Thursday 12 July 2012

Recruitment Challenges

Once I was looking for a specific candidate to fill a position. Searching specific positions arround the region where such business has been started first time is always a difficult task. Reason is scope of the business. In some cases, whenever there starts a new business in a place having differentiation strategy. It is always hard to find related compentecies  / skills / knowledge and expertise locally. People usually run after the trend.  they start getting expertise in that area only which is the demand of the time. So the case was there. A new business was started with new products. And before there were no one who started the similiar business.
Products used to be imported from other countries. It was the first time, product was being thought to be manufactured locally. The idea was great. But the issue was there how to find the right candidates who not only would have knowledge of production manufacturing but also must have experience in the related field.

One way could be that we hired a person having related education and then trained him. But the issue was that the management itself was unware of the process.They just had idea to start this business and for execution of that business, related person was must to hire with similiar expertise. So the case was unusual.

I was sitting on my seat with great worry how to handle this situation and where to find the candidate. I used various recruitment channels i.e. Head Hunters, Consultants, Newspapers, social media compagins, references, market search but all in vain. How could i use more channels. The company was cost conscious as well and had low cost optimization strategy. So justification of ROI was difficult to present and infact difficult to get. Inseated, wasting time and money which was annoying to the Management.

This thing made  me,in real time, frustrated. On one side, I was facing the Management worry as the time was passing and production was to be started. I was myself worried regarding the delay in project just becuase of hiring issue and further my bosses comments were making more worried.

Here, What happened, luck worked a lot. Suddenly, I received a call on my Landline Number. The person started asking me about the job and requesting me to give him a chance. OMG, It was what I was looking. He was requesting and we were looking for such a fit person. Meanwhile, I received another call from a person falling in the same category. Anyway, I attended them, greeted them and motivated them to come for interview. I got them interviewed by the management who was very happy to find such fit persons. It was difficult to decide whom to hire even. One was selected who not only executed the production plan but also gave new innovative ideas to enhance the performance of the product. The other was kept in record and special place of data bank.

I asked them from where they got attention over our requirement. They said that It was from Social Media.

My Learning:-
  1. Be active in Social media because the target market of Recruiters will always be there in social media. So keep on enhancing your social media activties.
  2. For Job Seekers, they must join famous social media channels and keep updated their profiles.
  3. For HR Professionals, always attend the queries with politeness, listen them carefully, ask them to send the resume and keep it in your data bank.
  4. Do hard work on Employer Branding using different channels i.e entertaining universities, social media compagins, Marketing, sponsership and so on.
  5. And the last most imporant, have faith.