Requirement: .Net Developer with 2 - 3 years experience.
Ageing is 90 days (yet no offer....)
Type: Pretty Generic (There are 3 types: Generic, Niche & Super Niche)
Availability: Plenty......
Response to a job posting for this type: 200+
Closure Cycle: 15 - 30 days
Then why is this blog? ........
Here you go...
This recruiter's requirement was a .Net developer with 2 - 3 yrs of total experience.
He sourced more than 200 candidates from small to big to MNC kind of companies.
He brought on table from immediate joinees (which is recruiters friendly always ;)) to 3 months notice period.
He did exhaustive pre-screen and scheduled their interviews with panels.
First week 10 interviewed and all 10 rejected.
Second week a weekend drive was called and interviewed around 50 candidates and again no luck.
Third week, he added 2 - 4 technical questions(which he got from his network) as part of his screening and based on their convictional answer; scheduled for next round of interview.
Fourth week (pressure, hopelessness, ageing analysis threat). Some more interviews lined-up & again same status quo.
Not even a single candidate went till final round. Yes there was a guy but the feedback read like "average candidate can be groomed". It is better to reject than giving such feedback in my opinion. By fluke he might make it to the offer level but with a STAR (don't give any hike, if he wants he will join else look for new profiles.
Some of the common feedbacks on rejected profiles can be -
- No hands on experience.
- He was part of just one module in his company and here my fresher also does end to end work.
- Does not even meets expectation
- His salary expectation is too high for his expertise
- Attitude is bad
- Bad in basics..
- And so on & so forth
Fire Room Meeting (review meeting actually)
Hiring Manager: We are just not able to deliver because we dont have a simple .Net hire yet.
VP: Why there is delay in hiring a simple .Net guy here. What are we lacking here.
Recruiter: We lined up more than 200 candidates but nobody got selected.
Hiring Manager: Quality of profiles are very bad. Not even a single candidate is upto the expectation.
Recruiter: We sourced quality profiles from top companies too.
Hiring Manager: Quality of sourcing is very bad. Company can be good but you should vet based on the projects. They just put big projects, if you probe in the first 5 mnts only you will get to know that their role in the project is very limited.
Hiring Manager to VP: We need to do something, else we cannot promise on delivery of project on time.
VP immediately sends mail to the Recruitment Head...
It means escalation (in corp terminology).
Poor recruiter now has to seriously clone the resource. He has gone all out. The .Net industry knows him very well. Clearly he starts losing interest in working for this requirement / department & very soon company.
So my question here to all - what is your solution for such situation?
Change the recruiter?
Bring in extra recruiter?
Go to additional hiring partners?
Invest in more branding for the company?
Spend lavishly on some online tool for filtering?
Put a kiosk in one of the hiring event and start interviewing?
Increase the salary band for this requirement?
Offer a designation higher than the current?
Show onsite carrot to the candidates?
......
......
......
......
NO. Try CHANGING THE PANEL. Just try with another panel.
Closure of a requirement is not just the responsibility of a recruiter. Closure is a collective responsibility.
Selection is based on understanding the actual requirement. Being fair in expectation. Prioritizing what is important in a profile and what can be compromised.
The above is purely based on my many experiences. Just to quote one such example (keeping the company & the names confidential because of various purposes).
Me and my team tried to close few simple requirements by lining up as many good candidates as possible. Every candidate used to get rejected. And we recruiters also have intuition by looking at the profile or candidate; so we just changed the feedback sheet where the usual panel had put very bad rating & rejected the candidate. We attached a new evaluation sheet and put the candidate to another panel in another team. He was not just shortlisted, his ratings were beyond Exceeds Expectation. Just to reconfirm our intuition, we asked the candidate to share his previous appraisal ratings with us from his previous companies. They all supported our findings that he is a good candidate for sure. We went ahead and offered him (ofcourse with the approval of our department head). He joined and is been one of the top performer in the group.
Me and my team tried to close few simple requirements by lining up as many good candidates as possible. Every candidate used to get rejected. And we recruiters also have intuition by looking at the profile or candidate; so we just changed the feedback sheet where the usual panel had put very bad rating & rejected the candidate. We attached a new evaluation sheet and put the candidate to another panel in another team. He was not just shortlisted, his ratings were beyond Exceeds Expectation. Just to reconfirm our intuition, we asked the candidate to share his previous appraisal ratings with us from his previous companies. They all supported our findings that he is a good candidate for sure. We went ahead and offered him (ofcourse with the approval of our department head). He joined and is been one of the top performer in the group.
Note: Here I am talking from a recruiter prospective only. No offense to good panels please :).
In short, don't just keep on searching for profiles. Stop in between and review what is going right and what is going wrong. Re-start again. This will also fetch you better, faster & fresher results.
All the best recruiting.
Janaki Shantharam
janaki@dextertalentlabs.com
9886559155
Dexter Talent Labs
- Dexter Talent Labs (DTL) is a new age hiring firm, doing loads of experiments in cracking the talent crunch. Keep in touch with us and know more on upcoming Hackathon / coding contests.
