How to avoid the 5 common mistakes that Recruiters make while hiring:-

Recruiters today work in an environment of multiple challenges and pressures. Often, they find themselves fighting for the same slice of the skilled job pool as other competitors. On other occasions, the extreme specificity of requirements beats them because they lack the technical expertise to decipher them. The following are some of the common errors that recruiters make, and how we believe they can be addressed:-

1. What You See Is NOT What You Get: Recruiters often accept candidates on face value.Immense pressures on their time leads to situations where they give inadequate time to screening a candidate. They are just flattered by the skills or qualifications portrayed in their resumes, but what they overlook is what the candidate can actually do. To avoid such mistakes recruiters should ask tricky questions different from the stereo-typed ones which will help them to analyze the candidate in a much better way. Watch out for hesitance, slow answers or repeats which often indicate that a candidate is speaking from a script.

2. Referral Policy:-The referral policy is another big mistake which the recruiters follow to make their lives easier. While in principle a good idea, occasionally recruiters do not take a proper interview for the referred candidate since they believe that the candidate is good enough by dint of association. This can prove wrong and create problem in an organization. This can be addressed by following the same selection criteria for referral candidates as any external candidate.

3. Selection Bias:- These days often female candidates are given more preference than male ones sometimes to address the gender imbalance in the organization. Conversely, technical roles still see a bias towards male candidates. To find the right candidates it is essential that recruiters avoid the pressures of fitting the right buckets, and just search for the right person for each role.

4. Traditional method of recruiting not effective:- Recruiters shouldn’t just follow the typical traditional method of recruiting. Instead they can also leverage newer forums such as social networks like LinkedIn or Facebook. However a blanket bombing process on these networks is likely to prove ineffective and it is essential that recruiters take some time to segment and position available opportunities effectively. This will help them to go beyond their traditional means of locating candidates and gain access to a larger diverse pool of job seekers.

5. Job Description provided by recruiter lack detail:-Many times job descriptions provided by the recruiter are too broad and candidates who are not qualified apply for it without understanding the details. So to ensure qualified candidates, the job description provided by recruiter should contain all the details. Such an incident happened recently in a MNC Walk-in Interview. There were a huge number of candidates who came for the interview. The recruiters were totally taken aback seeing this they never expected such a huge number. All this happened just because their job description lacked some important details.

Everybody Lies

In the summer of 2006, during an extended period of insomnia, I discovered the television show House MD. I spent two nights catching up with Seasons 1 and 2, and revisiting my childhood fascination for 'erudite British humorists in serious roles' (yes, I know thats a niche, somewhat acquired taste).

Anyway, I got over the show, as its mythology got more and more absurd, but when I began working in a start up two years later, a piece of advise from the show stayed with me- "Everybody Lies"

Over the three years spent attempting to hire people for first a start up, and then a mid size company with a clear vision, I was reminded of Hugh Laurie reprimanding his interns of this diktat at every turn. Everybody I met lied- on their resumes and in their job interviews. There were the small lies, where an assistant manager chose to call himself a manager- the unnecessary lies, where people invented MENSA scores or an imaginary proficiency in French, and the ridiculous lies- where people claimed to be proficient in data modeling but struggled to add two three-digit figures!

Now those of you who have seen the show know that the venerable Dr. House counters this problem by typically breaking into his patients' house and finding out the truth for himself.

Unfortunately, we as employers, can't do that.

What we can do though, is, -'Inception' style- 'break into their minds'

Behind their rote desire to say that they are a "team player who likes challenges and loves risks and doesn't really care about money' (la-di-dah), what is it, that makes a person really tick?

Short of administering a polygraph- the best answers we've come up with after extensive tests in our labs are:

1. People lie less the 'more' we get them talk (you know the old saying about giving someone enough rope and he'll hang himself??)- hence the extensive textual answers on our portal- which give you a window into their soul.

2. Numbers and statistics lie less than humans- hence converting these textual answers and the users' behavior into measurable metrics

The journey is still a work in progress, and while we can't claim to have quite got to the whole truth, we definitely are 'closer' than we were before.

Now when someone comes into our office, we take great sadistic pleasure in first tearing their tiny resume into pieces, and then ask them to sit on a machine and start testing!

They protest occasionally- but a careful probing- typically leads to a sheepish admission or two, an interesting moment of catharsis, and we feel so much more confident when finally making the job offer to them.

They would be advised not to believe us about the 5 day work week though- because- everybody lies :)

They say, "We need a change"
I say, we need a Revolution. Now.