The 2 Authors you don’t want to miss if you are a HR professional.

As HR We enable people to work, we manage their aspirations for growth, we enable decision making. If there is any time left we think and work towards the welfare of employees and organization. Irrespective of the function we are in within HR – Recruitment, compensation, business partnering, Learning and Development, the main challenge remains to be meeting the expectations of individuals and bringing in changes to keep them happy and motivated. We sell, try to convince, bulldoze. But after all these being done, every now then we get disappointed by the so called "irrational expectations" of employees like someone is not happy with the percentage of hike  though we think he/she got a decent pay raise, we complain the business is not co-operative, lacking long term vision. It is easy to get frustrated and say we are dealing with a bunch of unhappy minds and disappointed souls which we do comfortably. But that by any chance will not solve the problem we are dealing with every day

Now these 2 authors I am talking about are going to revolutionize the whole landscape of HR thinking. Few organizations have already started embracing their ideas.

The biggest influence I think would be -HR leaders realizing the need of shifting the fundamental concept in managing people from “group of people” to “The Individual”.

The second one – HR departments are going to spend less time on mulling over bell curves, budgets or trying to make the statistics about percentage of hikes look good. Beatifying turnaround time or employee turnover. For the very basic reason that these guys are advocating the staggering theory of  “Money is not the biggest motivator.

Daniel Pink

When I started reading the book Drive – the surprising truth about what motivates us, I thought I have a serious disagreement with the author because he says money/extrinsic rewards are not the prime motivators, but as I continue and complete the book I realized – his idea is around money could be a basic motivator but what comes on top of it matters a lot to achieve excellence. Which is a truth. We don’t come to office everyday thinking about the hike we are going get after 12 months, the challenge for that day, things we need to finish, a meeting where we present our ideas matters a lot to us than the performance review at the end of the year. This theory is not far from what Maslow said - to keep it simple - we look for something else once the basic needs are met. What makes Pink great is – so far nobody dared to translate this truth so effectively and presented it to the world so far.Interestingly he mentions the example of Wikipedia  - how a bunch of self-motivated volunteer built the most comprehensive knowledge base. Would it be possible with a group of 1000 employees working for salary? The answer is no. In the same way think about the scientists who have given most valuable things to human race, did they work for salary? What motivated them??

His blog - http://www.danpink.com/

Dan Pink TeD talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

Dan Ariely:

I first encountered his masterpiece TeD talk on YouTube and immediately bought the book Predictably Irrational. What makes him so attractive and compelling to listen/read is: he deals with the day to activities we do and the kind of decisions we take in our life. He brings out the point of “we making decisions by the temptation of that moment rather thinking long-term” so well and convincingly. Paying attention to Dan Ariely can help us do away most of our day to frustrations because he helps us understand the anatomy of Decision making, motivation. One of the cute examples he gave is “if you are passing by and saw someone who struggling to fix  car Tyre which went flat” if you are asked to help, you might consider and help. What if “he offers 1 dollar for the same?” the possibly of not helping him is 99%. The point he makes predominately is money and motivation is not directly proportionate.

His blog - http://danariely.com/

Dan Ariley TeD talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aH2Ppjpcho

Books of these authors are not expensive, even if you want to test the quality and practicality of their thoughts you can watch them on YouTube, I wish Indian universities consider including their work in the curriculum for at least HR students across India.

5 suggestions to LinkedIn : To make it much more powerful Recruitment tool

There is no scope for any doubt about Linkedin’s ability to serve as a good recruitment tool but the current problem with Linkedin seems to be that they want to drive all recruitment activities with Linkedin recruiter or Premium job seeker’s account. The reality is Linkedin may not succeed only with paid services option because of the below reasons.

      Linkedin corporate account is far more expensive than the traditional jobsite’s employer subscription (At least in India – when we compare with Naukri.com who stands as no.1)

      Linkedin is not as effective as jobsites, not popular as well. Recruiting with Linkeidn still considered being a special skill and not more than 10% of total hires come through Linkedin in any organization.

This calls for a special attention to popularize Linkedin more as a recruitment tool; this can only be done through normal user accounts. Here are my recommendations to counter the challenge.

Make the "Search" strong

Though the quality of search results improved a lot over the years but still Linked search is not so powerful for both jobseeker and recruiter. I think Linked development team should realize this fact very soon to try and make it much more productive. Have a check for yourself search for any job with location, you will get a bunch of jobs completely unrelated to your search and few are related to your keyword in way but do not match to what you are looking for. It would have been really fine if Linkedin is Search engine or simply a social networking site, but as they aspire to become stronger recruitment tool it hampers the experience of jobseekers and recruiters too. Hence Linkedin needs to limit search results specifically to keywords just like any other jobsite.

Force users to fill up their Technical expertise /Primary Skill set

As of today more than 90% of the LinkedIn profiles are not good enough to at least have a fair idea on the area of expertise of a candidate. It just provides a high level view about employment and area of work. Linked should target to get these profiles at least to the level of providing sufficient information to screen candidates without having to ask candidates to send their resume. We can understand the business pressures of being a social media site, Linkedin would definitely want to keep the registration very simple and cannot force users to furnish details as it might discourage them from creating an account. Linkedin can afford to do this at later stages for ex : if a candidate is applying for job on .net technology and he/she did not specify this as part of primary skill set then Linkedin should throw an error and ask user to apply only to jobs which matches their primary skill or update primary skill set. Of course I am suggesting them to have something called “Primary skill” which must be a mandatory filed to complete in order to apply for jobs. It makes the life of recruiters easy and much more effective search strings can be framed, eventually the quality of search results will increase. Most importantly recruiters will not be spammed,

     

Preferably in a drop down box like below

Endorsements should not be reduced to the level of “likes” on Facebook

Why dedicate so much of space to something which does not have any importance to either recruiter or candidate. Endorsements have become like a formality, a joke as if it is the “like” button on Facebook. You cannot stop users endorsing each other as a favor, but Linkedin can definitely stop endorsing a person without even knowing him at work. There is no validity for endorsements at all; I get surprised when someone I’ve not met in person so far endorses me for a skill. Let people endorse only if they worked together. If you cannot bring this change right away at least give the control to the users whether to accept or Reject an endorsements, so that whoever wants to keeps their profile genuine, they will be able to do so. It helps in having much reliable information on Linkedin.

Give few premium account privileges to normal users

Linkedin perceived to be a platform for passive Jobseekers, it sounds like someone is running a scared charity program to help jobseekers find a good job without their employer noticing it.Now this myth of passive jobseeker is vanishing gradually, everyone is an active jobseeker, we are no more living in world of people serving for years in one single organization. Consumerism is ruling the world not only in the sense of money but work, brand, work life balance etc. Almost everyone considers changing his job provided the criteria are met. So we have Desperate, Selective and very Demanding jobseekers all of them active, just that options and intention to bargain varies. So by making most useful features available to only for paid services which are most likely used by desperate jobseekers you are not engaging the other major chunk.

Linkedin is not a tool for mass hiring, this makes it extremely imperative for them to be more popular by  giving more meaningful services to users, at least to job seekers.By trying to make money for most of the services, there is always a danger of someone coming into the market offering it for free. We are witnessing an explosion of freeware recruitment management systems already.

      

Become more social

It might sound funny asking a social networking site to get more social.Linkedin is most effective for mid-sized organizations and really helpful for special skill sets than generalized .The one ability of it makes Linkedin so desirable for recruiters is it’s capability to help in building market intelligence. You could capture the details of entire team in a given organization, it is even possible to capture the details of almost all employees if it is an organization of less a than 1000 people.

Linkedin must build on this ability and partner with other social media sites to provide much more meaningful information to users. For ex: it can incorporate the ratings/comments on employers from Glassdoor when someone is trying to fetch information.

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.