10 Ways to spot and hire the perfect candidate for your organization

An Enterprise cannot reach the winning position without a pool of talented employees. Every company wants the best talent but now-a- days , it has become quite a challenging task to select the right candidate for a suitable profile.

Here are few strategies which a firm can follow to hire the best employee:

1) Highlight better job description:

Nice and clear job description is like a great sales pitch to the candidates. It should be attractive in order to attract candidate’s attention and interest too. Specific key words should be used to steal attention of target audience. An experienced & knowledge-rich Recruitment Agency who has drafted hundreds of Job Descriptions (JD’s) should be consulted to write Job Descriptions in a professional manner instead of utilizing the efforts of professionals not used to do the same. A Placement Consultant with the expertise of drafting & finalizing Thousands of Job Descriptions can set the ball rolling for the Recruitment Process by launching the appropriate JD to the prospective candidates.

2) Use of social media in Recruitment:

Now a days the world has become digital. Mostly people like to work with those companies who follow latest technology related trends. Use of smart phones is common in a job search. Employers should engage smart Recruitment Agencies who keep themselves abreast in Social Media Recruitment via platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook.

3) Background Verification:

Background verification is done before selection by using social media and interaction with the previous employers via mail or phone calls. It is being checked whether the candidate has potential skill sets and experience or not in order to be a right fit for the role. It might be an arduous task to call multiple previous employers over phone, draft verification questionnaire professionally and deep searching a candidate’s profile over numerous social media platforms and spot the anomalies. Hence taking support of a professional Recruitment Firm will come handy in these scenarios

4) Capability of candidate:

Hiring authority must check whether the candidate is capable enough to deliver the work and perform well the duties and responsibilities being assigned. Body language, self-confidence and communication skills of the candidate matter a lot along with the experience. An experienced Recruitment Agency can appropriately analyse the attitude of a prospective candidate by expropriating professional tools & knowledge because of their expertise in dealing with similar situations in the past

5) Compatibility:

Compatibility is the most essential parameter which helps in judging whether the candidate is able to adjust in the work culture and environment of the firm or not. Employee should be able to get along with the new colleagues and existing partners and clients. He or she should able to build up healthy relationship with boss and the other staffs.Their social skills must be well developed in order to cope up in new environment. Taking the help of an experienced Placement Agency can be quite helpful in these aspects, as they will be easily able to red flag a wrong candidate because of their time tested NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming)process oriented candidate filtering mechanism

6) Commitment:

Employer should check how serious the employee of working for long period of time is. Is he or she is just passing time and looking for better opportunity. The history of past employment records must be checked. An experienced Recruitment Agency knows how to utilize NLP techniques to hunt for a committed employee. Also they have in house database of candidates on which they have used NLP techniques to test their commitment level

7) Focus on career oriented person:

Career oriented candidates should be given more preference. They are dynamic and serious about their work and career. Every employer wants their employees should be an asset who are loyal to their work and have the urge to grow in life. They have a passion towards their growing career. So they work hard and try to take their company at the top position in terms of revenue growth.

It’s not so tough for a sly and willy candidate to fudge their career credentials and project a wrong impression as a career oriented person during an interview process. Hence in such cases an experienced Placement Agency who knows the tricks of the trade can be the best bet for an organisation to weed out unethical candidates

8) Assessment of practical experience of Candidate:

An employer should hire the candidate who is both qualified and practically experienced in his or her domain of work. It helps the company in saving both time and money when it comes to the training. Experienced people needs much less time in order to understand company products, services and ethics. This helps the candidate to streamline the work with duties.

Only by asking proper questions with NLP techniques can an employer can gauge the capabilities of the prospective candidates. Hence an employer definitely needs a recruitment agency with smart analysis capabilities and knowledge of NLP techniques

9) Test the candidate

Employer should follow different methodologies in order to assess the learning capabilities and analytical skills of the candidate. Resumes must be screened very carefully and potential should be analysed based on that. A seasoned recruitment firm can be quite helpful in these aspects by virtue of their past experiences in multiple domains of recruitment.

10) Determine strength of the candidate:

Modern work culture is very stressful and target oriented. Candidates should possess necessary mental and psychological strength in order to take the pressure, stress and tight deadlines. They must be motivated in challenging situations and should be able to win at any cost. The traits of candidates which signifies their mental strength and adaptability can be uncovered more, if an employer takes the services of an experienced Recruitment Agency who can analyse various parameters of a prospective candidate tailored on time tested scientific and rational recruitment methodologies

Finally the companies should regularly audit their hiring practices and see that they are utilizing the best practices followed globally. An SME organizations main goal is to excel in his business domain and hence it might not be prudent or sometimes possible for them to make an in-house Recruitment Power House since most of the SME’s operate on constrained budgets. Also to get the best brains the company has to think ahead as there is always a scramble in the market for right talent.

It might not be possible for an SME also to train and equip the in house hiring managers and other resources to the best Recruitment Practices as the Recruitment Industry is constantly changing and evolving with more complexities and dependence on costly tools and technologies has become a norm now a days.
Hence it will always be a judicious decision to engage a Recruitment Agency who are technologically agile with experienced & educated / knowledgeable Recruiters who are masters in the game of Smart Recruitment.

Smarter Way to Recruit Through Artificial Intelligence

Thirty three years back in 1984 Terminator, part of the iconic blockbuster Terminator series had first shown us a glimpse of the Artificial Intelligence in action. The Skynet, the AI system was the central feature in the 5 part Terminator franchise and served as its main antagonist. In the movie, the Skynet projected a harrowing face of Artificial Intelligence which enslaved the human race and was responsible for worldwide annihilation of millions of human beings.

But the Skynet story was just a ‘fiction, far from truth. AI will act as a harbinger of development of our race in an unprecedented way thereby completely changing the way we work and live.

In 1982 in India when computerisation was introduced in the banking sector there was a large scale speculation that computerisation will lead to mass layoffs and new job opportunities will get squeezed but actually the reverse happened. Not only computerisation increase the banking efficiency, it also led to creation of new jobs

Similarly due to extensive growth of AI some jobs will definitely be automated but significant number of new jobs will also be created parallely. Automated machines like robots may create new categories of work, but there will be human-robot collaboration which will result in bringing a change in the kind of work opportunities available. It has been estimated that AI will grow from a $643.7 million market from to $36.8 billion by 2025.Future aspects of AI needs to be visualized in day to day business.

Now days we are using Google maps, which utilizes big data and machine learning algorithms to understand driving behaviour and patterns. For example Google maps help the drivers to find out the routes very easily and efficiently. Self-Driving car service at lax classylaxcarservice.com are boon to the automobile industry. This technology is using machine learning algorithm that understands driver behaviour and is continuously learning to respond under different situations thereby making travel safer and efficient.

Likewise AI in recruitment industry will also help the recruitment agencies to improve candidate lives. AI will continuously learn the placement agency’s best practices and provide them with data and insights which will help the recruitment firm to build relationships with the candidates, understand their talent, background and capabilities. Thus, recruitment consultants can spot the best person for a particular position.

The Role of AI will thus be of an enabler and augmenter and not to replace the human touch. It will enable a recruitment agency to make greater impact with informed decisions

So how exactly AI biased applications is going to bring transformation for recruitment agencies and candidates. Let’s uncover some facts:

A) Analyzing resumes, social profiles and information on the web AI will uncover stories of millions of candidate profiles & data points like companies and roles, skill sets, common facets in resumes, similar work history and the trajectory within those companies and other pertinent information

B) From vast amount of data processed by AI applications, recruiters will have smart insights on talent movement and hiring trends

C) AI will understand the candidate’s job tenure, their background, roles and responsibilities and growth path at different companies’ thereby unraveling valuable information on candidates characteristics, attitude, qualities, performance and skills.

Bu harnessing this knowledge, AI based applications will automatically create search conditions and source candidates who can be perfectly aligned with the companies recruitment goals

Sourcing Time Is Reduced

Recruitment is very hectic work. It takes a lot of time to find out the right candidate. And most of the time the operational procedures are inefficient and ineffective to spot the right talent. Half of the days’ time a recruiter spends in searching for new candidates which leaves a little room for him/her to concentrate on engagement with qualified and interested individuals.

Skill sets of recruiters’ can be put to best use, when they work on cementing their relationships with candidates, making them understand the value of the proposed job rather than doing menial tasks. This factor will lead to faster closure of vacant positions, thereby creating value for companies and candidates, ultimately increasing the loyal customer base for a recruitment agency.

Biased Sourcing is Eliminated

As the entire process will be AI aided, recruiters will no longer be susceptible to unconscious biases at the time of sourcing. Recruiters most of the time gets driven by certain facts from candidates such as alma mater, major experience, qualification, location for a particular role which may not be adequate to make an impactful and unbiased decision as the full spectrum of candidates information might be elusive to a recruiter. So instead of depending on smaller search terms for information filtering, AI will prudently define the search based on larger data size and hidden information facets, thereby producing decision driven by data rather than perception.

As human bias is eliminated company will be rest assured that that in their quest for right talent, they have not missed out on any deserving candidate .

Increase Efficient & Rational Recruiting Process

A wrong recruit can lead to considerable economic and reputation loss for a company. The total cost of a wrong recruitment includes hiring, training, total compensation and eventual severance package apart from loss of valuable time and disruption in business operations.

AI can create high quality talent pool from social networks, internal databases and public information available on the web in minutes. What takes recruiters weeks can now be accomplished in fraction of a time thereby redirecting their energies more on human interaction with each and every candidate of the talent pool so that they can hire the right candidate for the right job without any apprehensions.

AI will be a disruptive force in the arena of right recruitment. As a leading Placement Agency, we are currently in the process of adoption of AI tools for decision support. This we believe will help us to provide value to all our customers and also power the career track of right job aspirants.

Reasons to Choose a Placement Agency for Optimizing Your Brand’s Value

A top Placement Agency is perceived as a PARTNER in providing quality talent that augments the pace of business growth of an organization. Apart from perceiving a Recruitment Agency just as a means of talent supplier would be grossly injustice to the value of the work done by the firm, since apart from providing quality talent, the Placement Agency, if given EXCLUSIVITY for fulfilling a hiring mandate, also adds value to the optimization of the Client’s Brand.

When a mandate is given by a Company / Organisation, to a reputed process oriented Recruitment Agency which is powered by intellect and technologically driven, the Recruiters flash the Job Requirement of the client on multiple reputed job portals mentioning the client details and the Job Description (JD) written in a professional manner. These job portals are visited by millions of people, subsequently their rankings in search engines are also very high. Hence the clients name gets disseminated in the cyber world as a professionally managed company because a sizeable chunk of people are seeing and sharing the job postings in the social media also. Even after the mandate gets closed after successful selection of talent, the postings remain in the cyber arena for more period of time due to the reason that once search engines indexes a particular content, it virtually becomes indelible. So these Job Postings act as a catalyst for improving a company’s internet presence and people can have a positive perception about the company’s Brand Image.

Apart from Job Postings, a Placement Consultant also uses Applicant Tracking Software for sending mass mails to prospective candidates. Each of the sent resumes contains details about the Company on behalf of whom the Placement Consultant is hiring. This mode of communication also increases the brand value of an organization and creates a positive brand perception in the eyes of the targeted persons.

Large organizations devote a lot of time, money & resource in order to make them an employer friendly and marketable brand. If an organization wisely chooses, a top Recruitment Agency, then they can give the potential candidates a real insight about how the Client’s Business operates; create a perception about the working environment, benefits and career openings, growth options available and also, the Organisation Culture including Vision & Long as well as Short Term Business Objectives . This information is relayed to multiple prospective job applicants during interactions and multiple conversations by the Recruitment Agency in their process of identifying and shortlisting suitable candidates. This creates a “Top of The Mind Recall” with respect to the Client Organisation or Brand in the minds of the candidates as many at times it happens that people applying to positions are also the Customers .

A Placement Agency is instrumental in augmentation of Brand Quotient of an organization for which they have been engaged. Top leaders and high performers who will build the brand of the prospective Employer ( Client Organisation) will just not involve themselves in the Organisation because an open position have been published rather they will Join / Engage themselves in the organization if a positive perception about the Organisation is crafted in their minds. Responsibility of creating that perception will solely rest on the Recruitment Agency. In today’s world where the social media is driving the economy, the digital & word of mouth marketing as well as positive Reviews are a key ingredients for a successful brand and many candidates mention their hiring experiences as public posts in different online platforms such as Glassdoor, Blogs, Facebook, Quora etc. These online conversations actually drive the buyers’ adoption of a particular brand in the long run and project an image of a company to the buyers which is professionally managed and can be trusted.

Organizations sometimes get tempted to use their internal knowledge and system to hunt for quality talent in order to save some money which they will have to shell out to on-board a Recruitment Agency. However, they should keep in mind that a professional Placement Consultancy apart from bringing a high performance resource can also largely value add in marketing the Brand as they are adept in their work because of their past experience in dealing with Recruitment assignments of other companies involving multiple scenarios.

The communications presented by a Recruitment Consultancy during different stages of Talent Acquisition Process, as mentioned, therefore, ensure an integral as well as significant part of Brand Building, Brand Recall, Brand Enhancement & Brand Augmentation of an Organisation.

Infrastructure of a Good Recruitment Consultancy Firm

The sole aim of a reputed Recruitment Consultancy is to provide world class services to its Clients in the form of providing them access to credible information of leaders and winners that can help them to thrive & grow their business.

All the business around us is dependent on quality manpower for their sustenance & growth . The organizations who can accomplish the better acquisition of Talent-Pool are likely to outsmart the competition and become ultimate Winners in their respective Business Verticals. So, a successful combination of Technology and Talent can actually brings a business from a state of obscurity to fame, unlocking an ocean of myriad opportunities.

However, to enumerate the information of the potential of a particular Candidate or a Group of Candidates from hundreds of Applicants and Job Seekers requires Appropriate Infrastructure to support the entire process from talent Identification to Closing the Profile / Position.

An ideal Infrastructure of a Quality Job Consultant should comprise of:

  1. Subscription to Multiple & Premium Job Portals –The Recruiter can scan these sites to scout for talent. Since job portals provide an opportunity to talented job seekers to hunt for lucrative job opportunities for free, they are tempted to enlist their profiles in the job portals. However, a paid subscription to a single job portal may not be sufficient for a recruiter since different job portals cater to different strata of job seekers. Hence it is a pertinent for a top Job Consultant to have paid access of Multiple as well as Premium Quality Job Portals which cater even to the niche segment of quality talent.
  2. Personalised CV Bank – It is a potent weapon in the arsenal of a Good Recruitment firm to perform quality talent hunt. During its day to day operations, a Placement Consultancy firm gets lot of CVs of talented job seekers in their recruiter mail boxes through internal references & connections, events or as responses to job adverts. Over a period of time these CVs get accumulated to a sizeable number with many of them catering to requirements of niche segments. Sometimes, these CVs or profiles might not be readily available in leading job portals or professional networking sites. Not all Placement consultants are having this type of specialised CV Bank. Only those who are reputed, trusted and are dealing with quality clients and talents for a considerable period of time are likely to host this type of large talent information pool with them. The full exercise of creating a CV Bank requires word of mouth references, research and analytical skills, business networking, investment in manpower & technology, branding, relationship management, continuous learning & development and finally successfully sustaining the business over a considerable period of time with trust and reputation
  3. Career Site Manager or Simply Mobile Ready Personalised Career Portals of Recruitment Consultancy Firms Integrated with Leading Job Portals – These types of Portals are personalised mobile ready career sites hosted in the infrastructure of leading Job Portals and connected with them providing a seamless information flow between both the job portals and the personalised career sites. These sites provide the facility for Recruitment via social media powered by tracking software. Also it sharply increases the presence of the firm in google and social media circles thereby attracting quality talent and reputed organizations. The application tracking software in the career site manager helps to track and manage the CVs that are coming from multiple sources thereby regularly creating a talent pool on which the Job Consultant can readily fall back on for closing Job Mandates, thereby ensuring successful turnaround time
  4. Subscription to Premium Job Postings across Multiple Leading Job Portals – This facility is available only on paid subscription. More the recruiter is using these paid services, more is the visibility of the job profile in cyber space or in digital world. More and more talented professionals are using Internet and Google to search for quality jobs. Hence in this scenario if an organisation has to reach to the right candidate, it has to give exclusive Mandate of Recruitment to a quality Placement Consultant who can use the paid services to disseminate the information of the vacancy in the digital space. Also this exercise on the part of the Recruitment Consultant boosts the Brand Image of the hiring organization in Google and associated social media circles thereby creating a positive image of the Organisation in the minds of the prospective job seekers.
  5. Applicant Tracking Software – This technology enables a Recruiter to efficiently track applicants from his candidate database. Features included are:
  • Resume parsing whereby resume data will be automatically saved on to the recruit candidate database, thereby considerably rationalising the resume processing time
  • Resume Extractor, which is a tool to capture any resume from the web & social media and parse it in to the recruiters own recruit database with just a click.
  • Formatted resumes – This gives a uniform look to the CVs that are sent to the client with the Recruiter’s own branding details without any Candidate credentials
  • Resume inbox which helps to segregate emails from different information sources and helps in building a well-defined talent pool
  • Resume search – This feature aids a recruiter to efficiently search for a suitable profile from his huge cache of data efficiently.
  • Besides other features includes mass mailing, SMS and direct Calls from inside the applicant tracking suite, and advance analytics with clients, candidates overview, job openings and activity dashboards
  1. Advanced Communication Modalities – This includes video conferencing or web conferencing infrastructure with display units, & high quality internet phones with collaboration software which helps the Placement Consultant gauge the candidate’s attitude and body language to support their assessment besides engaging with clients more efficiently. This increases conversion rates and results in on boarding of right profiles.

An organization has to keep in mind these above mentioned factors before selecting a Recruitment Consultancy firm for sharing Mandates to Recruit Appropriate & Interested Professionals for various Profiles. To increase your business you need talented manpower which can only be provided by a reputed Recruitment Consultant  which is having the right mix of skilled manpower and technology infrastructure.

Using Social Media for Recruiting Talent

Social media has a great impact on Recruitment Industry. Recruitment firms are using Social media to hire talented people around the world. They are also using Social Media for branding their organisation & for effective communication in front of prospective clients and suitable candidates.

Two widely used professional social media sites are Linkedin or Xing. They mainly create a network of talent pool. Social media recruiting or “social recruiting” involves leveraging a variety of social media tools to recruit talent. Job recruitment is all about networking and social media simply injects modern technological networks into the tried and tested formula.

Generally Job recruiters post the ad of various jobs in the social media portals by targeting the audience based on Job Location, Specific Skill Sets, Education, Job Exposure, Professional Career Growth Parameters etc.
Recruitment can be done by tapping the recruiter’s professional network. Clients, colleagues, industry figures, business owners and professional acquaintances help a lot to access the connections. Once a prospect is found, it is only a matter of evaluating the Candidate’s Profile for References, Affiliations, Achievements, and Integrity Assessment etc.

Though in India the percentage of Unemployment is very high, yet it’s still a big challenge to find a skilled professional with the right qualities, exposure and qualifications to fill a position within a Specific Budget & Joining Schedule. Very often, the process of Sourcing, Screening & Reviewing Resumes turns out to be a Waste of Time & also Interviewing Candidates. This attributes to one of the Reasons that more companies have started using Social Recruitment with Increased Frequency.

We are residing in a technology oriented world, so social Media Recruitment is substantially becoming more important. The use of social media websites with public profiles can be useful for communication between employers and prospective employees. Many employers are now looking at the public profiles of applicants before hiring them to get a better idea of their past experience and background.

Social media is one of the top tools to be used for job search and therefore a high number of candidates are / will be present on the networks. That is why it makes sense to optimise the brand’s use of social media, as it becomes bit easy for the candidates to get an idea of what the organisation is all about.

Off late, scores of organizations are using social media to on board suitable professionals. In this aspect, a survey has been done by a company named Universum. Being a global leader in Employer branding, they work with top organizations and advise how to attract and retain the best talent. According to their survey report, Companies will increase their spending in the next five years, with 65% stating that they are likely to increase spending on social media in general and 63% increasing spending on social media advertising. Survey responses varied with industry and it was found that the management consulting industry will reportedly see the highest increase in spending in the coming years, with 84% saying spending will increase within the sector. On the other hand, 65% of those in Engineering and Manufacturing said spending is likely to increase.

Despite the high percentage of those identifying Social Media as the most important channel for employer branding and for recruitment, only half (52%) of the survey respondents said that they measure the effectiveness of their social media activity, though 69% do plan to do so in the next five years.

Marketing department is the leading face of any company. It helps in building up of the brand image of the organization. It helps to conduct the campaign management for marketing activities and create good contents for search engine optimization of the websites. It does marketing by using different social Media channels and hence become helpful in attracting the best talent.

One particular option that generally receives positive results is a ‘Social Media Center of Excellence’, which is a training and development program that educates recruitment & marketing teams on effective use of social media efficiently thereby aiding in dissemination of corporate brand message in the digital realm.

The tremendous growth of social media has significantly changed the way people communicate at home and at work. Social media applications include sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, Yelp, Flickr, Snapchat, Instagram, Second Life, WordPress and Zoom Info. These tools has not just changed our world, they are helping us a lot in business generation, internal and external communications, social collaboration, public relations and inter and intra company learning, apart from suitable mediums for spotting &recruitment of right talent

We as a recruitment firm we are using different Social Media tools to successfully reach out to quality candidates and our internal findings suggest that our social media outreach has added value to our clients in faster on boarding of trusted & quality candidates. To know more how we do it and how we can share our expertise with you, please be in touch with me at ceo@b3india.com

Cheers

Amitav