Some of the things I enjoy being a Management Consultant are
wide ranges of networking prospects, traveling across globe and opportunities
to work across industries on a broad range of HR projects. In past one and a
half years, I have been working with Automobile, Engineering, Financial
Services, Entertainment, Information Technology, Distillery, and Beverages, and
Auto Component Industries on projects such as Leadership Development, HR
Automation, HR Systems Analysis, HR Processes Reengineering, Manager
Development, Compensation and Benefits Analysis. In the month of November 2016,
I was commissioned by the CEO of a leading player in the auto-component
industry in Pune, a 215 million USD organization with 1,728 white-collar
employees in three plants across India, to help them refine their manpower
hiring processes with an astute focus on preparing the organization against
ongoing talent shortage, which, according to them, had been affecting their
expansion plans in India. At that point in time, my client had more than 65
open positions; some of which were open for over 180 days. Around the same
time, Manpower Group, a leading global recruitment company, came up with its
annual talent shortage survey results, announcing “40% of Global Employers
Report Talent Shortages”. In this article, I will be sharing an overview of my
diagnosis study with the client and the proposed project plan.
Before visiting their
corporate office, for a meeting with the
leadership team, including Vice President HR and AVP Talent Acquisition, I had few rounds of telephonic and offsite
discussions with the CEO. To summarize his requirements regarding manpower
requirement: he needed a ready pool of talented people, willing to take up
challenging assignments at any given point in time, at any work site,
positively motivated, working towards the requirement of clients with utmost
sincerity and accountability, always meeting the threshold of On-time Delivery
(OTD) and in the process of doing so add value to organizational growth and
help us in creating a positive brand. To him, the educational and
socio-economic background, gender, religion, physical appearance, and industry
background of the candidate was irrelevant. He also said, “However, whenever I
discuss a new project with my teams or asks reasons for the delay in project
execution or below acceptable OTD, I am often given reasons of a shortage of
manpower”. My problem diagnose meeting
with leadership team, which begun at 10 AM, within one hour of its start,
turned into a blame game meeting, with functional heads blaming HR for their
failure to source and attract good talent from the market; HR team was blaming
external forces such as talent shortage in the market, poor education system
overall, impractical expectations of candidates and poor work ethics of
Millennial generation. Some of the key pain areas highlighted by leadership
team were as follows:
Poor quality of resumes
shared by HR and Recruitment Consultancies [Only 3-4 profiles out of 10 get
shortlisted by the hiring managers]
Below average soft skills
[Communication, Language, Time Management, etc.] among candidates
High Cost [Disproportionally
high salary expectations of job candidates]
Too long waiting time [From
the date of the Offer Letter, candidates take 60-90 days to join]
A discussion with HR and Talent Acquisition Team brought forward following
points –
1. Frequent changes in the
job description by hiring managers
2. Opaque job requirements –
Many times hiring managers mix 2-3 roles in one job description and make it
complicated to search
3. Unclear short-listing
criteria are adopted by hiring managers [often candidates get rejected on the
basis of their gender, marital status, age, religion, physical appearance,
etc.]
4. Hiring managers want us
to schedule interviews on working days during working hours only, making it
difficult for candidates working in
different cities to participate in the recruitment process
5.Few candidates turn for
job interviews [While 7 out of 10 candidates come for the first round of the
interview, only, 3 out of 10 candidates come for final round of interviews]
6.Poor offer acceptance and
joining ratios [while 6 out of 10 candidates accepts the offer letter only 5
out of 10 joins on agreed joining date]
7.High first-year attrition
rate [First-year attrition rate is 45%, while attrition rate among those who
are working with the organization for more than TWO years is 12%]
As we came to an end of our
Day-1 of discussion, I asked the AVP – Talent Acquisition to schedule a meeting
with THREE of their active Recruitment Partners. 60% of manpower requirements
of the organization are filled through recruitment consultancies. Next day in
my meeting with recruitment consultants following points was shared –
Hiring managers change
interview schedules at the last moment without any consideration which makes it
difficult to coordinate with candidates for rescheduling the interview.
Midway through the
recruitment process, the position is put on hold without any convincing
response. Often, we are made to do aggressive follow-ups
Some hiring managers of the
organization directly discuss their requirements with us and give us
specifications which are is a contradiction with the job descriptions shared by
the HR.
By the end of first round of
discussion I fondly began to remember the story of an Elephant and FOUR blind
men.
Once upon a time, there
lived FOUR blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey,
there is an elephant in the village today”. They had no idea what an elephant
was. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go
and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Each one of
them touched the elephant.
"Hey, the elephant is a
pillar," said the 1st man who touched his leg.
"No! It is like a thick
branch of a tree," said the 2nd man who touched the trunk of the elephant.
"It is like a big hand
fan," said the 3rd man who touched the ear of the elephant.
"It is like a huge
wall," said the 4th man who touched the belly of the elephant.
They began to argue about
the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. A wise man was passing by. He stopped and
asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to
what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the
elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are
right. The reason each one of you is telling it differently is because each one
of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually, the elephant
has all those features what you all said."
Next blog will be posted
soon…
About Us
As a Principal Consultant,
Sanjeev is credited with pioneering best practice HR systems and processes for
clients. As a Talent Strategist, Sanjeev partners with organizations hiring
managers to find, select, and hire top talent which provides a foundation for
organization's future growth
Contact Us
No:
22, C2, 6th Floor
Hermes
Heritage – II
Shastri
Nagar, Yerwada
Pune
– 411006
Phone
no: 9975689991
Email
Id: sanjeev.himachali@ecliptichr.com
Website:
http://sanjeevhimachali.org
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