Negotiations!! is it really bad??

Negotiations!! A recruiter’s strengths at times are measured by his/her skills to negotiate. I am sure most of the recruiters enjoy negotiations. In this post we won’t discuss how to negotiate but I definitely would like to have your opinion about another aspect of negotiation.

In Indian market, most of the candidates feel (might be correct in many cases) that if they negotiate hard they may end up with a better package as they know the next salary revision is quite far off and the best that can happen would be somewhere around 10%-15%-20% max. And all this we are considering as a best possible scenario so for them (candidates) the negotiation becomes the key. In my early days, while making the offer I used to go back to my hiring manager / delivery head and tell how badly the candiadate negotiated for just around 25K – 50K etc. And to my big surprise their views used to change completely about the candidate after the disclosure of the expeceted CTC. The next thing they would say ‘if the candidate is negotiating so hard for just 25K or 50K not sure how he /she would react on projects, the candidate looks very money minded etc…etc…’ I do agree, not every delivery or hiring manager would be of such mind frame but I have seen people with huge experiences getting biased after listening to the salaries of the candidate in progress. And that is when most of the companies decide not to let the panels know about the salaries of the candidates in process.

My argument has always been very plain and simple that every one (mostly) tries to negotiate at the time of taking up an offer, so I feel its not bad on candidates part to negotiate. There are hardly a few who worry only about the brand or the kind of work ( I do remember a sr QA candidate in one of my old companies who did not speak a word and accepted the offer the moment I sent it as he was keen to get into the company I was recruiting for and he is doing great there even today after around 7 years).

Many a times I have to go back to my hiring manager and tell him about the salaries as cost of the new hire comes from the project bucket. Also, in case of exceptions we need to check back with the interview panels how great the candidate was in the interviews so that we can do an exception for salary and thats the point when people swiftly change their opinion saying ‘yeah okay.. etc..etc..’.

Sharing salaries with the community leaders has got its own advantage. The leader is in a very good position to analyse if the new hire is worth that cost or not, but even in such a scenario one thing that I have clearly seen missing in many cases is even these leaders feel that the guy ( since he is expecting so much) should be able to shoulder those responsibilities from day one as he is coming at that cost. But am not sure if they realise the culture, process and every other thing of your company is different from the one the candidate is coming from. You need to give him/her the breathing space. yes as per the seniority the settling time should be much less than compared to one with lesser experience.

I am sure many of our dear recruiters would have faced such situation where they would have felt if and only if my technology folks would have been a bit more matured!! 🙂 Views please…

Screening out the candidates before actual interview…. Without looking at the resumes??

I was reading through an article (How I Hire: Three Questions, No Resumes) posted by one of the very senior and seasoned HR professional. A gist is – She has stopped asking CVs to filter out the potential candidates for interview, instead she has been posing the candidates with three questions that tell her about the connectedness, seriousness for the job of the candidate. The answers also let her give some idea on the values and interest level of the candidate. And she claims that this has reduced the junk CVs up to a larger extent making the recruiting process more effective.

I completely agree with her and this certainly would help in processing the really good candidates and with a shorter turn around time.

However, there is another view point to this. Does this holds equally true, when we want to do some quick hiring and particularly in Indian context. Being in such a scenario many times, I have came across such candidates who are honest to accept that they are hearing the name of my company for the first time but are definitely more than willing to explore the opportunity. And since they were good, they have cleared the interview process, come on board and they proved to be great assets for the companyin future. So here is my dillema, if I would have rejected this person at the start of the process itself (for not knowing the name of my company or doing his part of due diligence about it), we would have never got that talent at the first place, so is it worthwhile in rejecting the candidates based on the pro-activeness/interest shown. Might be or might not be.

With the kind of tight competition that we are facing in the market, I am sure it’s still the candidates market. If a recruiter had his/her way, he/she would have never processed a candidate who says they already have an offer in hand but still would like to pursue for a better package or great work etc etc. The pressure that a recruiter always has from delivery side pushes him/her to stop being that selective and instead try to convince a candidate(who looks promising from the CV) who has never heard of your company earlier but is willing to explore the opportunity. It’s not that we don’t filter people with bad attitude, we do. It’s just that not being so pro-active or not being updated about all the companies around is such a big negative that should we end up rejecting the candidate on that basis? Believe me, this is a hot debating topic amongst the Hiring manager and the recruiting folks. Pasing on this info many a times results in a biased interview feedback. Views please..

Mining for Startups

Today, I was reading through the interview of an entrepreneur who has set up four successful start-ups in a short span of time about the challenges faced in startups in one of the leading dailies. And the biggest challenge that has come out to be is the unavailability of the right resources for the startups. I have to agree with it because if you check with the startups 90 out of 100 startups would agree with the same that they are unable to reach out to the right candidates as the need for the startups is slightly different than that of a regular settled company. Since so many intelligent people believe that this is a problem then there can be no second thoughts about it. But every problem has to have a solution. So this also should have one.

“Dhoondhne se to Bhagwan milte hai to Talent kya cheez hai, dhoondhne wala chahiye” (with proper hunting you can find God then Talent is a small entity, you need a proper hunter for it.)

I have spoken with some entrepreneurs about similar situations in the past and realized that none of them wished to invest efforts/money in hiring specialists who can in turn hire the right guys for them. Yes, because almost all of them felt that since they were a startup they would not like to incur the cost of Recruiting/HR function as such. Oh yes! They might be right HR/Recruiting cost never figured out in their planning when the startup idea incubated but neither the aggressive growth plan was there at the start of it. And also, one thing that cannot be ignored is the kind of people that they want at the start of it is very different from what you can probably get readily on the portals or at the ready sources. And the biggest surprise is almost all of them in their previous experience as employees of some companies did really believed the importance of HR/Recruiting functions. So what has happened? They now feel since the startup team would be involved fulltime in the growth they should be able to filter out the junk and get the best, no doubt they will be able to do that but the problem of bringing the right guy on the table is still there, which probably would be resolved by (to a larger extent) by having someone doing full time hunting for the start-up for the right resources. Someone who would resound exactly what you need, someone who believes and understands the founders expectations and is bought in by the mission and vision statement. The point that I would like to make it here is that one cannot ignore the need of a strong recruiting backbone in a startup as (probably) they may need the most. Recruitment in a settled company may do away with junior recruiters or by outsourcing recruitment, but for smaller setups an in-house strong recruiting arm is a must.

Hello world!

This should be my first blog on word press. Though, I have been writing articles and contributing to stories on linkedin in the past, but after reading a blog by Mahesh Baxi on Mentors (Are you making most of your mentors?), I realised the importance of sharing your thoughts with others and so I jumped up and started this blog of mine. Over here, I wish to share my experiences on the HR side (specifically recruitment) and understand the view point of others. Your views/comments/suggestions are all most welcome..

Happy blogging!