Deciphering Recruitment Process - Part 1 : Shortlisting of Candidates

Recently i have read an article on "Lotus Notes" where as part of a study on Organization Culture, the resumes of first 40 employees including the founder were sent to HR department ( Changing their names, and this after the firm being extremely successful) for open positions in the organization.These people comes from extremely diverse set of backgrounds most of which are not related to the work done in the organization. Unsurprisingly, none of these people were shortlisted for any of the vacant positions in the organization.These are the very people who had built the organization to the heights it had reached but in the process also put in structures & policies in place which exclude people like them. If such a scenario is by choice, its fair enough.

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.... :)

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