Hiring Hurdles

They say one of the toughest parts of running a company is managing all the human resource issues that invariably come up. However, I would say in India the toughest part is hiring people. We recently wanted to hire a technical person so we did the usual by using an online job site to find someone.  We got flooded with over 300 resumes and had to sift through them to find the gems, in the end we found 10 gems. We emailed them all and five responded back saying they would be available on an interview on Saturday. The big day came and only one person arrived and that candidate was clearly under qualified with an over-inflated resume.  It was a waste of time and resources for everyone involved.

Now, suppose all the interviews are done you would think all the heavy lifting would be done…wrong.  Now, you have to wait and hope the person you have extended an offer to actually shows up.  This is where it really gets crazy, because you might call the person several times and they will give you an excuse they are sick or someone else is sick.  Most people will not come out and say they don’t want to join your company, they just string you along till you stop calling. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about this and it’s back to the whole recruiting process again.

So what do we do now? Job portals do work for many people but we decided it was not worth our time and effort to screen the candiates so now we use an outside recruiter. The recruiter screens the candidates and makes sure they show up for the interview. We also conduct a pre-interview phone call, this helps us establish the candidates speaking skills and whether they can communicate clearly. There is no point in having people spend time traveling to our office and then realize they can’t communicate effectively. With these two changes we have been more effective and the hiring process doesn’t seem so daunting as before.

The above article originally appeared on GQindia.com.