HIRING BEST PRACTICES

By Anish Mathew John

Best practice adoption in hiring leads to…

Realization of tangible and intangible benefits

• Tangible benefits:

1. Low cost of hiring (good talents are easily attracted)

2. Better ‘Quality of Hire’ leads to Higher levels of productivity reflecting on Gross Margins (Billability improves)

3. Improves sourcing through Employee Referral Programs

• Intangible benefits:

1. Goodwill prevails

2. Employer Value Proposition - Becoming known as the Best place to work

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Where are we today (snapshot)?

Not a known brand name

Fails to attract the best talents

Low retention of new hires and poor quality of new hires

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Where are we today?

• Still a known brand but not the one sought after

• Maximum number of our employees have gone to companies A, B and C

• Our new hire retention percentage is XYZ% YTD

• Low Quality of new hires: Only ABC% of new hires have so far scored above 4 (on a scale of 1 to 5) which reflects a low Quality of Hire. XYZ% of high performers had chosen to quit in less than one year.

• Recruitment process is not even semi-automated resulting in frequent errors in data due to manual intervention – lack of investment in technology to aid hiring

• Employee referral programs are considered as one lacking luster

• Offer letters are withheld till the date of joining

• Employees who’ve been hired have had no “Wow feeling” right from the time of being contacted by the recruitment team, followed by scheduling for interview, technical assessment, on-boarding and induction.08-03-2015 by Anish Mathew John 4

Our current plight

• Are feedback to candidates open (those rejected do not know the results)

• Long waiting hours at the lounge often exceeding 1 hour

• Candidates go through the value statements of the Company displayed on a screen as a presentation which does not mean much for a candidate

• Candidates who are interviewed are not interviewed in style and lacks empathy

• After communicating the selection, there is no follow up done with the employee before on-boarding

• Recruiters lack enthusiasm to come up with creative ideas to make the work place a wonderful ambience as its “number pressure” always at the back of their mind

• Recruiter’s salary should be incentivized and there should be an intra-team-R&R program for recruiters run by the TA team

Long waiting hours before interview

Lack of empathy and style

while recruiting

No follow up after selection till on-

boarding

Low morale of recruiters

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What we should be aiming for?

• Be known as a company where the candidate has a nice touch of professionalism felt

• Reduce the waiting time at the lounge

• Add a personal touch when the candidates come for interview exhibiting the best form of hospitality and respect

• Emphasize on social media recruiting (Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook) and also start recruiting retired English speaking officers and house-wives

• Switch over to strategic low cost hiring methods

• Create a robust stand alone recruitment portal to automate hiring and have that integrated with ERPs like PeopleSoft OR SAP

• Conduct special recruitment drives exclusively for candidates whose parents are in Public Sector Units

• Enhance Corporate-Academic partnerships focused on training selective students in advance especially from the non-engineering background

Candidate experiences

the best form of hospitality

Recruit and advertise

through social media sites

Recruitment automation

Corporate-Academic

partnership

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What could we get?

• Recruiters should communicate the outcome back to the selected as well as rejected candidates and also congratulate the winners in a nice manner

• Stay connected with the short listed candidates till on-boarding

• Offer letter should be handed over or couriered as a gift pack to the selected candidate For agents who are joining in short time, the Welcome Kit OR “Glad to have you” kit could be handed over on the day of induction to each employee.

• Recruiters to double up as ER SPOCs for the first 30 days post on-boarding

• Continue building relationship through non-selected candidates and future aspirants via networking sites or blogs and keep them engaged

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How to make it possible?

• Integrate Induction with the Talent Acquisition team (in case it’s the Employee Relations teams or Business Partner HRs responsibility)

• Create a “Wow effect” right from the pre-hiring stage by equipping the recruiters through orientation sessions and mock drills

• Feedback to recruiters on employee experience from pre-hiring to induction

• Separate Talent Acquisition budget for branding

• HR Audit to be conducted periodically to validate best practices implementation through surprise checks

• Have recruiters engaged in CSR activities, complementing hiring

• Conduct multi-venue single day recruitment drives for easy access to candidates and communicated to candidates well in advance through job boards and gazettes

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Thank You

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