[mmmjgm]

Originally Posted by shuvc

M
Say if 1 hr per interview for a detailed one. Say 10 interview panels of 2 persons each. Max, 7 interviews per person on a Saturday considering breaks. Select ratio can be as low as 2-3 persons out of 10. So you interview 70 on a Saturday and select only 14-21. Out of which 5-6 would decline the offer later.

And I have not even considered the time taken for processing formalities, HR rounds, 2nd round interviews etc.

Originally Posted by Mission_Safari

Whats the difference between a graduate and under-graduate? I don't quiite get it.

Shuv- With BPOs the interviewed candidates to selected ratio is more like 30% or thereof Imagine interviewing 1200 across 25 days to recruit 400 people in a month, almost all HR departments within BPOs are recruitment cells with very little to do with other HR activities. Daily almost over 50 interviews are taken.

Mission_Safari - a graduate is one which has cleared his gradudation as compared to an undergraduate (undergoing) or non graduate (stopped studying). With BPOs it is regular to hire infact now it is more like are there any graduates working with BPOs. Most hires are trainable and require a certain test to pass before they are selected. With 3 to 4 rounds of interviews Most outbound campaigns hire undergraduates.

Cheers

[Jaggu]

Where do i start oh boy oh boy oh boy... the below post is just my version of things, there are no facts or points which i would like to convey. call it b-log if you want to.

1990-2002: Recession or no recession IT was coming up in India and engineer were being hand picked by companies, small, medium and big. Yes $ had the edge, value might have been 35 or 38 Rs but that 38 Rs could buy you real quality stuff, not peanuts So IT became the in thing.

HR also started playing newer roles, coz numbers were small and each engineers value add had become critical for IT business. People accepted offer, came in on promised time. Simple phone call to previous manager or HR and things are set for promotion, new gaadi and a house loan for apartment or land for some.

2002- 2006, slowly market dynamics had played its part and people were getting paid through the nose, and yes spending through the nose also to have a decent living. $ was giving good returns and all are happy, gaining flab and enjoying, looking forward to next hike.

So starting late 90's Graduates coming out of college irrespective of stream (engineering, science mainly, but sometimes even doctors and those from arts) had only one dream, sitting in front of comp and tapping away to bigger piggy bank. Opportunities were zillion and eager top honchos didnt mind as long as the job was getting done (for heaven sake thats business!! ok atleast most of the honchos, there might have been exceptions).

Money, Onsite opportunity, Cutting edge technology, Most desired company to work, Flexible working hours, Work from home and la la la la became the in thing to talk about over a cuppa coffee. Retention was a pain and somehow the inherent insecurity of the IT professional always worked well for prospective employer.

So all this gave birth to a new bunch of "street smart" individuals who started misusing inside info to work for them, be it an additional project in CV from roomies resume, or couple of months here and there. And some even to an extent of making IIIT to IIT. But hey the monkey who employee also belongs to same breed at the end of the day and he figured out to unscrew the cork. Again back ground verification came to forefront and to be unbiased, started employing "3rd parties" to do the job. It has worked to a very good extent, finally honesty, integrity are getting some due credits.

How does this work?

Collect the info on paper during interview. Employment application forms, pay slips, appointment letters, promotion letters, relieving letters and la la la la Verify the same either before joining, if the applicant is confident with going about the same, OR wait till he joins to do the 3rd party checks.

If AOK hug him and if issues are there, kick him where it hurts, since at the end of the day it hurts your business (directly or indirectly) and you better care for it. Ok now if you were already kept informed then hmmm shove that file in one of those basement filing stations where nobody would see

So where is it all leading to, 2008 $ is having mid life crisis. So caution is the word over drinks, B/C class cities are heaven for profitability and for another vicious cycle to start. Will it all last hmmm thats my secret info which keeps me in business so cannot share with my beloved friends.

tchuiss
Jaggu

[mmmjgm]

hi Jaggu

Whats the significance of ->ol mcdonald had a farm

[Lalvaz]

Hey Shuvc, I understand the demand supply equation, however my grouse is that HR in India wants to evaluate people based on their previous experience and their previous earnings to determine the offer. Cant understand that. Why dont they use their own methodology to evaluate a candidates worth and then make an offer? Why does HR assume that everyone with a 5 yr experience should be at par? And what does the past salary have to do with the new offer? What is this obsession of % hikes based on a persons last salary? Should'nt a more relevant criteria be the job profile? To the best of my knowledge this is not the only criteria used by HR depts abroad. A look at Monsters international openings will explain better. The HR depts abroad seem to be more flexible in the sense that they are willing to pay a candidate based on the job profile and not the previous salary.

IMO, HR depts are plain lazy. They want to use consultants to fill in positions, rather than use their own skills in finding the right candidate. They do not do adequate homework and research prior to recruitment. Very often they recruit candidates with a previous history of job hopping and then later wonder at the high attrition figures. Commissions from placement agencies is more the norm than the exception. Background checks although mandatory are incomplete in many cases. BTW, I'm speaking from experience since I've audited many cos and seen their background check records, so this is not heresay.

Also, just to set the record straight, I'm totally in favour of background checks and want employees to be honest in their resumes.

Cheers,
Lalvaz

Originally Posted by shuvc

Mid-Late nineties : A lot of s/w companies would allow ONLY computer science, electronics and electrical graduates to write their exams. They could afford that, since their numbers were satisfied within the available pool.

See the scenario today. I had team member who holds a bachelors of english degree. And is a top performer as a technical practitioner in software development.

In a way it's a demand supply thing. They ask for grads/post grads and get them too. They day they won't, the criteria will be revised. Don't some BPO's use undergrads today?

What you say about capabilities vs qualifications is true.
But one of the objectives of these policies is also to reduce the chances of nepotism and malpractices in organizations with hundreds of interviewers across locations. Even with such stringent policies, I have seen extreme poor performers get through 2 rounds of interviews.

Detailed interviews you say. Possible when hiring numbers are small. Impossible when there are weekly targets to the tune of hundreds which is normally the ask for large companies.

Say if 1 hr per interview for a detailed one. Say 10 interview panels of 2 persons each. Max, 7 interviews per person on a Saturday considering breaks. Select ratio can be as low as 2-3 persons out of 10. So you interview 70 on a Saturday and select only 14-21. Out of which 5-6 would decline the offer later.

And I have not even considered the time taken for processing formalities, HR rounds, 2nd round interviews etc.

[kuttapan]

Originally Posted by Jaggu

So where is it all leading to, 2008 $ is having mid life crisis. So caution is the word over drinks, B/C class cities are heaven for profitability and for another vicious cycle to start. Will it all last hmmm thats my secret info which keeps me in business so cannot share with my beloved friends.

tchuiss
Jaggu

Ah !! That isn't nice of you. I was reaching for my phone, to get some real insider info, as I was reading the last sentence. again....

[diabloo]

Thats brilliant analysis. HR seem to have caught in their own vicious circle.

Originally Posted by Lalvaz

Hey Shuvc, I understand the demand supply equation, however my grouse is that HR in India wants to evaluate people based on their previous experience and their previous earnings to determine the offer. Cant understand that. Why dont they use their own methodology to evaluate a candidates worth and then make an offer? Why does HR assume that everyone with a 5 yr experience should be at par? And what does the past salary have to do with the new offer? What is this obsession of % hikes based on a persons last salary? Should'nt a more relevant criteria be the job profile? To the best of my knowledge this is not the only criteria used by HR depts abroad. A look at Monsters international openings will explain better. The HR depts abroad seem to be more flexible in the sense that they are willing to pay a candidate based on the job profile and not the previous salary.

IMO, HR depts are plain lazy. They want to use consultants to fill in positions, rather than use their own skills in finding the right candidate. They do not do adequate homework and research prior to recruitment. Very often they recruit candidates with a previous history of job hopping and then later wonder at the high attrition figures. Commissions from placement agencies is more the norm than the exception. Background checks although mandatory are incomplete in many cases. BTW, I'm speaking from experience since I've audited many cos and seen their background check records, so this is not heresay.

Also, just to set the record straight, I'm totally in favour of background checks and want employees to be honest in their resumes.

Cheers,
Lalvaz

IMO, HR is till in Socialist mindset. Hope somebody brings in some reforms.

[Jaggu]

HR is the bakra aka Goat.

Helloooo!!! guys why are you blaming everything on HR lol think beyond the obvious and see why HR does what they do. As far as i know at the end of the day they also get appraisal letters!!

Ok atleast share some HR acts you would have done for yourself and for your team if wearing HR shoes, which will make win win scenario, and hey if you can share it here, i dont think anything is stopping you from sharing it with your egoistic HR person also.

@kuttapan: your personal plans are aok and please proceed as planned cheers:

[Lalvaz]

Sorry was'nt my intention to blame everything on HR. Theres a lot of good stuff that HR does too. Dont laugh, I'm serious.


On a serious note, HR is an essential part of the organisation. They need to have a better understanding of the companys goals and help meet them. Its not good enough to say that we recruit grads/post grads cos they're available. You're paying more if you want more qualified people, right? Dont you feel it makes more sense to see what the job requires? If for instance, someone is an undergrad, and is a good programmer, who clears the technical tests, is that not good enough reason to recruit him for a programmers job? After all, MS and Oracle were founded by undergrads, no?

Secondly, HR like any other dept in the org needs to abide by the same rules and regulations. They need to focus on reducing costs too. Explain this to me. A company pays huge amounts to head hunters, why cant they have a team in house to recruit people. They could use naukri, monster et all to help them in that task. Dont you think that saving money by reducing external consultants will help the org meet its goals?

And lastly, HR could be a little more flexible. They need to do a better job of recruitment since one bad apple will ruin the whole lot. Surely everyone here will have some experiences wherein a total misfit was recruited. Who takes the blame for that? Sorry, but all these and more need to be fixed if HR wants to get its act together.

Dont mean to denigrate the HR community. Have a lot of friends there and really appreciate the work they do, however theres a lot more that needs to be done too.

Cheers,
lalvaz

Originally Posted by Jaggu

HR is the bakra aka Goat.

Helloooo!!! guys why are you blaming everything on HR lol think beyond the obvious and see why HR does what they do. As far as i know at the end of the day they also get appraisal letters!!

Ok atleast share some HR acts you would have done for yourself and for your team if wearing HR shoes, which will make win win scenario, and hey if you can share it here, i dont think anything is stopping you from sharing it with your egoistic HR person also.

@kuttapan: your personal plans are aok and please proceed as planned cheers:

[mmmjgm]

HR no doubt is not the bakra afterall they have budgets too !

Now the functionality of HR within situations has a lot to do with these budgets. Some over enthusiastic individuals will go all out to show that negative delta (lower hiring costs) to the effect of reducing intake quality. The head hunting industry too has caught on to this and now squeezes HR for the same.

To explain this phenomenon I take a case study, naturally since we all are contentious employees. Lets say the head hunter has x people in a category, y people in b category and z people in c category.

Now knowing that the recruiter has budgets the head hunter will canvas a quality people to the IT biggies where the $$$ are more . The b quality people will be shown to International BPOs who pay more and there by the headhunter earns more and the c quality people will be shown to the lower paying recruiter.

Thereby the person paying lower payouts for hiring will not see the ideal candidates which need to be recruited.

In a blue moon scenario if the recruiting co raises its payout it suddenly sees candidates of b quality ! voila hiring headaches gone.

Thus is the case. Now the majority of people fall in the c category who poor souls will not see any salaries more than 10k ever. Damned be the capability.

Perceptions are the sorting mantra at the head hunter level. This is my viewpoint alone. I may not have seen the entire gamut of recruitment as naturally it is not my domain, nevertheless keep getting affected by intake quality.

Cheers
M M M

[Jaggu]

Inline replies in BOLDfrom my side.

Originally Posted by Lalvaz

Sorry was'nt my intention to blame everything on HR. Theres a lot of good stuff that HR does too. Dont laugh, I'm serious.


On a serious note, HR is an essential part of the organisation. They need to have a better understanding of the companys goals and help meet them.


100% hike for you

Its not good enough to say that we recruit grads/post grads cos they're available. You're paying more if you want more qualified people, right? Dont you feel it makes more sense to see what the job requires? If for instance, someone is an undergrad, and is a good programmer, who clears the technical tests, is that not good enough reason to recruit him for a programmers job? After all, MS and Oracle were founded by undergrads, no?

Makes sense and there are organization that follow this, atleast which have open policy wrt educational background

Secondly, HR like any other dept in the org needs to abide by the same rules and regulations. They need to focus on reducing costs too. Explain this to me. A company pays huge amounts to head hunters, why cant they have a team in house to recruit people.

They could use naukri, monster et all to help them in that task. Dont you think that saving money by reducing external consultants will help the org meet its goals?

Most of them do have internal recruitment teams, some HR functions as both gen HR and as recruiter

And lastly, HR could be a little more flexible. They need to do a better job of recruitment since one bad apple will ruin the whole lot. Surely everyone here will have some experiences wherein a total misfit was recruited. Who takes the blame for that? Sorry, but all these and more need to be fixed if HR wants to get its act together.

HR usually owns up, yeah sometimes arms are twisted when it comes to certain business needs

Dont mean to denigrate the HR community. Have a lot of friends there and really appreciate the work they do, however theres a lot more that needs to be done too.

I say every dept has to have this pinned on their wall, basically SLA for their dept then things will rock

Cheers,
lalvaz

cheers
Jaggu

[hrman]

Some interesting thoughts on this thread. My 2 paisa worth.

1.Background Check: An integral part of the selection process. It is also the most susceptible to fraud and forgery. Hence needs to be monitored. Have seen some candidates lose their jobs for this.

2.Experience: Relevant experience always helps and is one of the most important criteria for selection. If not, what can you use? You say a candidate is good but without experience, so hire him? Huh... If he was so good, he would have got thru campus right? Why does he want a job from me? Ill always go the experience way.

3. Last salary: Another benchmark to make an offer to the candidate. We always insist on last salary slip and follow it up with background check on last salary. The letter also mentions a condition that if any documentation is found to be untrue, strict action will be taken. (have fired a handful on this). Internal parity should be kept and a 25-30% hike is not entirely abnormal. In fact, if the candidate willingly accepts a 10% hike, something is wrong.

4. Role of HR: IN the current IT , ITES scenario, recruitment is at the forefront. So its not incorrect to assume that HR just recruits, recruits and recruits. There is no time for allied activities(training, emp engagement, OD, Talent mgt, Comp n Ben). Companies do have their own in house sourcing team. Overdependance on Consultants is also a costly affair. But at the end of the day, if you save yourself the trouble of shortlisting CVs, following up with candidates, calling them for interviews,scheduling, why not? Its sunny, let them make hay too.

[vivekiny2k]

Originally Posted by hrman

In fact, if the candidate willingly accepts a 10% hike, something is wrong.

not really. i am not a good negotiator myself. It's a different fact altogether that my reasons for satisfaction are mostly other than the hike.

[mmmjgm]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

not really. i am not a good negotiator myself. It's a different fact altogether that my reasons for satisfaction are mostly other than the hike.

Ditto, same here, it depends upon the situation as well, people leave managers, after all money is the same everywhere. Situations are different as well, if you offer a BPO employee the same he is getting in a night shift during the day time, you will find a lot of his friends queing up your doorstep requesting openings in your organisation.

I'd say a lot depends upon the organisation in this 10% hike scenario. Infact 3rd party companies offer a career path to their employees to join the captive after a period of time, at 10% increment and people are happy to join & hire

cheers

[Lalvaz]

You have me speechless HRMan, but let me try responding to your post.

Originally Posted by hrman

Some interesting thoughts on this thread. My 2 paisa worth.

1.Background Check: An integral part of the selection process. It is also the most susceptible to fraud and forgery. Hence needs to be monitored. Have seen some candidates lose their jobs for this.

HRMan, So I'm assuming the background checks are mandatory in your org. Now, have you ever been audited on this process? Do you honestly have all the documents for all your employees in the time frame defined as per your process? If you do, you're special. Believe me, I've come across very few orgs who have this complete in the defined time frame. KPMG is one that comes to mind.

2.Experience: Relevant experience always helps and is one of the most important criteria for selection. If not, what can you use? You say a candidate is good but without experience, so hire him? Huh... If he was so good, he would have got thru campus right? Why does he want a job from me? Ill always go the experience way.

I beg to disagree here. Many colleges do not allow KT students to appear for campus recruitments or atleast did not allow this earlier. Does that mean that they are not good employees? Also going by your logic, Bill Gates, Dhirubhai Ambani, Sachin Tendulkar, so many others are no good eh? As a recruiter, dont you consider it your job to get the best possible candidates for the job? For that you must interview many people to find the ones you need. Or do you honestly believe that only campus recruits are good enough?

3. Last salary: Another benchmark to make an offer to the candidate. We always insist on last salary slip and follow it up with background check on last salary. The letter also mentions a condition that if any documentation is found to be untrue, strict action will be taken. (have fired a handful on this). Internal parity should be kept and a 25-30% hike is not entirely abnormal. In fact, if the candidate willingly accepts a 10% hike, something is wrong.

So if someone is working with a small organization and is underpaid, he must keep jumping jobs every few months till he is worthy of his market price? Can't you just pay him what he/she is worth? Oh yeah, it sure gets easier for HR folks who dont wanna take the trouble to evaluate candidates well. You sure cant be from KPMG. And you actually fire them for lying about their salaries. Do you even consider if they deserve the price before firing them? Oh no, you just see their previous salary slip, dont you?

4. Role of HR: IN the current IT , ITES scenario, recruitment is at the forefront. So its not incorrect to assume that HR just recruits, recruits and recruits. There is no time for allied activities(training, emp engagement, OD, Talent mgt, Comp n Ben). Companies do have their own in house sourcing team. Overdependance on Consultants is also a costly affair. But at the end of the day, if you save yourself the trouble of shortlisting CVs, following up with candidates, calling them for interviews,scheduling, why not? Its sunny, let them make hay too.

Yes, let them make hay "too". Whats your cut dude?
I just explained how the recruitment function could save the org some serious money, but how does it matter when people are making hay. God, was someone saying that HR is being needlessly blamed. You for real???

[Zappo]

Originally Posted by diabloo

I wonder why the HR accepted the fake stuff in the first place? First they should have been fired for dereliction of duty.
Can you recall when the HR was efficient?


During hiring spree, they turned blind eye to these fake stuff. When the going got tough, suddenly they found about these fake stuff and found a reason to fire them.

Whoa! Hold your horses man. You started from an ideological ground, which was fine by me. But now you are talking senseless. You are trying to justify the fakers with all those lame logic.

First of all, one who cheated needs to be punished. Whenever this comes to light. Period. There is no two ways about it, and I believe you will not disagree to that. You can not fudge resume, particularly when you know that it gets you an immediate boot. Most companies make that amply clear at the recruitment stage. If someone still tries to play the hookie, well...

About why the HR did not catch the fake resume at the recruitment stage, I will tell you why. Because that is the most ideal scenario that actually can never happen. The HR person is not a detective. Nor do they get intutions (or even if they do they can not use that on the job). So they accept the candidate on the face value. The idea being innocent till proven otherwise. The process is that once the candidate fills up all the details (and some deep details these are) on the joining day these are passed on to some of the world's top-notch background verification agencies (yes, I said "world's"... like first-eye global). They take time but they go to the root of each claim. Even if you claimed that you picked coconuts in Timbaktu they will track the guy who employed you there and get the details. Obviously it takes time. But if it is proven that you fudged some detail the directive is clear. You need to march out. Finito.

And by the way, after most top IT companies got rid of the fudged cases by sackfuls in 2006 or so this has now become an ongoing process. Most top companies now boot out the fakers on a regular basis.

And I do not see where you have the issue with this practice. You can not abuse the trust laid on you and then blame everyone when caught and punished.