What Recruiters Must Consider While Recruiting

When I was in search of a job, I approached many people to place me in some company. In this race for searching a job I wasn’t alone. Few of my friends too accompanied me in this race. I found many of them got placed very soon and in reasonably good and big companies. When they got selected, I wondered, what that recruiter must have searched for, when he recruited one of my friend, whom I thought was incapable of serving that job, for which he was chosen. I suspected that he was incapable because, personally I found him to be lacking some basics in technology. This suspicion was turned into a reality when he was thrown out of the company in few months because of his failure to serve the job. This made me think of this question which I am sure most of the candidates seeking a job wonder: Is the BASIC factor consider while recruiting by a recruiter?

I am sure that whenever a recruiter asks a candidate to appear for an interview, he must have at least glimpsed through that candidates resume. But as a matter of fact, some candidates don’t provide the exact genuine details in order to attract recruiters, by adding stuff (skills) which they don’t possess. Now this actually gives the recruiter a feel that he is asking a potentially good candidate to appear for an interview as he gets disguised by the false resume. The interview is conducted and is basically a HR type of interview. I guess you guys know what an HR type of interview is. And at times the candidate gets selected. Lucky him! I feel that recruiters search for a spark in the candidate for how conversant he was and how quick he is at understanding and finally makes a choice in selecting the candidate. Considering the quickness and conversational competency of the candidate he is selected and is placed in an environment where both his quickness and conversational competency isn’t very much required. This is where I feel recruiters must not let things run out of their hand. Immediately few questions arise: Will the candidate survive in that industry? Will the candidate have the fluency in his transition from the current knowledge state to a state where he needs to get acquainted with the business requirements of the company?

Well as you and I are given the briefing regarding what kind of background the candidate has, we would opt to choose a NO to these questions. But the recruiter doesn’t know that the resume, he saw wasn’t genuine. The candidate may not satisfy the needs of the job profile chosen for him and he could be thrown out of the company. Well this was exactly what happened in my friend’s case. Now was this a failure on my friend’s part or on the part of the person who showed interest and confidence in recruiting him? This is a debatable question. But the answer is very simple.

Neither the recruiter nor the candidate was solely responsible for his failure. It was a joint failure. The recruiter as well as the candidate failed. Candidate failed to get himself adjusted to the requirements and the recruiter failed to search for what I referred to as the BASIC factor.

This BASIC factor which I am referring to is nothing but the “zeal” that a recruiter must search for. I hope you all agree that not a single one of us is perfect and learned to the extent knowledge extends. So what matters is the passion, zeal, enthusiasm that persists among a candidate to learn, to grasp, to educate himself. You would say that in the above case the recruiter wasn’t provided with genuine details so he can’t be wrong at his choice but I would like to ask, is it fair that based on quickness and conversational competency a recruiter must decide that a candidate is good at the job he is chosen for? I mean if it would have been a BPO job I could think he would have had a point.

A recruiter must definitely search for conversant and quick behavior in the candidate, but he/she must also work equally hard to search for BASIC factor. As an example let’s consider a software developer (SD): SD can be a person who knows a language (say Dot Net or Java) and he knows how to program in those languages. A recruiter can expect conversational fluency and quick behavior in such SD, but shouldn’t he search for a BASIC understanding of fundamentals regarding the language in which he is expected to work in the industry? This is what I refer to as the BASIC factor. If the recruiter can search for this BASIC factor or to say the zeal or passion to at least learn, I am sure the candidate will not let the recruiter’s decision in choosing him down. What a candidate needs is a correct orientation, which I feel only a recruiter can provide.

Wouldn’t it be nice and beneficial for the Industry, the candidate and the recruiter, to have such an understanding of the BASIC factor? If the recruiter can think of this then I am sure that we will reduce failures.