Resume Reading - 1

One of the basic skills that any recruiter who is starting out should have is "Resume reading"
yes I mean it! I am sure you have a "so what about it?" expression on your face!

But i can tell you there is many a science behind the same.

For one Resumes are no longer home grown stuff. There are professional Resume writers who can do wonders to the most drab and dull resume! Interestingly it is these Professional Resume writers who have brought in a lot of structure to the resume - resulting in the resume being written and structured in a format which is uniform and easy to read

With the rise of technology resumes have undergone a sea change. Job portals have also driven the format - resulting in Resumes which are in line with portal fields.

So how are resumes structured?

They are broadly structured to include the following-:

• Personal Information - name, location, address, contact details.
• Candidates summary - Current role/Designation, function, key skills, years of experience, what kind of role is the candidate on the look out for
• Chronology of qualifications - starting from the latest to the earliest (with details of marks received, accomplishments)
• Chronology of experience - starting from latest to the earliest (with details of the main achievements in each area
• A summary of key skills (more common in information technology resumes)

It is a good idea to glance over a resume first and understand where each of the above information resides. This helps searching for information easy.

Now to Resume Reading:

Resumes come in all lengths - unusally crisp ones and extraordinarily lengthy ones.!
While reading a short resume is bliss a long one can put off the most ardent of recruiters. It is not the best of efficiency if one is hell bent on reading every page of an 18 page resume

So how should a recruiter go about his or her task.
There are some rules....

Rule No1: Begin with the end in mind.

While reading a resume bear in mind the Job Description and the Candidate Profile.

While the JD includes the KRAs and roles and responsibilities of the potential job, the candidate profile will tell the recruiter about the qualifications, exp that is required.

As a recruiter it is useful to list down the important facts listed in the JD and candidate profile and search for the same in the resume. This helps to search for the relevant details easily.
I would call this process the resume screening process

Rule No2: Look for Key words

Similar to how one would search for resumes in a job portal by inputting a particular key word in the search box - while reading a resume look for key words.

These could be niche skills, qualifications, or experience in a particular company or role

Rule No3: Search for the "rejection criteria" first

When reading a resume firstly look for aspects which the client will not accept. So if they exist then there is no need to peruse the rest of the resume.

Afterall it is much easier to reject a resume than to accept it!

Rule No4: Once Rule 3 is done check for the "must haves"

Check the resume for the parameters which the client compulsorily expects the candidate to possess - be it a particular niche skill or a particular kind of role experience.

"offer decline"

i was training last week a group of Recruiters in Chennai. They work for a well known consulting company. While sharing their experiences they were of the opinion that their main concern was -

The increasing bane of offers being turned down by candidates (which i guess is the offshoot of the kind of offers that are being made in the first place)

Now every Company has its own compensation philosphy which guides it, based on which offers are made.
A consultant can attempt to bridge the gap between what the candidate desires and what the company can offer to the extent possible. After that there is not much he or she can do with respect to that.

However i am of the firm belief that all is not lost inspite of that not too fancy compensation offer.

Given below are some ways to ensnare that candidate who is not too happy with the compensation offer.
I have divided it into 3 types of strategy

The Icing Strategy

The Intangibles Strategy

The Tactics Strategy

The "Icing"
Offer him and his family a holiday trip within 6 months of joining
Offer him an attractive joining bonus (of course with a 6 month tie in - that is if he leaves within 6 months he will have to return it)
Offer him a relocation bonus
Offer to reimburse chidren's school expenses - related to relocation
Send him for a training programme on behalf of the new company
Send him a joining gift hamper - which includes coupons for shopping and dining

The "Intangibles"
Get Senior company employees to talk to him and even discuss loosely the future project pipeline(without compromising on confidentiality)
Involve him in any off sites if possible
Keep in touch with him to keep track of the progress on his exit from the current company - if there is no progress that is the surest sign of trouble in
paradise

The "tactics"

Ask him for a copy of his resignation letter email that he sent to his boss.
Get an acceptance email copy also if possible
Get copies of air or train ticket bookings if it is a relocation
Enquire about plans to relocate - spouse's job, children's education, transferring belongings
Discuss about any loans that he is presently carrying and which he would like to transfer
Ask if his replacement has arrived or not and when would that happen
Correlate all of the above through your own sources in the company

The list can go on and on - there is never that innovative idea that cannot be tried out....

Recruitment Process Outsourcing

Recruitment has become a complex process in today's times. In the pursuit of the right candidate - who fits not just the role but the company's culture - companies have embarked on a combination of sometimes lengthy selection processes. They range from the standard test cum interview to psychometric tests to spending time with the CEO. The more long widing the process the greater the rejection rate resulting in the candidate success rate plummeting.

If getting thru such a process was not enough there are stringent reference checks to overcome.

An administratively over burdened Recruitment function is the not so unpalatable outcome of all this.

To focus their attention on the core task of identifying the right candidate companies are more and more outsourcing various administrative tasks. These include managing the test process (making the tests, conducting them online, getting them corrected) coordinating the entire process - candidate calling for tests and interviews - and conducting reference checks.

The result of such an outsourcing is really win win. The company gets to concentrate on Recruitment from a strategic perspective and not from a administrative or execution perspective.
Individuals in the function donot get bogged down by the trivial stuff which otherwise does derail the main process.

Recruitment companies also forge a strong symbiotic relationship with their clients - creating better understanding between the two.

However this does throw a large challenge to Recruitment consulting companies.
Firstly recruiters will be expected to have better Business skills since they would be expected to handle a larger gamut of tasks unlike yester years where it was mostly about sending that bunch of resumes for a particular position and then doing a waiting game with a client - for the outcome of the process.......

Recruiter Skills -1

I subscribe to Lou Adler's newsletters. Though i vow to myself to read them regularly that rarely happens what with the daily to dos looming over me.Especially while running such a young organisation there are tons of things which demand my attention all the time.

But on a lazy friday evening i was glancing through some of the old newsletters which i had sincerely preserved in my folder.
i came across some neat stuff which i thought i should share with all. Lou Adler's company has recently conducted a Recruiting and Hiring Challenges survey amongst recruiters and hiring managers. It had thrown up some really interesting data.
Collating the responses of the same Lou points to 3 important deductions.

1. Understanding the Job is the most important skill that a Recruiter should possess. This DOES NOT mean obtaining a job description from the hiring manager but an understanding of the challenges and the performance deliverables for the potential hiree. It means understanding what the selected candidate needs to be delivering upon to get him or her going ahead in the organisation. Its about understanding and questioning the standards e.g why does the candidate require 7 years of exp - what of these years of experience will come in handy in the new opportunity ? Getting the Recruiter to demand all of the above from the hiring manager is the need of the hour

2. Competency Assessment . No recruiter can get out of this one. It is not enough to send to the client an essay which is a verbatim of every thing the candidate had to say. It is also not enough to understand what a candidate is looking for, but important to check whether the candidate has what the client is looking for

3.Do not set up good candidates for bad jobs...This is a tough one when you have revenue numbers staring at you. But this tests the real guts of a recruiter who protects his good candidates from jobs which do no justice to the former.

While there are other skills also that recruiters need to be honing on; especially the one on using the net more effectively for search (i think the same has been bandied around far too long that every one takes it for granted - alas a big error but something which i donot wish to tread upon in this post) - the above 3 cut since they really take you to the core of what differentiates a good recruiter from a great one. This is also because there is no short cut to achieving competence in all of the above

"Linked-in"

I am sure most of you have heard of Linked In . It is a networking site which believes in the 6 degrees of separation. It believes that each one of us are networked to each and every soul on this earth thru 6 levels of connections.
LinkedIn has actually brought to life this very concept by creating a by invitation only site which gets you to connect to lakhs of similar minded professional people who are there mainly for professional reasons.
This is how it works - you get introduced by some one who knows you well enough (mostly colleagues or ex-classmates) . This gives you access to the site. You get to float your profile and can introduce more people onto the site, get yourself introduced to others already on the site that you know from your past or thru others on the site. So indirectly your network keeps on increasing.

I was taking a look at the statistics that the site has provided. It says that there are more than 26,000 people based out of India who are members! Globally the site has currently 70,00,000 people on it.

And looking at the kind of people i have met on the site they are clearly creme amongst the Corporate community.
I saw lots of software professionals and also senior managers from various industries - primarily sales and business development (but then i guess it makes sense for these guys to be there)
The site seems to growing at a phenomenal rate ....at least a 500 a day which i would say is a very decent rate considering the quality of people who are registering.

Of course it has a large group of Indians who are currently in the US in its directory - mainly from the Bay Area - again software professionals .

As a recruiter - i would say on multiple counts this is a great site to be on for headhunting purposes.

It has the best of candidates based out of India and also the best of Indian professionals based out of the US (of course mainly software).

I saw a lot of recruitment consultants also logged on - currently there are nearly 6000 HR professionals on the site.

social networking

I love teaching and had taken up a visiting faculty assignment at an MBA school in south delhi. Yesterday i was talking to them about the need to network as part of building relationships. I asked them how they normally network. And the singular answer i received from all was "the net".
and one of the more popular ones was orkut ...

Orkut is a very popular social networking site - recently acquired by google - it provides people with an opportunity to write about themselves and meet people online. It is universe where people share their lives - events, photos, interests, talk - thru skype - .

Realising the kind of interest provoked by this medium by young individuals aroung the world - Internet media companies are paying a lot of attention to social networking.
There are a lot of companies who intend to start such websites. they represent excellent advertising oppotunities for companies - considering the fact that it grabs the eyeballs of the most consumeristic section of population the youth in the 25-35 age bracket.

For recruiters - this again is a great candidate mining opportunity .....for finding the right kind of candidates ...after all the 25-35 is the most significant candidate group...

popular social networking sites include ... www.orkut.com, www.del.icio.us.com and for a complete list visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Funnel Search

Last saturday I was imparting training to the sales team of naukri.com a well known job portal based out of NCR.

I taught them about their database product - which houses their resume database - which clients such as recruiters buy to search for potential candidates
....the pupils were new joinees and needed to undergo a knowledge cum practical training on the product so that they could sell it well enough.
Understanding all aspects of the product was imperative.

I found an interested audience who shared with me snippets about their clients.
One of them shared his frustration about a client who always told him that he never got the right kind of CV from the job portal - be it any kind of role
Whenever he asked the client as to how he "searched" the database the recruiter used to say that "i do put in all the details of the job description provided to me by the company"

And that my dear friends is at the heart of the mistake that most of us as recruiters make when trying to search for a certain type of cv

Just like we search google where in we first try a broad search and then narrow it based on the results that one get...naukri.com's resume database(its got 70lakhs resumes) needs to be searched using what i would call the funnel strategy...where in like a funnel we should write the broad skill sets and parameters and then narrow or refine the search

Of course funnel search can be modified depending on the nature of the search - generic versus niche. So if one is looking at generic roles (la sales manager or finance manager or Java engineer) then it makes sense to be relatively specific but in cases of niche roles such as a J2EE cum EJB then a broader search will elicit a larger database pool

attrition

with the huge talent crunch staring at every industry it is not surprising that every one is trying some thing new...i read about this article where Recruitment managers no longer look at attrition data (may be they want to save themselves a potential heart attack) but their retention rate!... of course the fact this is plain mathematics turned on its head...but any thing to feel better...
jokes apart ...it is useful to understand the half full glass perspective also and see how one can increase it....

i also read about the Infy HR chief mourning the death of the sensitive employee who was willing to wait it to get his rewards....i couldn't agree more but what can we do ....every day brings a new company to the shores of India who are willing to throw moolah to attract the good guys - with exciting challenges ...and today's youth is in the pursuit of challenges....

greater the attrition greater the pressure on all businesses and this has led to a sort of mean war of poaching talent at all levels. Reliance has no qualms in going to press and announcing that they intend to poach from a south based retail firm to fill their ranks - for there new retail venture...
This trend in turn requires recruiters to hone their skills in an area which was traditionally dominated by Executive Search firms - that is "poaching cum headhunting"

Now i wonder how many of us of actually spared a thought on the same. it is definitely a subject which today has become an art and that too a difficult one.....

these are difficult times...

circa 2006 is definitely a difficult time for recruiters....as i survey the chaos around me i am left wondering when will it all become better ...
i donot think anyone of us have an answer to that
Hiring is the number one pain point for every corporate in this country. It figures in the discussions of every corporate honcho at any forum. It is NASSCOM's favourite subject

It is a Herculean to do which stares at each Recruitment Manager and gives him sleepless nights.

Oyster Learning is a Professional Education Company which intends to do its bit to aiding these harried teams of recruitment consulting firms and companies.

It provides Professional education to individuals aspiring to join this industry - equipping them with whatever it takes to be a good recruiter. It aims to impart knowledge, skill and the right attitude to its students which it believes will help them to take up the challenges of the industry.
It also provides Corporate Training to Recruitment professionals in organisations

The recruiter's diary treads the path of the average recruiter and brings up for debate and discussion the former's trials and tribulations and in the process provides food for thought.

It also shares the learnings, the tips of the trade imibibed from practising Recruitment professionals.

It will also embark upon frequent knowledge sessions offline and online - relating to industry trends