The recruitment process conducted by HR professionals does not always zero in on the best .

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The one thing HR professionals seem agreed on is that the maximum mistakes their department makes is in the hiring process. In fact, recent research by recruitment and HR advisory firm Recruitment Roundtable says that only 50 per cent of all new hires are the right fit for their jobs.

This does not mean that half the intake comprises total duds. It’s just that a little bit of care would have ensured a better fit. “You end up with the passable instead of the best,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh.

This matters but not too much when the economy is booming and candidates are tougher to find than jobs. But when the situation reverses — as has happened today, albeit temporarily — the warts in the selection process are there for all to see.

Recruitment experts say that the problem starts with the HR department itself. Nick Corcodilos enumerates the 10 Stupid Hiring Mistakes employers make. At No. 1 is the desire to get an exact fit and not a best fit. You want a certain portfolio of talents with the candidate. The chances are you will never get all of them. This approach is for specialised jobs and you must go out and seek rather than wait for applicants to reply to your ad. HR professionals within an organisation are notoriously deskbound; you can recognise a star who you want to have in your organisation only if you meet him in the field.

Corcodilos’ second “mistake” takes a further potshot at the HR department. The problem, he says, is that HR does the recruiting. “Consider that the person who first talks to a prospective hire is your company’s front line of communication with your professional community. What does an HR representative — even the best one in your company — really know about the work your department does?” His solution: if you want an engineer, get the engineers in your company to vet him.

“All these things work when you have the time and the resources to go about recruitment in a systematic fashion,” says Singh. “Over the past few years in India, it has been more of taking people in without many checks.” This has resulted in the recruitment of both dishonest (with a fudged track record and sometimes even a criminal past) and incompetent employees.

Today, IT and BPO companies are getting rid of the chaff. That’s good news. What is not is the fact that if business hadn’t hit a rough patch because of the financial crisis and the possible recession in the West, these employees would have continued on the rolls. “What is worse news is that companies are not using this opportunity to put systems in place,” says Singh.

If anything, companies have been shirking the responsibility. Most large organisations today believe in pre-screening. They give this job to an outside agency. HR professionals confess that one of the reasons for this is to avoid nepotism; it is standard practice in India to get as many jobs as you can for your extended family. (Curiously, it has become a best practice in the West also. But there the performance of those you bring in reflects on you.) But pre-screening may eliminate some of the deadwood; it doesn’t ensure the candidate fits your organisational culture.

Corcodilos is not alone in giving recruitment advice. The Internet is full of lists of top recruitment mistakes. It is a problem not for the company alone. The Recruitment Roundtable survey reveals that 40 per cent of all hires feel that they are misled to some extent during the recruitment process. The result: unhappy employees and post-purchase dissonance.

“We may have a window of six months to a year when the mad recruitment of recent times will slow down,” says Singh. “The wise will use the opportunity to put their house in order.”

FIT NOT FAT

A recipe for effective recruiting:

To save short and long-term costs, leading recruiting executives are redesigning their assessment and selection strategies to ensure that “best fit” talent is consistently identified and selected early.

• Reduce costs by better predicting “fit” and quality. Apply selection techniques that appropriately (and simultaneously) screen for job and organisational fit, as well as quality.

• Streamline assessment by improving sourcing before selection. Use sourcing practices that achieve higher initial state quality, easing preliminary assessments and long-term costs for high-volume positions while ensuring upfront quality for harder-to-fill positions.

• Place the candidate at the centre. Make candidate care as important as effective selection and implement “candidate-centric” practices.

• Apply risk-adjusted assessment practices. Differentiate investment in assessment techniques based on the turnover and quality risk carried with specific position types to maximise ROI.

Source: Recruiting Roundtable

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