Recruiting is Being Human
I always think and excite about the role that I have been handling for the last over 16 years. I have been instrumental in extending better living to most of the people I engaged in the process of recruitment. As we move on the connect between the recruiter and the candidate is getting diluted. With the intervention for Technology and social media platforms, the Recruiter connecting with masses have never been a challenge now. Earlier it was extremely difficulty, only opportunity was to participate in any of the job fare in the city or extensively drive the Employee Referral campaigns. Even in Job fare around 80% of walk-ins were sometimes irrelevant for you, only the 20% you will try to carry forward in the process. Paper advertisement was another option to reach to many but depends on the financial decision of the organization that you work with. Employee referral was relatively an effective tool, recruiters used to keep a very strong rapport with the Employees on a regular basis doing floor walks, participating in Employee Engagement programes and frequently connecting with the recent recruits. Pepping up Employees for ER campaigns was one of the major KPIs for us those days and we were very successful in delivery. The kind of travel we make with the technical panel across the country for hiring further strengthens the relationship. In the view of personalizing the hiring process we even feed 100% selected candidates contact number in our personal phone so that when they call us we can address them personally. All that were the kind of recruitment activities when I started my career.
Why are people looking out for a new opportunity?
Not paid enough….
No visibility in scaling up in this organization….
Wanted to relocate to join family or to detach, or to take care of your parents…..
My manager’s wrong reign…not convinced
Medical Reasons….
Few of them are in this line. However not easy to finalize one opportunity or get qualified for one which will eventually help you to overcome the very fact of your reason of looking out. Here comes the role of the recruiter who rightly engage with the candidate. Finally, when we can make him/her join, both the parties will get convinced. However, the whole act of recruiting is completely controlled by the very expertise of the Recruiter and his kind consideration for the fellow candidate he is dealing with.
Very Often I educate my Team that Recruiting is all about selling but it is not like selling other products in the market. We are influencing somebody to take the lifetime decision which will eventually have lot of impact in his/her life ahead. Still if a recruiter engage with the candidate rightly/genuinely can even control the degree of scaling up the impact towards the negative pole.
Right hiring is not a coined term to define fulfilling a position on time with a right skilled resource. What if a new joiner later found the job is not inline with his aspiration or he is not able to balance the W/L in the new role. Hence the recruiter conversation in understanding a candidate background is very critical. Often we miss this fact and keep probing candidates only to match your fitment and to take the final decision. Understanding candidates’ personal life and aspiration in detail is extremely important in Indian hiring scenarios. Therefore, the HR discussion we conduct towards the end of the selection process is extremely crucial in hiring a right candidate. I still remember along with the candidate we even sometimes try to support spouse if they are in the professional stream where we can accommodate. By doing all this we are ensuring that the opportunity that we are fulfilling will not get vacant soon, and to some extend we are also improving the probability of making this candidate join us. Perhaps these are all old thoughts not in line with 2022 scenarios for sure. In 2022 we did not mind striving so hard to scale up with the highest number ever and still manage to have the last year headcount closing balance intact. Thanks for the new campaign “Retaining is the new hiring”. In a different line 2023 possibly be dragging us to the ground of Basics from where we let ourself fly so high with an inflated balloon.
Recruiter and the Candidate, it is a divine relationship which starts from the first cold call until the candidate joins us. Moreover, every candidate you hire are the potential lead generators for your upcoming opportunities. Now mostly these different roles of a recruiter have been hijacked by AI tools, or may be Recruiters are taking advantage of this and handing over the candidate to the system intelligence to manage the post offer discussions. Gone are the days we talk about personalizing offers but today it is mostly system talks to the candidate as soon as we release the offer and the candidate in turn does not bother to connect with the Recruiter in case of offer declining and to take up a different opportunity. Very few recruiters’ sense this proactively before the system notifies him/her.
The process of hiring is evolving by embracing automation in all the process stages as much as possible. But this is not intent to reduce human interfaces or neglect the hygiene of hiring process. It is a consulting role, only a seasoned recruiter can provide options of solutions to a Candidate. Like other functions it is tough to demarcate core and noncore in Recruitment. Core are meant to be handled by Human and non core can give to systems. However, as we move on today’s noncore will become the core tomorrow. Hence it is challenging to make the system learn a particular pattern for future response. Having said that the automation of every process other than the human interface scenarios have enormous possibility here. One way it helps us in establishing the maker and checker to reduce possible errors the process, and to standardize the written communication with the candidate. Working with one UI throughout until the candidate join will help the recruiter to improve the candidate experience provided, he/she is able to personalize the engagement throughout the process.
While we welcome all the new changes in the recruiting process due to technology intervention and the post Covid hiring scenarios, being human in recruitment is the only successful model in retaining the hygiene in this function and to support the Business at its full effectiveness and efficiency.
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