Courage Quotient: How many organizations have the courage to hire and retain the best people?

Courtesy -Google images

When it comes to hiring - most of the organizations set up noble mission of hiring the best of the best – at least to hire best people by their respective standards and no organization in the world disagrees with the fact that hiring inferior quality leads to destruction of the organization. In same way every organization tries to put together all possible measures to retain them, the Irony is it is the best they lose every year, and add “not so great people” to replace the best. I think organizations end up in this paradox because of the below reasons. It will be good if HR teams monitor and put a check otherwise all the efforts will go in vain.

“The sin called – “he is overqualified, let’s not hire him”

All of those who are part recruitment would relate to this statement really well because they  would get to hear this sentence frequently, Organizations reject candidates because someone has couple of years of more experience than what the job description says, their argument would be “He/she will be expecting a bigger role” and we cannot keep them happy. Sometimes feedback will be like “he has done better things already I don’t think the work we have will excite him” It could be true in some cases, but the crucial point that the interview panel/Organization miss here is that particular candidate will not remain in the same role over period of 2-3 years, he/she will grow and need to grow to help organization better. So keep the future needs in mind and hire people. Hence it is worth enough to hire such people that will help organization in the long run even it means paying 2-3 lakhs more than the usual salary.

Action from HR Teams

Keep a track of number of rejects under the heading of “Over qualified” every month, talk to the interview panel and later find out for what they might suit better.Have courage to create positions/Roles for such candidates who are really good, don’t lose them  

Sometimes best things do not come so easily

Great people are most sought after too, hence it becomes difficult to attract best people in to the organization, most recruitment teams settle for compromise here because we have the pressure of filling the role and they ant be blamed for the same. It is the organization who should support Recruitment teams to escape from the routine of SLAs and peruse excellent candidates, give a pat on the back to recruitment team for each great hire made. Leadership teams should identify at least few open roles/positions as “does not fall under the SLA’s – get the best” and gradually the culture hiring the best will become usual, recruitment teams will not succumb to the pressure of SLAs. If organization don’t show courage to do this. They would have to live in a scenario where people are not scaling up and not delivering expected results.

Interviewer’s insecurity closes doors for rock stars

All recruiters agree with me with the point that there are bad interviewers not because they conduct interviews in a bad way but because they get scared by bright candidates and reject them. It is wise to deal this issue from the other side.

Think once, have you ever recognized a good interviewer? If so how frequently? This does not happen in organizations. This is a costly ignorance; applaud people who are getting “best material” in to your organization. This might sound idealistic but think again once who would not like to get noticed for doing good. A thank note to a good interviewer means a lot, that sends a right message to rest of the interviewers.  You could ask me how exactly I think this is possible. Well end performance appraisal season J is the key time here; prepare the list of “great performers” who joined a year back - now go back to your files and check who interviewed these guys, that’s all, if you see a consistent trend with a particular interviewer selecting best performers award him. In the same way if you find a trend between an interviewer and poor performers caution them. It consumes some time for sure but it is worth it and volume of the recruitment and number of employees does not cause a problem at all.

Retention is high, great! But who are you retaining?

It is great to have high retention rate /low attrition rate but it is important see who are we retaining? Retaining 50 B players will not be equal to retaining 2 A players. An organization losing A players will become a huge bunch of mediocres where there is no innovation. So while doing attrition analysis, do try to know on how many rock stars have you lost this year as per previous year’s performance rating. Dont worry even your attrition rate is 30%, but worry a lot if  5-10% of them are “great players”. Retaining “Rock stars” does not mean spending more money always and giving to them regularly. In most cases it could be done by just moving them in to the team they want, changing their work, changing their manager.

Do you have the courage to listen to the outgoing employee?

We all say oye yes! We do exit interviews religiously for all leavers and document the summary of them. But what we do after that is the big question, exit interview is just a formality and the moment an employee resigns in most of the cases that employee becomes insignificant; the feedback he gives becomes even more insignificant. It is true that leaver throws out their frustration during exit interviews; it is also true that they give useful feedback because there is no need for them to impress anyone anymore. HR team should have courage to face the criticism from leavers and pay attention to them, think honestly to bring their feedback in to the strategy.

It is more important to keep your peer happy than your boss

Image courtesy - Google

Keeping your colleague happy is very important because you don’t want to fail in your job, you do not like having a stressful environment at office, and for sure you would not want to spend your time thinking what the next door guy is cooking up against you. Your manager has an obligation to be nice with you, to accommodate you and protect you but your colleague does not have any obligation what so ever. Hence it is extremely crucial to have good relations with your colleagues for positive reasons like below

·         To succeed : No matter how good you are , you still need a lot of support from your peers, it could be just a positive word about work to standing by you to support in your work.

·         To learn & grow: Most of the learning comes from colleagues by seeing them do things we will learn what not to do. We will acquire new skills with the help of them , good relationships lasts beyond the current organization – they will take you where they go or can refer you in a good place when you are looking out for change

·         To have a companion: We may be the strongest person on earth but – we still need someone to talk, we need a shoulder to lean on  a difficult day – to share things which we can’t share with our boss.

Am I saying you should keep pleasing everyone around?

No, one does not need to try hard to keep everybody happy; you don’t need to be nice all the time after all that is not the purpose why we are working.it is advisable to invest enough time to understand our colleagues well and operate. The ones who are difficult to manage or create obstacles on your way needs to be handled in a different  manner – flag it up to your superiors proactively if you see a potential threat, trouble on your way. Going back to the point of how we can maintain good relations without being submissive or trying to please everyone all the time. The naked fact we should remember here is our colleague also needs good relations with us; he/she also needs a friend at work. Hence we are playing on an equal field.

There are 2 ways of building good relations at work.

Avoid clashes: First let us think why clashes take place? Very few times we end up having a confrontation with a colleague because we are fighting for credit over one thing, or we may be competing for one promotion. But most of the times it is because of the reason that we don’t understand each other’s requirements well. “Transactional analysis” helps a lot to manage this particular problem. Look at the below image if anyone of them does not match we end up disliking our colleague.

Someone wants to be regarded as an intellect, other might like to be seen as a cool dude once we understand this part it becomes easy to sail through. Based on this we can build our conversations and rest all will fall in place slowly.

Understand who you are dealing with?

Everyone is not the same person, there are few people we need to be really careful of, and there are other we can just get along really well. I am classifying them to the below categories there could be more – this is purely based on my encounters and experiences so far.

Snakes: Very dangerous people, by nature manipulative, they do not need a real cause to fight, on a slight indication of danger, it could be completely wrong indication also – they will bite you. One should be sharp enough to identify this kind of colleagues early on make sure you have “stick” that they are sacred of – it may be your good relationship with your manager, or your ability of influencing bigger people in the organization – make sure they are aware of your influence so that they are careful and will think before targeting you. The below are must when dealing with people like this, I have seen this type in my career so far.

·         Maintain hello– how are you? Relationship – do not go any further, if you need to work with them closely, make sure a third person is involved and is aware of what is happening.

•         Never share your personal interests, opinions on others
•         Never talk about your failures and your weakness
•         Talk about your success if possible tell how you taught a lesson to a cunning fellow before

Foxes: Have all the abilities, smart, can work on their own that is the reason other will get attracted towards them initially only to the disappointment of knowing they are really dangerous and contagious. – Cribs all the time. Brags about themselves ever as if they are bearing planet earth on their shoulders. Always look for an opportunity to grab credit from others. Has foul mouth about anyone – can give any information about all most everyone but don’t fall pray – if you are getting along well closely with them – they might be telling others (Including your manager) that he/she guiding you all through. Not good for your career and life, at the same time you cannot afford to have him as an enemy unless you yourself is one like him, or a Tiger/Lion.

•          Massage his/her ego and giggle within yourself
•         Feed him/her with non-controversial information just have the relation going on
•         And finally do not try to do anything except the above J

Birds: Most of the people will fall into this group, they are not happy neither unhappy. Minds there work and go home. They don’t fail in their job and will not exceed exceptionally also. Very good people to trust and go along with – that is there maximum expectation too. They will stop talking to you the moment they realize that they are not important for you. But will not cause any harm. Good to have a colleague like this – you can go on on a party, movie and enjoy – they will not talk about work too much. But also remember they are not powerful people – will be of no help if you want to climb up the ladder.

Lions: Ambitious, hardworking people, very powerful – they know where their prey is, do not harm people unnecessarily but are capable of doing so if you scratch them on the wrong side. Very open in their agenda; you will know when they are hitting you. Good to be friends with them as long as you treat them like lions – massage there ego, talk hunting, exhibit ambitions. If not they will treat you like an insect. Never fight them until you are a lion yourself and also please be cautioned if you are a bird or if whole team is filled with birds you might mistake a fox for a lion.

Sages : Know it all people – they are really knowledgeable, but often get in to the filed they are not quite sure of too. Does not harm anybody – not interested in completion or in day to day politics. If your manager is also this type – he/she can be Lion too. So not to fight with. Make most of their presence, ask for a suggestion they will be over critical sometimes but it does help. If you do not ask for their opinion they will try to grill you in open forums. Very easy to manage them by just asking for their advice on things you are doing.

There is nothing wrong with managers, just that they aim a completely wrong target

Image courtesy - Google

A group of people under any name needs some one to manage them,we all are conditioned to the model,even the best Self -motivated person in the world also needs some kind of management over him to guide what is right or wrong- in his case his/her inner sense might do the majority of the job but for rest of us we need managers and that is the reason there are number of managers you find at every corner of each office.The irony is most of these managers are stressed  and predominantly this is caused by their own team members or by his boss.Even more ironic angle to this is most of the team members are stressed too and without any hesitation they say these stressful conditions are created by their managers who are  impractical,push them too hard and what not. A very few managers are respected by their teams rest all managers are called "Damagers".

So from both the sides tension exists, this is a result of sheer confusion for which managers must be hold responsible though are some genuine complaints from managers.Mangers get frustrated with things like below.

• Team not getting up to speed
• Lack of commitment
• No updates till the last moment
• Escapism
• Code of conduct

The above all are genuine, they do exist and that is the reason manager exists to manage all these calamities and get things done.Managers are supposed to resolve all these issues, this is the fundamental reason why teams need managers it is funny that managers complain about same things that they are supposed to solve because they mistake the whole purpose of their job, I've done that few occasions too, it is important for managers to come out of this situation as quickly as possible.

Team's success is a byproduct - don't run for it crazily

Manager is not a robot or a computer programmed to achieve success and success is not fruit juice which comes out of a mixer after grinding.Manager should focus on getting few things right in first place before worrying about results.Manager must be a catalyst, The very purpose why manager exists is

• To cater to the emotional needs of the team to get psychological balance in the team
• To be the best knowledge base,enable team to leverage on his skills and knowledge
• To channelize efforts in the right direction

"Individuals" are the only reality, rest all - Team, Company they are all just names

There is no specific tantra, or code for team management except few fundamentals remains same.There is no such thing called team management, we manage individuals that eventually becomes what we call "Team Management", so team never fails or succeeds it is individuals who does.So to ensure you are on track managers need to do a "Talent mapping" within the team and assign tasks based on that, if the KRA's/KPA's are same for the whole team members you have a fundamental flaw, just because they are in one team they shouldn't be performing same tasks, most of the manager make the mistake  of assigning all tasks to all in the name of having balance in team - this is extremely wrong.You team members should complement each other not compete among themselves.By assigning same jobs you are asking your team members to compete which leads to non-cooperation among them.This should be avoided strictly.

Most productive time in life spent at work - manager remember that!

All of us spend our most efficient time at work, that is when our senses are at their best, we can think better, have the energy to execute things better during this time.Everyone excepts the return from this time, your team members are no exception to this.While it is crucial to reward appropriately,recognize them when done well, the most important manager needs to do is "Allow them to have satisfaction for the day"  put every effort to ensure your team member is not going home with stress, that gives them a sense accomplishment, it brings peace in to their mind.It reduces cribbing, dissatisfaction which in turn leads to harmony in the team.

You are not running for an election - Don't hesitate to be assertive

The most frequent and difficult dilemma every manager face everyday is being nice VS being right. In search of "nice manager" image most of the managers pardon fatal wrong doings of Team members, without

realizing the fact of one small drop of poison spoiling a pot of milk.If a non-performing team member is surviving for long it set ups a wrong precedence, it builds a way towards team's failure.Also note the fact that strict managers never lose their team members but incapable manager does.The so called worst managers in any organization are not the ones who fired non-performers but they are the ones who could not take decision on them, this gives strength to non-performers, the not desired ones to further malign manager;s ability,character as a result nobody listens to the manager.Be assertive, be fast.

You are paid to take the blame, not to rule!

This is another critical one that no manager can afford to miss.Managers do a great justice when he protects his team member by providing a cushion to them especially when someone fails.Attribute your success to the team publicly, you would need to make a point on what you would expect them to do in one on one discussions.Ironically every time something has been delivered the credit goes to manager and when something goes wrong it will be cascaded down to a particular individual.Get this right.

Success will be a byproduct of all these.

Why does social media matters a lot for any recruitment team?

Courtesy - Google

Today there are only two types of recruitment teams – one who is supportive of social media usage, talks, eats, breaths LinkedIn and Facebook, the other one who rejects it on the face of it, considers social media is a time waste. In both cases one would like to know the fundamental matrix called - what percentage of your total hires come from social media? You won’t find much difference in the statistics of both the parties. Then why so much of cry and debate happening on the same topic. It is because of the reason that both the sides ignore the intrinsic value addition by social media. As a recruitment team you are always prone to measuring value addition through number of hires, the same cannot be the parameter for measuring social media because of the fundamental reason that none of the most popular social media tool is designed specifically for recruitment, and they have not evolved as full pledged recruitment tools yet.

Intrinsic value addition has more worth than the extrinsic like filling open positions. Creating a pool of potential applicants is more valuable than just hiring one candidate. When you have good online social media presence, when you keep your corporate pages updated you will create a circle of people who keep knowing about your company, they won’t stop there – they will further talk to people spread the message – unconsciously they are your brand ambassadors – this will result in reduced effort in selling the company’s brand to candidates. Imagine a recruiter calling a candidate and getting to hear “I’ve not heard of this company” that whole process gets painful, conversion ratios will be bad, attracting the top talent will be even more painful.

Why I think recruitment teams must pay attention to Social media.

We are living in a world where people Google

The year 1998 changed the way internet is used, from then to now we have a close of everyone who consolidates and gives reliable information about any topic across the world in many languages. You cannot hide what you are doing on the internet; if you hide also others won’t reserve their comments about you. It is not a troublesome research project anymore to know more about a particular company - Google gives you accumulated data about every organization. Now it is the job of recruitment team to make that cumulative data look good.

Now imagine if one is trying to search your company on internet and it only throws just a company web site, your company does not exist for the younger generation. They will be interested to see your Facebook page, Wikipedia, Twitter and what not. If you are not on social media you have not arrived or you are not a company for younger generation. No company can afford to land in this kind of unfortunate situation.

What you say on your Website is no more your brand

When a recruiter calls a candidate, after the call candidates used to get on to the website to know more about the company, the trend is changing candidates now get onto mouthshut.com or Glassdoor.com to see what employees have to say about the company. This is the case even you are the biggest brand in the world, people still would want to see what has been written on social media, candidates will be curious to know about a particular aspect- even if you are Microsoft or a Google, they would still want to know about that particular team they are going to Join. Hence what you are claiming about your company on website will become less valuable than what people had written on these sites.it is a natural law of behavior – people believe a third party’s feedback than your own words.  And another important thing is as an organization you might overlook these sites, but people who worked with or left you will not – they will write their comments in most of the cases they will be writing negative comments to avenge out their frustration, hence it is important to companies to neutralize these dynamics with active social media presence. Otherwise over a period of time you will become a bad organization on the internet and you won’t even realize it. As result organization’s ability to attract best talent will diminish.

Your Job site will give you access to candidates in your country – Social media is boundary less

Any jobsite whether Indian, European, American they will focus on the local markets. We will have access to candidate’s database in a particular region but LinkedIn and Facebook or Twitter has no boundaries, reach is bigger. Whenever you are working on a market intelligence project or hiring for leadership roles the help from LinkedIn is priceless. Jobsites might give you information regarding salary ranges and other stuff, but they can’t do the job of social media sites of providing a hawk eye perspective. Let us take an example – if you would like to know the companies who are doing extensive work in HTML 5: LinkedIn will be a great tool for the same because the moment you search with HTML 5 it will give you details around

• ·         Individuals working on HTML 5
• ·         Consulting firms offering services on HTML 5
• ·         Huge network of individuals working on the same technology
• ·         Groups for HTML 5

All of these details at one place and you will have less problem of fake experience – this can’t be done by any jobsite.

Recruitment teams are reluctant to use social media extensively -because

>They always tend to measure social media in terms of number hires made

>Social media recruitment is slow

>Corporate page subscription fee for sites like LinkedIn are higher than the regular Job sites

But when you compare return on investment it makes more sense to get active on Social media, once we reach the break even point in terms of money rest all will be a great bonus

Take an example if you have spent 4 lakh rupees on LinkedIn subscription all you need to look at whether you were able close positions equaling 3 times of the subscription. If you have done it, you are getting the entire branding for free.

Other social media sites are just for free like Facebook,Twitter it makes sense to make most of it and build a consistent content across all sites. Candidates will depend on websites only for factual information rest all like culture, Performance management, and compensation for all these key details they depend on social media and we all know these aspects play a vital role in candidate’s decision making.

One side of the Paradox: frustration of a Jobseeker and its anatomy

Google Image

Every Job seeker lives and contributes towards the creation  of a paradox where so many eligible jobseekers are  struggling to find a job they would love to do and on the other side a recruiter is dyeing to fill a position and unable to find a right candidate. Most of the times jobseekers blame recruiters for not replying on their applications and for not returning/answering calls. At the same time on the other side of this world recruiter would be fuming on jobsites for throwing up same search results and resumes they have interviewed and rejected earlier already, desperately getting on to social networks, changing keywords, checking with friends – having a bad day. Why on earth in this advanced technical savvy world connected through internet, a suitable candidate can’t reach the recruiter who needs him, why is it getting really difficult for a recruiter to find right candidate.

This paradox is a result of combined effort of candidate and recruiters/organizations. No one to blame for this alone, Organizations/recruiters would not have a slick recruitment management system, most of them won’t use it even if they have one. Candidates do not know techniques of job search and unfortunately most of the candidates apply for jobs they won’t suit, even worse things is jobseekers does not do a good job of updating their profile on jobsites, sometimes resumes looks shabby, unrelated to the expertise they have.

In India -there is not much information available for jobseekers to help them on how they can update their profiles, what enhances the possibility of their resume appearing on top of search results, unlike Europe, the USA, Indian job market is dominated by jobsites, social networks like LinkedIn are picking up but still not yet contributes to a significant percentage of hires in an year in an organizational context. Candidates need to know few facts to make their whole experience of job searching, fulfilling and smooth.

Do you understand the science of job search?

In order to understand the  art of job search first you need understand science behind candidate search, how recruiters search for suitable candidates?I have heard from so many people saying I " updated my resume 2 months back and did not get a single call so far". To find an answer to this  you need to understand candidate search works , you might be the best brain in your area but if your profile updated on jobsites does not tell that there is 100% chance that your resume will be ignored. It is the medium between you and recruiter plays key than your expertise. Most of the  jobseekers does not write their profile headline properly on Naukri.com, moster.com.They write summary of their experience which is wrong, you need to mention the key words around your technical expertise , if you are java developer just write that along with the technical skill set like, JSP,Servlets,Spring etc and avoid using words likes  “Technologist”, “Innovator” because they are not going get to anywhere, recruiters never use keywords like that.to summaries all you need remember is “How would a recruiter search for resumes” obviously they search for resumes just in the same way you search for information in Google. If you would to know about Tajmahal you will just type that name in Google, let us say if you use “Shajahan” as your keyword the information you wanted about Tajmahal will be somewhere lower on the search results. So keep the headline simple, accurate, very straight forward to cover all the areas you worked on.

Do you need to have a beautiful resume? 

Honestly not, after all you are not sending your resume for a beauty contest! On a serious note no recruiter in the world will fall in love with your resume by the look of it, or for the literary value , neither he/she has time to  read your resume so deeply. Of course it must be in a good shape neatly formatted, no grammatical errors etc. But the key area that catches the eye of a recruiter is “your area of expertise”, skill set summary and your project details – whether the skill set mentioned in summary reflects again in the projects you have worked on. Remember a recruiter takes a call whether to proceed or not in less than 2 minutes by having a glance at your resume. Have those details accurate; repeat your areas of expertise as keywords across your resume.

Curse your co-applicants! 

Not because they are competing with you for the same job but for the reason they applied even after knowing they are not suitable for the position. It is so unfortunate that applications from non-serious, not suitable candidates makes the chances for right candidate meager. Over last seven years, I and with help my team where I worked done an analysis on the response for job postings, we found out consistently that more than 95% of applications does not suit the job. Let me give you a recent example – I posted a job for software architect, we were looking for a person with more than 8 years of Java with distributed systems,multi-threading, strong design and architecture experience on developing highly available enterprise applications. You don’t believe we received application from call center executives, Admin, Finance and freshers in a good number. Now relate this with the life of a recruiter on a given day, he/she would be handling multiple positions and would be receiving resumes from Consultants, employees and direct applicants. Once the recruiter opens up the applications folder and finds a set of resumes not related at all, he get frustrated and move on to another source – he needs to fill the position quickly. So if you are expecting a reply from recruiters - apply for only those positions you suit, ask yourselves twice if you really fit the bill. Otherwise not only you won’t get anything out of it but also you will be killing an opportunity for another suitable candidate.

Where are you applying? 

The emergence social media pushed recruiters post jobs everywhere, the biggest weak link here is not many organizations have a strong recruitment management system which integrate all these and stores resumes at one place. As result recruiters get disorganized, always remember if you are applying on the website the chances of you getting call is really less because of reasons mentioned earlier.so whenever you are applying it on the website, it is a good idea to send a note to the recruiter clearly mentioning the job code you have applied for. Another reason for not getting a call would be “unfortunately most recruiters perceive direct applicants as desperate jobseekers who is struggling to find job, hence it becomes less valuable for them, recruiters should get rid of this notion”.

If you are allying on any other source please consider the below:

Lifetime of your application/email is maximum a day: 

If you are sending your application directly to the recruiters, please keep in mind you need to be precise and straight forward, you don’t have to please the recruiter. You need to understand and accept the fact that recruiter has no time to read your entire email to understand whether you are suitable or not. Write in a manner that recruiter will get to know your profile in first 2 lines. While applying on LinkedIn so not simply click apply button and send resume, customize your response in way that your expertise if mentioned there, that will make the recruiter to click the attachment you sent, otherwise it gets in to recycle bin. If you application cannot attract recruiter’s attention that moment or maximum on that day, you are out of scope. By next morning when he comes to office new set of resumes already piled up in his inbox. Grab the attention by what he is looking for – but only if you really have that expertise recruiter is looking for , DO NOT fake it ever.

Sometimes your subject line of the email disqualifies you! 

I am not exaggerating it, it is true – I have deleted so many applications from my inbox after looking at the subject line, and still see most of the recruiters doing it, let us take an example – a recruiter posted a job of “CFO” on LinkedIn or a Jobsite When you reply it changes the subject line as “Application for the role of CFO” all the hundred resumes recruiter receive will have the same subject line, Now let us say if you change the Subject line to “ Chetan_CA,ICWAI_PWC_ application for CFO”, I can guarantee no recruiter in the world will move on without looking in to the resume.

When madness has its own method why not Job search J , follow basics and help recruiters in helping you.

Two crucial aspects HR should focus on - measuring value addition and stop taking undeserved blame

Image courtesy - Google

I was just a college pass out when the most famous (now) critic of HR Mr. Keith H. Hammonds opened up his thoughts on HR professionals and HR as a function to the whole world. I was shocked when I came across this article later, started doubting my decision making skills – did I make right choice by choosing HR as my career? But as time flew I forgot about this like any other young graduate fresh out of college. But now after having spent good time in HR, I strongly feel his criticism is not all true, but there are genuine issues we still need to address and improve on, tragedy is after 8 years of his article we still look the same in few of the areas he wrote about.

It is extremely crucial now that we focus on these areas to sustain this extremely dynamic world where the war for best talent is getting fierce day by day and taking an ugly, brutal shape. The two critical aspects HR should focus on are – creating more value, measuring that value and stop taking undeserved blame.

Does HR really add value? What kind of value is that and how can we measure it?

World called HR and still calls a necessary evil, a bureaucratic setup which kills flexibility and innovation. Few organizations saw and continues see HR as the living system which keeps everything intact, which adds life to organization, which prepares and leads them in to future. As a matter of fact most of the successful companies today have most successful HR department. So then why there are divergent perceptions, where does HR fit in to the pyramid of value addition? Take an example of a mother, who is a “home maker” ( not mean to say mother can’t earn, it is strictly about a home maker) , she ensures everything is in place at home and makes everything available for the family, she guides, consoles, sets up guidelines and code of conduct at home, brings up children, takes very key decisions, helps in decision making, the only thing that misses here is she going out and earning money, it is done by the “father”. So a home maker mother does not earn money on her own but helps the whole family to earn it. I think in an organization’s scenario HR does the same job of home maker (excluding HR consulting, where money generation is directly related), while HR does not earn money on its own it helps the whole organization in doing that. HR helps the organization deliver by delivering in its own area. In business return/Money/Tangible value takes the ultimate priority, where in a family set up there are much more things attached to it than just return/Money/tangible value addition, that is how I think people start perceiving HR as a cost center, non-value adding function. The other side of the coin most of the HR professionals perceive their function as supreme and argue that without HR an organization cannot survive or it will not exist, the fact of the matter is HR exists because of business, and ultimate decision making rests with the business itself, HR for sure will play a key role, but cannot decide what to be done over and above business’s decision, when I say business I meant the one who funds, runs the business with an objective. Coming back to the point - work of HR and its value addition touches every aspect of an organization like the mother at home, so you cannot fit HR at a particular level and spot on the pyramid. It is everywhere. So the parameter for measuring HR value addition should always be what impact its presence will have on the organization rather what felonies its absence can cause.

So when HR is everywhere obviously it becomes extremely difficult to measure its value addition, however we all know what major areas in  HR  makes it as the living blood for the whole system. They are Talent Acquisition, Training & Organization Development, Performance management, HR operations.

Adding bodies or pumping in Talent?

Talent acquisition attracts a great deal of attention whenever somebody wants to evaluate HR effectiveness, but traditionally for years the way we measure recruitment effectiveness by number of positions filled, time taken to hire, source mix  which does not reflect the real value addition of recruitment function. Parameters mentioned earlier reflects activities performed by recruitment team not the value, take an example of driving a car – if you drive a car with a speed of 100 Km per hour and reached a place in 30 mins, that is a great driving performance, not the real value, you will know value when you compare with what is that you wanted to achieve by driving, if you have reached a different destination that of you wanted to reach the effort is mere waste. Hence while measuring the value of recruitment we should get in to the very purpose of recruitment, why do we recruit people? to add great talent in to organization so that we deliver a great service/product. If this is not met, you probably are not recruiting the talent your organization wants, now how can you measure the value here, would you attribute every product success or profitability of the organization to recruitment? Answer is no, there are much more critical aspects which contribute to success and profitability. It is wise to take the data of employees recruited in a year and analyze – what percentage of people left early, how many non-performers you have from this group (for both cases they could be various other reasons why people leave, can’t perform – you would know those reasons for sure – so do not include them while measuring the value of recruitment), how many of these employees are star performers, what percentage of these have been already identified having potential to move in to the next level or perform more difficult job, take feedback from manager against each role he filled in his team, as to check is he able to get the what he wants from this resource, he might have recruited one with an aim of adding a new skill, if that skill is not added, your recruitment failed of course there is a contribution from that respective manager too for that failure. After having done all this exercise identify those areas where recruitment team needs to focus for next year, pat on their back for the areas they have done well.

Performance management – shake its fundamentals; make it fairer, understandable

I have a fundamental problem with the whole idea behind performance management, the entire HR fraternity is in love with bell curve and forced ranking may be because it looks to be scientific and more because it serves various purposes, like it helps identifying and cleaning up bottom-line, it also helps manager to satisfy their vengeance. So essentially with the model what are we expecting from employees, we are clearly telling look folks only 20% of you will make it in to the top performers so you must compete and do better than your colleague. But imagine what happens to the whole team performance, what happens to the organization, that’s where organizations fail and also results in your best guys leaving. Imagine if everybody on Indian cricket team competing to do better than the other rather striving for team’s success, will we ever win? just imagine Sachin Tendulkar and Virat kohli competing to score a run more than the other, that will result in one guy not giving strike to other, will we ever win. Might looks funny but this exactly what happens on the floor, employees look really amicable and helping each other but majority of them will not share the big ones he is working on because he does not want to give share in the salary hike/bonus to his colleague. It is time we re look at the overall philosophy of performance management and change it in a way that drives team’s performance, like let the whole organization decide what are the most valuable deliverables they had for this year – award all of those who are in those projects, couple it with 360 degree performance management for every employee , so that everybody knows and cognitive of the fact that his colleague’s feedback has value so he/she better cooperate and co-exist to succeed, not in way of Quid-pro-co, any way each feedback should be justified with examples and tangible activities. Take feedback from every employee on performance system at the end every performance management cycle. Improve, innovate it consistently.

Training or capability building?

I think this is the most difficult part when it comes to measuring value, like the recruitment most training departments traditionally measure the activity rather than value, you speak to any L&D professional they talk about how many employees participated in a training program, what percentage of total employees they covered in a year, how many hours each employee spent in training which is again a transactional piece. It is like a person going to most sacred place 1000 times and remain as what he was before, you might visit amaranth 1000 times in your life time but what is the use if it does not make you a better human being? Measuring the value of training department should start from asking are we doing the right kind of trainings that organization really needs?Do an objective analysis do not do trainings that does not add value , over a period of time it will reduce the importantance of whole training function altogether, after every training we ask for feedback asking how was the trainer, environment, facilities provided rather asking the important question – where do think this training will help? Which part of your job you will be able to perform better after this training?

Let us go back to the point of how do we identify right set of trainings to be delivered over the next year, take an example of a software firm having a product, at every release which part of the product you will find more bugs? UI side, Database? That is the area you exactly need to focus and get your resources trained. Track individuals who attended training whether he/she able to contribute in a better way in the areas he got trained, does he still needs someone helps even after getting trained? If this happens on a large scale it is time to look at the whole training function and start fixing it.

HR is not changing at the speed the environment it operates in changing, we need to catch up with the pace and keep reinventing ourselves, after all said and done sometimes HR role looks like a wicket keeper in cricket , you catch 99 balls and drop one, the whole stadium stands up and says his wicket keeping skills are bad, the only way to stop this undeserved blame is keep updating ourselves and being proactive before business comes back to us.

The "Csquare" of Recruitment - Providing best experience to your candidates and client leads to the real success

In this post I am not going to discuss about the widely used smart ways of managing, convincing candidates or clients – I would like to bring up the point of how important is it is to make client and candidate experience part of the overall recruitment strategy for the  super success of the recruitment function.

Everybody in recruitment today witnessing the transformation of staffing function in to a much bigger strategic activity, from one of the HR activities to in a way it is emerging as a separate function altogether. As the war for talent gets fierce day by day – it is extremely crucial for every recruitment team to shift their focus towards two important stake holders, who can influence the overall success of the recruitment function. It is time now we start re looking at our efforts towards redefining and enhancing recruitment experience for our client and

candidate.

Recruitment managers and recruiters should not forget the fact that recruitment is a service -irrespective of whether you are in a staffing services company or you are in an in-house recruitment team, it could be a IT services organization or a product development company. We are business enablers – we are not the business and most of the times we represent an organization. As Dave Ulrich said “Value and quality of the service it determined by the receiver not by the giver”. Whenever we start looking at the overall success of recruitment function we consider parameters like source mix, Turnaround time, Conversion ratio, Quality of Data and market intelligence, Offer decline percentage, Employer branding activities and to an extent verbal feedback from your clients which is greatly influenced by that particular moment and personal interactions. We all miss the “candidates” who are the focal point of the entire recruitment process and we also miss “Client” because of who we exist today. Few might argue that we receive feedback from clients/internal business regularly and work on it – but please do understand this is always about one single open position or it could be on why delay is taking place in filling positions etc, but we never receive constructive feedback on overall recruitment nor we put an effort to streamline and put up a robust feedback mechanism.  Now this is the costliest miss – this will lead to the danger of recruitment teams being perceived as transactional pieces. Let us see what needs to done and how that can we bring a paradigm shift in the way your client and candidate perceives recruitment and how it will lead to overall success.

Client: Diagnosis, not post mortem! Recruitment team needs to be proactive to provide better experience – get involved from day 1

Most of the times recruitment teams fail to meet the expectations not because they are not good enough but it is because they don’t really know what business exactly expecting, business or recruitment team alone cannot be blamed for this, in the conventional thinking recruitment is always a support function and comes second. as a result of this recruitment team receives requests to fill once business finalized their budgets, projections and deliverables, business has a deadline for each project to be delivered and to meet these they need people as of yesterday – without people they cannot meet their deliverables. So they push recruitment team and get pushed in return – it will become an ugly web where brick passing happens to and fro. There is flaw here.

There is nothing called closely aligning recruitment strategy to business strategy - recruitment strategy must be part of the business strategy

You have different metrics – Different deadlines – make it one: 

Almost all the time, business wants to deliver things at pace which is different from the pace at recruitment teams aiming to fill positions. See below

Technology team plans to deliver a product in next 2 months but SLA for closing a position for recruitment team still remains 90 days. So what will happen in this case – it will be similar like “operation success but patient dead”, recruitment team will try and fill positions in 90 days, but technical team will not able to ship the as per the plan. Now here we need tackle this problem from two ends – one, Recruitment head must be involved while Technology teams trying to put deadlines in place for their delivery and consider staffing problems to have achievable targets for future. From the other side – for recruitment team SLAs must not be “writing on the wall” – they should be flexible enough to adjust their SLAs as per business requirements – reason is if business fails there is no relevance for anybody’s existence.

Do not forget you are sailing in the same boat:  

Recruitment team often forgets that you and your business are working hard for the same purpose – “they need people more than you”, but when you forget this both sides will end up in an argumentative mode.in my experience so far I did see some serious flaws from business’ side which makes the life of recruitment team really difficult – but as we all know, we are business enablers and we are in service – so diagnose the problem and place reports in front of the business like a doctor – let this decide whether they want to get it fixed or not. If the recruitment team is date driven and come up with solutions, business will agree – reason being the same – they need people more desperately than the recruitment team.

It is not just Recruitment team’s problem – it is Organization’s problem: 
Most of the times recruitment team hides issues from business, It is the biggest mistake, let the business see problems through your eyes. You might not have a great brand name, your business model may not be really appealing to candidates – let business know, give them first-hand information, let them understand your exact issues, then only your client will be able to agree with you and empathize and realize as organization’s problems rather criticizing recruitment team.

Let your client be the owner of you success: 
Not for the sake of it – truly recruitment teams succeeds because of their client, the kind of insight they provide, the amount of time they spent with you play an incredible role in recruitment team’s success.

Never hide failure, shortcomings – I know of recruitment managers who asks their team to hide offer declines from the business till the last moment – by doing so you are losing credibility, no matter how many wonders you might do in the future, your client will not trust you.so let them know the moment you have a bad news.

Provide market intelligence regular, give an update about your competitors, and provide metrics around how you are performing. Let your client know your strategy, take their feedback embed them honestly – communicate the back up plans too – by doing so you are building the trust.

Never ever use the tone of an outsider when you are communicating to your client irrespective of whether they are within your organization or outside. Hard fact recruitment owns the problems of their client – you are solving their problem – hence you are “your client”  

Candidate: he is the solution for the problems you have

That company’s recruiters do not have a clue on what they are looking for!

They made me wait for one hour in the reception!!

I am done with the interview – but never heard back!!!

Interviewer did not have manners- he kept on speaking on his mobile while I was in the interview room!!!!

The above are few comments I have heard from my friends and colleagues who have attended interviews with various companies. It is sad that the most important stakeholders in recruitment process is not treated well. It is astonishing how recruitment team can forget that “the candidate is one who decides their success or failure”. We need to treat each candidate as a guest, I know and worked with few companies where the candidate is pampered starting from providing fine breakfast to pick and drop for the interview. Not all companies can afford to do that, because of the fact that not all of them are rich. To give the finest experience to a candidate you do not have to pamper him with nice lunch or cool drinks always, to be honest that not  is the purpose why candidate visited your place. Hence it is always a bonus to pamper candidates with nice stuff but is not mandatory to provide them great experience.

Provide consistent information about the opening and organization: 

Recruitment team must team make sure that information shared over phone should match with what is written on your careers page and wherever it has been published. Most of the times in a hurry recruiters post a very brief JD on the Jobsites, which will mislead candidates – must be avoided.

Let it be the memorable day:  

Candidate needs to be at his best during the interview , make him feel comfortable, receive them well with warmth, inquire if they want anything, provide them a special closed room for few minutes so that they can unwind themselves from their work related issues.Tell him how long the interview will take, run him through the JD and explain the background of interviewers,If candidate needs to wait for long – this happens when you have interviews lined consecutively, provide them some snacks – nobody likes the feeling of an empty stomach.

Let them know:  

Not telling candidates about the status of their application or interview is the biggest sin, in my view a recruiter who misses this frequently is not fit for his/her role at all. You may not be the only company that the candidate has applied; this status update will help him to take crucial decisions. Make sure you communicate the status – positive/Negative without miss, a recruitment who does this at 100% hit will be the most successful team.

Conduct a Survey with your candidates: 

There are so many free tools available on the internet to conduct surveys; Recruitment should conduct a candidate experience survey every quarter and analyses their shortfall, should implement measure in the next quarter to make it better. Ideally every candidate should be part of this survey. Make candidate experience part recruiter’s KRA, and give it good weightage.

Candidates are the ones who will build your brand – they speak, they write over internet, they refer and recruitment team succeeds.