But more often than not its the result of shortlisting candidates based on some set criteria like educational qualification, years of experience in particular functional area, industry, tools they have worked or clients they have served.All these factors serves as filters in navigating through the deluge of resumes received for every single position in an organization. The more employer of choice an organization is, the more stringent filters would be. Its true that such filters help in screening the initial lot and would be very effective when combined with an element of human judgement. But with the penetration of recruitment tools which does activities from shortlisting to sending standard regret mails, there is very little chance that some of the would be superstars would ever get a chance to present their case.
But the problem with such a rigid process is that over a period of time, organization is filled with employees who are very much similar to each other because these people would have come with same or similar educational background, work experience and since people who would interview these candidates remain the same, the selected candidates would be effectively clones of existing employees. It might work very well for some organizations especially in the service sector where the focus might be more on following the existing processes rather than innovation and there is a requirement to higher volumes.
But as the saying goes "one size doesn't fill all" ( or is it some thing different?), caution is required in over relying on technology for shortlisting candidates.True at very senior levels, generally the task is handed over to head hunters with specific requirements. But even at lower levels there are quite a few positions where it would make sense to deviate from regular standard requirements.It would reap benefits to keep a look out for such positions and ensure that shortlisting for such positions is not completely left on some predetermined filters alone but rather involve some one who can see the big picture rather than trying to tick mark the checklist of requirements required for that position.
One other most important and anomaly found in shortlisting criteria is the number of years of experience. Now, every one agrees that years of experience does not directly correlate to expertise level. Even the recruiters knew about it. That's the reason one can find that even for positions asking for 5-7 years experience, more often than not, we can see people with much lower experience levels getting the job.Fair enough. But the most glaring mistake is when as a title for the position , it would be on lines of "Looking for experience levels of 2-4" and in the qualifications & experience section , it would be written Minimum 5 years of exp required. Next time, just have a look at job openings, keeping this observation and you would be surprised to see the frequency with which it keeps recurring even from the most reputed names
The point is that, these experience criteria is often taken on approximation or based on experience levels of some one doing the job currently which may or may not be a right indicator. It would make more sense to keep experience level generic like say 2-7 years and rather focus on kind of experiences one should have as a criteria for people to judge whether they would be considered for shortlist or not
to be continued.... :)
