Recruitment - Is it a Number Game or Much more ?

First four months in Recruitment,  Summing up What it is all about – Stakeholder Management,Process adherence, Market Intelligence, Result Orientation.

Stakeholder Management – On a daily basis a recruiter need to interact with the Business, Prospective Candidates, Background verification team, Induction team, Admin team, placement Vendors and Internal stakeholders. A recruiter is one who cuts and connects across all these teams to put in the best candidate experience and also to fulfill the business requirement. Everybody’s goals are different and yet it conspires with each other, that’s what a recruiter is responsible for.

Process Adherence - Whenever there is a process and policy in place, it’s not just to increase the complexity but on the other hand it’s a collective wisdom that has evolved over a period of time substantiated by the past data and trend . Particularly in recruitment, being the gate keepers of the organization it’s extremely important to uphold the integrity of the system.

Market Intelligence – If you are aware which company has which skill in abundance, what’s their notice period, What’s the salary each company pays for certain experience, Who is downsizing ,  Client relationships with your competitors in the market, Which skill is hot in the market , Recruitment is a cake walk for you !

Result Orientation – At the end of the day, all matters is Cost, Quality and time. How many billability loss positions you were able to fill without any billing leakages and how many deals were not lost because you brought in at right talent @ right place @ right cost.

Stakeholder Management, Process Adherence, Market Intelligence all zeros in to the single end product of Result Orientation and Customer Delight !

It’s high time that as a recruiting partner, not to be a mere process owner but also be aware of the business, talent market and recent trends in Talent Acquisition.

 Being a process might help you internally but it's the other aspects that would help you when you move out of your current employer ! So it's time to look beyond !

Nuggets from my Learning !!!

·        People Around- # You should be of some use to people Physically, emotionally or mentally to have them around # When you stop contributing to person or situation you become irrelevant # Nobody is with you for free #

·        Family - # Loosing some part of yourself to accommodate somebody else in your life is the biggest thing you can do # Respect Individuality, Passion and help people blossom # Let nobody who steps into your home walks out hungry #

·        Career - # Joy of Action is known only to the person who doesn’t have a need for it # Never Stop Learning # Concepts are Universal, Contexts are different. No two situations are similar # Perceive to Prosper #

·        God - # It’s a Cosmic congruence # Something that is perfect, flawless, beyond the comprehension of human mind, devoid of ego, prejudice, doctrine and duality # Advaita # Whatever is not under your experience doesn’t exist in reality is the peak of ignorance #

·        Success - # It’s not the same for all – for some its getting rich, for some it’s to reach greater heights in their career, for some it’s about a happy family # Depends on what kind of impressions, aspirations they have gathered in their life all the way # Better don’t weigh others success on your Scale, let them weigh on their own # You might be successful and still not married ;) # Different dimensions need different stokes, efforts, setting # All don’t get all !

·        Getting Married – # It’s not the nine planets that decide your marriage, it’s the people around who make or break yours # Beware People are Watching you ! They sell you or scrap you – Do bit of Branding, Positioning # You are responsible for how people perceive you # You are matured enough to search one for you, if you are responsible #

Bell Curve Fever - HR's Curse !

It’s Performance appraisal time at the IT services companies and for quite couple of days I am hearing my friends cribbing about the Human Resources Department for the ineffective bell curve appraisal method.

During the college days, Students were comfortable with whatever they are being offered in terms of Salary, Place of work, domain etc. In fact it’s notable that IT services companies were not forced to change their entry level salary for the past of 7 – 8 years owing to the huge number of engineering graduates churned out from the engineering colleges and lack of employment / employability skills.

But in College, nobody cribs about being a Computer Science Engineer or any other engineer not getting into a core Industry of their engineering specialization. Why aren’t Computer Engineers not getting into Product Companies which pay them well ? It’s pretty simple that it demands higher level of competencies compared to working in IT companies.

After spending one or two years at IT services companies then comes the rat race for performance appraisals and promotions. First I wish to highlight, Performance appraisal is not a stand-alone tool in IT services industry, there are indeed a gamut of offerings like Promotions, Onsite Opportunities, Location transfers, Project assignments of choice, Career planning options available in the company

Putting into perspective the HR Challenges, IT services industries are the largest private employers in India and the IT landscape in which we are operating is pretty challenging to have predefined goals and monitor due to its dynamism in terms of stability of the environment and complexity in operations model. Even then we have been doing its best in terms of compensation and employee engagement reflected through Industry attrition of 13 % (NASSCOM estimates) well lesser against the Banking sector. Also Tata Consultancy Solutions  and Cognizant, two major players have been consistently rated as the Best Employers during last two years.

Even then IT Industries HR fraternity is vigilant in terms of keeping people engaged by providing with learning opportunities during their initial entry level stage and by the end of two or three years they are provided with gamut of options from which they can choose , but only pain point is the employees want it all ! Isn’t a certain trade off  required ?

But on the other hand, I don’t agree with some companies who have a clause saying that who gets 1^st rating twice would be promoted first as I personally feel under this clause the basic fundamental of “Appraise for performance and promote for potential” fails and at times even the rationale of performance appraisal is lost because of the trade-off with other options.

I have listened to so many people saying , this time I got promotion so I was rate less even though I performed well and on the other hand one of my friend told I will be given an onsite opportunity so I have been rated less. So Is’nt the rationale behind appraisals which is primarily a feedback and developmental tool is lost?

I feel it’s high time the organizations use the performance appraisals as a developmental tool and base promotion policies out of competency based management systems. Use motivation tools like onsite opportunities and other career planning as allied engagement options. Trading off Performance appraisal with others might be a serious trouble. !

You are views and critics on this subject / article are most welcome !

Recent Read - Quiet : Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking

For a long time,this thought has been lingering in my mind “Why Extroverts are widely accepted and Introverts are seen inferior in most of the situations”. Being an Introverted Kid, who prefer to be alone with books lying around, prefer more on ideation than going out and executing, wanted to be in quiet place, spend meaningful time with people rather than partying hard.

 I came across this book Quiet: Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking written by Susan Cain, a lawyer, Psychologist and an introvert by herself.

In this book, she explores how the Socio-Economic changes have influenced the change from Culture of Character to Culture of Personality – She says globalization and liberalization has turned the focus on how people are perceived rather than what actually we are, on the way sacrificing something meaningful we had.

She quotes couple of examples on the Communication Skills workshop, how Harvard is place for Extroverts and even the Churches in US are not accommodating the Introverts, a prime requisite for Inquisitiveness. She brings out how Extroverts are gregarious, sociable and act with less information rather than getting deep into the topic, on the other side Introverts are less sociable and get deeper into topic, Insightful. Introverts prefer Ideation and Extroverts prefer Execution. (All the thoughts has been substantiated with experiences, research data)

She also quotes how collaboration was brought about in the wake of internet based work systems with virtual teams, where people were not physically interacting instead were mostly anonymous and in case of today’s context collaboration in organization where people are physically working together, having their own predispositions about the other might give rise to organizational politics, social loafing behavior and might kill creativity.

She explores the anatomy of the human brain where one of research  findings found children who were highly reactive during their childhood days turned out to be Introvert and vice versa. It’s because of the their amygdala referred to as emotional brain being sensitive towards novelty compared to the extroverts. However, she says that the neo-cortex that carries the experiences, impressions can help introverts to act as pseudo extroverts if situations demand and how people might be pulled back as introverts after a certain threshold getting back to their amygdala.

In line with this she also explains how the Ascending Reticular Activating System (ARAS ) a part of the brain , a pipe like structure which is responsible for arousal is wider in case of the extroverts demanding more sensory outside stimulus for their arousal and on the other hand its narrower in case of Introverts making them self-aroused without any external stimulus.

She also talks about creating Restorative niches and sweat spots where introverts though involved in pseudo extrovert activities can rejuvenate themselves on regular intervals and form agreements with their closed one’s for spending times on things they love to do !

Extroverts are reward oriented and Introverts are threat oriented. She puts into perspective how corporates are responsive to short terms rewards and therefore value extroverts over Introverts. Also provides data on how Introverts investments sustained the Wall Street Crash compared to the investments made by Extroverts.

She talks about the Rubber band theory, which says every human being has his / her own Free Will to certain extent to modify his / her traits and this would happen mostly when people work projects that are close to their heart given by Free Trait Theory !

She also brings out how Asians Culture propounded Introvert ideal and the American Culture propounded the Extrovert ideal, how we are changing nowadays. She also has discussed about how to deal with Introverted kids rather than try turning them into extroverts.

Altogether a Brilliant work ! Must read for an Introvert and people dealing with introverts to understand their potential & possibility. It's much more than what we really think of an Introvert !

Here is the link for one of her TED talk on this book : http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html