April 12, 2020 | Posted By: EMC

Five Precautions you should take while recruiting the candidates

Once we referred a Sales Executive for an automobile dealership company. The candidate graduated in commerce. He had an impressive personality and excellent communication skills too. Certainly he got preferred and was put on job immediately.

During the initial period, everything went well but as time went on, the management came to know that his mathematical ability was poor. In fact, while attending the customers, one should have excellent mathematical ability so that he can convince and negotiate with the customer well. However, about this candidate, it was not checked during the recruitment process and then they encountered this issue. Ultimately, the candidate was asked to move. In such cases besides the candidate losing his job, the company also loses the cost of recruitment, salary paid and cost of lost opportunities.

Now, the big question is, can we avoid such disasters? And its answer is YES. Just read and take the following precautions and your decisions will come more accurate.

1. Study the profile/resume: Once you receive any resume, do study it carefully. Learn to read between the lines. This means, if the educational qualification is just written as B.Com., then don’t assume that he has passed the examination. Get back to him and as for the clarification about whether he has passed it or not. It is called camouflaging of the information and a professional recruiter can find it out easily.
2. Check the social media of the candidate: Once you study the resume, have a look at the candidate’s social media presence. Through this, you will get many inputs, which are un-written in his resume. Especially about his political or social connections etc and with this information, you can take your own decisions.
3. Back-ground check: At times, candidates provide wrong information through their resumes or application blank. Especially, they provide fake educational certificates, salary slips including bank statements or hide their criminal background etc. The list is extensive but it is important to reject such candidates before recruitment. For this purpose, there are specialized service providers, who can confirm such information by visiting respective offices/government authorities. We strongly advise that each organization should include this step in their recruitment process to avoid future inconveniences.
4. Psychometric Assessment: Although the candidate is suitable with respect to his educational qualification, experience, skills etc., it is also important to scientifically measure his behavioral tendencies, interests and preferences to ensure his on-job performance. If done, you will come to know about his personality traits, which are favorable and which are negative with respect to the on-job performance of the candidate and you can take suitable recruitment decisions. Although you may not get a 100% suitable candidate, the assessment can indicate the probable risks, which you can be cautious about. A known devil is better than the unknown.
5. Technical Skill Tests: During a personal round of interview, each candidate declares himself as excellent in all the knowledge / skills that you are looking out for. If selected believing their statements, it’s sheer luck that you will get a suitable candidate. So, you must have a structured technical test to confirm the actual knowledge/skills of the candidate. To ensure it, some companies also adopt strategies like in-basket exercises, stress tests, games etc depending upon the need.

Your HR Department can easily take the above precautions. Include these activities into the Standard Operating Practice (SOP) or ISO process made for the recruitment. In case, if your HR Department is not able to adopt, you can outsource it to some reliable consultant who can provide the professional services. But don’t avoid as far as possible.

This way, your process will become more reliable and the rate of failure will come down.

Wish you A Great Recruiting Experience!