Stop hiring people by name of their College
You probably must have read the quote give below a million times or more in journals,newspapers and novels
Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover
This quote transcends its meaning across various disciplines and subjects and it absolutely is in the case of Recruitment. Recruitment,is a subset of Human Resource discipline and plays a pivotal role in company’s growth and stability.
The advent of technology and internet has greatly impacted this human resource discipline in general by helping candidates access relevant opportunities by the click of a tab.
While the technology evolved,the recruitment processes stayed the same.A traditional recruitment process follows the following path:
- SOURCING
- SCREENING
- ASSESS
- HIRE
While sourcing has gone digital through job boards,social media platforms and networking sites, screening is more of a hybrid process (hybrid as in it requires human assessment as well as technological assessment).Today’s modern & powerful,algorthmicaly loaded ATS’s (Application Tracking System)help recruiters sift through thousands of candidate profiles in minutes and then a recruiter chooses apt profiles from the lot left.Once screened, candidates today go through some form of assessment,either technical (via computer) or manual ( interview ). Selected candidates are then made offers for the job.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the price of a bad hire is at least 30 percent of the employee’s first-year earnings.
The biggest challenge for any recruiter in this world,is to hire a “perfect employee”or a “near perfect employee” for its company. While perfection is nearly impossible to achieve, but, what in reality eludes a recruiter to make that “perfect hire” ?
The point where most of the recruiters make their biggest mistake is while screening the candidates. Recruiters,even today, value name over skills.Name of an institution(College ,University etc) often plays a critical role while choosing potential hires.
The Harvard Business Review points out that as much as 80% of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions
The question that peeks out though,is, what is wrong with such an approach and how does it affect a company ?
As mentioned in the beginning of this article, its difficult to know a book by its cover as it might not reflect the real content of the book and the thoughts which the author wants to convey to its readers. Therefore,its a malpractice to judge a candidate’s skills by their institute’s name. The name of an institute might not reflect the real talent and skills possessed by a candidate. While a good recruit benefits a company tremendously,a bad recruit hurts a company’s short & long term stability and growth.Therefore, recruitment has to be curated in the most careful way possible.
What is the alternative to this?
Companies, traditionally avoid usage of proper talent assessment techniques & platforms to minimize hiring costs. Various assessments, competition platforms have sprung up over the years to assist recruiters in spotting relevant & high quality talent. This indeed is an extremely important step in recruitment that should not be overlooked by recruiters at any point.
According to a study published by SHRM, poor hiring decision for a candidate earning $100,000 per year could cost, on average, $250,000, and that expense comes right off the bottom line.
Build it or Get it
The best way to assess candidates for a company is to design assessments or gigs to check skills needed for a required role. A customized and inbuilt assessment is a resourceful,efficient & a cost effective way of assessment.Building in house assessments requires collaboration across teams and various factors like company’s function,sector,employee strength etc affects the possibility of building in house assessments/gigs for recruitment.
The get it approach has lead to genesis of competition platforms and assessment service providers among various sectors in the last few years. Approaching an external vendor for assessment services might be costly but it ensures high quality and a relatively small response time.The get it approach has the potential to revolutionize the recruitment industry , as more and more companies register for these assessment services.
The development in technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence are sure to bring about the next revolution in recruitment strategies and processes but a reliable and robust framework for recruitment is what recruiters should look to construct, to overcome the problems of a bad hire.
While assessment is not the only strategy that needs to be overhauled for improving recruitment.A combination of Innovation and technology will truly revolutionize every aspect of recruitment in future.
