meeting etc. Such networking is not harmful but could be helpful if attrition is too high.

Maintain

• Always streamline every process and consider each good and bad feedback until excellence is achieved.

• Be ready to learn and adopt new ways of getting better and faster (even from competitors).• Expand learnings by sharing and training others who’re part of the process.• Maintain a database of records of education, qualification, certification, past experiences etc. of all

the employees.• Always maintain details of complete interviewing process of an employee and place the details with

employee records.• Any specific feedback for and by employee should also be kept under employee records.• Best is to keep soft copies of every detail. Use scanner and also email/document to PDF converter.• Keep refining processes for zero defects and no delays as a measure to be achieved with time.• Remember to hone interviewing skills of all interviewees as they are the brand ambassadors of the

company and face of company to a larger outsider crowd.• Listen more and speak less for ongoing improvement.

Process

• Keep shortlisting criteria ready and refine it time to time. • Everyone in interview workflow should decide over shortlisting criteria• In absence of all interviewers coming on same page, overall interviewing could be time wasting and it will be difficult to find the right

candidate. There could be a possibility of losing the most suitable candidate on the way and recruiting someone with some compromises to pay for later.

• Candidate’s probable manager should always be involved in interviewing workflow.• If a candidate’s CTC or position is not in sync with what could the company offer, then not to shortlist the candidate would be better idea

than creating anomalies within company.• Should never hire a candidate on too low or way too high CTC/position as compared with market and company’s existing employees. • Always keep statistics and graphs ready to refer to while deciding over compensation and other benefits.• For any anomalies, make sure that there are valid highlighters like qualification, certification or niche skills etc. that could encourage

existing employees rather than discouraging or confusing them.• There has to be a trade-off between offering too high/low and correcting compensations year after year. That has to be purely on

performance basis and not on current compensation basis (which is considered at time of hiring and rarely afterwards provided the employee is in not-to-let-go-of category). Best performer with highest pay may not like to be offered 2% hike while a below average gets 20% hike just because of being a low salaried one. Such decisions must be centralized, strategic and involve best brains in the company.

• Don’t recruit for shooting attrition up. Hold on and think if that’s happening after some recruitments/performance appraisals/promotions. • Highlight CV for next rounds. Let next round interviewers use different markers to highlight CV based on their choices. With time, try to

bring all interviewers on same page, so that rejections per rounds reduce to minimum.

(Short)list

• Screen the candidate for 20-30 minutes while talking to candidate for the first time after his CV gets shortlisted for a role.

• Explain about company, if needed explain differentiating features. (Sell the company to the candidate)

• Explain about the role and JD. (Buy the candidate for the position)• Ask candidate’s education, qualification, certifications, trainings, past experience etc. (Let

candidate sell him/herself)• Clarify candidate’s doubts and queries in best possible ways. (Keep buying candidate by

treating him in humble manner)• If candidate looks suitable, inform about next round and if needed, give on the spot feedback

as a take-away. Follow this practice for each subsequent round. (Be friendly and polite no matter what)

• Keep record of summary of complete conversation and highlight areas for fast reading. Either share with next round panel or keep the details ready in case candidate reapplies in future.

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• Technical and functional fitment assessment should take 40-60 minutes and candidate should be informed about it in advance.

• If needed, tell candidate to keep a paper and pen ready so that interviewer doesn’t have to spend time in repeating scenario based questions.

• Try to ask questions from a pool rather than certain specific questions. Or at least cycle the set of questions in the duration by which a candidate can reappear for the interview.

• Inform the candidate about typical areas on which skills would be tested. If possible include the keywords in JD also. • Previous round can reassure if candidate is prepared for the skills to be assessed in next round.• Let candidate take some time for brushing up (giving heads-up in previous round)or recollect if skills interview is

hard enough and has very high gauge. Don’t hire on basis of what’s not known, rather hire for what’s known. It could be possible that interviewee was better than interviewer but the set of questions were more specific to interviewer’s choice. Be polite and accommodating, don’t show attitude. At the end, the choice of selecting candidate is interviewee’s but that doesn’t give him opportunity to be disrespectful or bullying. Remember you’re representing an organization and not yourself. Leave a positive and welcoming impression. Don’t take interviews in bad mood.

• Gather all the skills to be assessed under one round and focus on other aspects in subsequent rounds.• Assess candidate’s fitment for the roles and responsibilities as the focus of this round.

Fitment - 1

Fitment - 2• Managerial fitment round should take 20-30 minutes and assess candidate’s fitment for company on longer run.

• Anything that’s input for this round, should be asked in previous round (after the candidate’s fitment for previous round was confirmed/probable). E.g. CTC, notice period, aspirations (short and long term), reasons for quitting, expectation from company if offered a job, opinion on company culture and environment related details etc.

• If company’s culture is of micromanagement or working under pressure etc. of less acceptable practices, then behavioural questions based on real scenarios of past experiences of working with not-so-fit or perfectly fit candidates could be asked in this round.

• This round can also help in aligning prospective candidate’s goal with company’s goal. So in general a visionary should talk to the candidate in this round. Thant’s why this round is called as executive round. Top management (or at least candidate’s manager) should take interest in talking to candidate in this round.

• If company doesn’t offer enough training and time before expecting employee to perform, then look for candidates with good learning curve (match it with candidate’s opportunities versus his/her procrastinating).

• If candidate is expected to handle a client facing role, better to look for a person with good communication as he/she will represent the company in front of client.

• For skype rounds, take screens and keep them for matching while the candidate joins the company.• For all rounds being telephonic, talk to candidate after joining and make sure he/she is the one who answered the interview calls. In this regard,

records of interview questions (one or two most distinguishable ones) may help.• Always spend some time in documenting interview questions and reading notes of previous rounds. Don’t rely on memory even if you’re not

busy enough to recall things; there are people who can’t rely on your memory or willing to access you instead of accessing your notes.• Be good at typing /noting fast and use industry wide shortcuts or create your own (elaborate them later for others if needed). It’s not a good

idea to buy time for preparing interview notes. This skill can be developed easily with time. Interviewing gives ample opportunities of learning and grooming; use them.

• Just as a candidate looks at the company as more than a monthly salary provider, a company should also look at the candidate as more than someone drawing a monthly salary. Talk about overall yield for both candidate and the company in this round.

• For compensation negotiation, the hiring manager (a centralized body who’s responsible to do justice for all existing and new employees without giving anyone chance to blame them before quitting) needs to do some homework. That’s why it shouldn’t be a clubbed up round or by anyone who spoke with candidate earlier.

• Always hire at par with (or more than) market.• Consider experience, expertise, education, qualification, certification and as many criterion as the current company spectrum and vision of

company consists of.• Make notes of negotiation points (positive and negative both). Interview notes of previous round, CV etc. may help here.• Define a min and max beforehand and try to pitch for the average of min-max during negotiation. Sometimes you may come across a

better negotiator, you may not wish to lose. Learn from him/her without delay. Make notes.• Don’t overpromise. Always inform what’s generalized and if needed, add clauses like – “performance based” and “company’s discretion”

etc. in offer letter.• By the time, a person may prove his/her worth, other 2 existing employees may leave organization as they would suddenly feel less

paid/recognized. Accept your fault so that you have a room to groom. Correct mistakes as soon as possible.• Always make sure, people in management roles have to be good with people and ready to accept certain anomalies that is part of a big

organization. On individual roles, there could be people who are highly competitive and may not tolerate others’ disseverance. It’s important to learn to accept failures early in life and career and also to understand that world is not always fair. For anyone who negatively impacts office environment, whether a very good performer or what not, shouldn’t be offered too high compensation, reward or early promotion. Never make it hard for a candidate to leave organization unless they are positive change agents. Think for company for longer term company goals.

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Happy hiring !!..