Recruitment and Selection in Today’s Era

What are the changing trends of Recruitment and Selection?Every person finding a job whether fresher/ experienced has to go through the process of recruitment. Today most of the recruiting is done through job boards, Social media, employee referrals, campus recruitment, recruitment agencies, online advertisements and mobile recruitment leaving behind the traditional methods of advertisements in newspapers.

The first & foremost element for short listing candidates is screening of resume. After short listing candidates based on their profile; companies generally opt for conducting GDs / aptitude test / psychometric tests as the second short listing criteria; which checks for candidate’s communication, analytical, logical, reasoning & quantitative skills and also tests his / her cultural fit for the company. When a candidate clears all the tests successfully, interview round is conducted; based on which the interviewer selects the best fit for their organization where the most suitable candidate gets hired. Interviews have also taken the mode of Skype & Video Conferences, which is beneficial on part of both; company as well as the candidate with respect to the amount of cost & time saved. The entire process of recruitment is quite prune and pertinent.

What is to be doubted though in current scenario is recruitment through ‘Social Media’. Should it be done! How much authentic it is!

Let’s first understand various facts related to social media recruiting…..

In contrast to what was said earlier, today most of the recruiter’s generally go for a second round of screening as scanning of candidate’s linkedin, facebook, google+ and twitter profiles. Nonetheless to say companies like HCL technologies have gone far more than that; HCL went for recruiting through Twitter recruitment campaign called #COOLESTINTERVIEWEVER. Definitely it gives a great scope and opportunity to people sitting at home to use their laptops to demonstrate their skills and get selected; with no travelling or other costs involved therein. But what about the people who don’t have an easy access to laptops or who are not well-versed with using twitter, linkedin, facebook or any other social media platform for that matter; but at same time possess right amount of skills and knowledge to be eligible for applying for the same job. Aren’t they devoid of this wonderful opportunity! Or is it in today’s world social media is equally important & that everyone out there employed or unemployed must have knowledge about social media.

Well, let’s look it this way. If the whole practice of social media goes this way and if it’s so easy to apply & interview for jobs just on few clicks. Isn’t it going to affect the retention of present company! A person will try to spend more time polishing their resumes, maintaining their social media accounts and pay less attention to their current jobs. They will always have an urge to look for new opportunities if they are so readily available, just like people keep checking for offers on the e-commerce sites. The commitment towards the present company or work may go down.

And what all does the Social Media actually shows is only the brighter side of the story and the other side can never be seen. A study done by Aalto University shows “An authentic image on social network sites (SNSs) includes an element of fakery”. Airi Lampinen, co-author of the study added “While social norms required individuals to be real in their sharing behaviour, presenting oneself in the right way through sharing often necessitated an element of faking”

Today when questions like what are your strengths & weakness are asked in interviews, people generally try to portray their weakness also as strength. So the truth can never be known. In interviews candidates try to frame as good a picture as they can before the interviewer, and the reliability of the same can be questioned. But what an interviewer still looks for is the Qualities, qualifications, strengths & talent required for a particular job. And if they get that through person’s resume, aptitude, GD, interview the candidate is selected. And still it’s a reliable process because the interviewer can counter question for things he doubts. But this option is not available while screening through social media. Maybe the person who is equally capable but just not active on Social media gets knocked out!

The second picture that is also visible today is companies opting for some other methods of recruitment like live internships, live projects, case study competitions, etc. The registered students are asked to work on projects or ‘live’ case studies along with company seniors. Some companies like Citibank conducted ‘Citi Campus Innovation Challenge last year’. Coca-Cola India’s ‘Showcase’, Hindustan Unilever’s LIME, Mahindra Group’s ‘War Room’, Tata Steel’s ‘Steel-a-thon’, Nomura Holdings’ ‘IAG’, SABMiller India’s ‘Brew-a-Career’, JP Morgan’s ‘The Deal’, Asian Paints’ ‘Canvas’, Tata Motors’ ‘Mindrover’, ITC’s ‘Interrobang’ and GE’s ‘Genius’ are some of the competitions conducted across B-schools.. Candidates who are shortlisted through these competitions may be offered either jobs or final placement interviews. These competitions are held all over India and the winner may have an opportunity to win prizes worth rupees one lakh. This process is still more logical.

Such practices are really helpful for candidates as it facilitates practical learning along with theoretical; as also gives an opportunity to candidate to get hired by the company they are working for. In the process; the skills required for a particular job also get tested simultaneously & the whole lengthy process of recruitment & selection can be skipped. So company should opt for such realistic concepts like PPO, virtual internship, live projects, live internships, and competition based hiring so that it creates a win – win situation at both the ends.

Though technology helps in lots of ways and actually saves lot of time & effort. But, there needs to be some wisdom applied on where to use it and where it should not be used. Attracting candidates through Social Media is a different thing & screening candidate’s based on their social media profiles is another. The former is alright but the later needs to be questioned and answered carefully!

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