In part 1 of this article we saw that candidates don’t get any constructive feedback in the assessment and interview process. The real problem is not the willingness of the companies. It’s the ability to quickly and efficiently get the information needed to give the feedback. There are 2 problems.
1) General lack of information due to non availability of data or because raw data is left unprocessed.
2) Communication gap between HR, Hiring managers, Clients, BU Heads , Technical Leads and other stakeholders
Non availability of data
It starts with the applicants providing their information in varied levels of detail. Some are sketchy 10000 feet view of decades of experience with no details of time period or job switches. Others are way too detailed giving more information about their employers and projects than the exact roles and responsibilities. This variety makes apples to apples comparison very hard. Do companies bother to get the missing information from the applicants? Some of them do- more of them don’t. That’s exactly what a recent survey discovered
Raw data is left unprocessed
A job description provides broad guidelines. It’s also subject to interpretation. Lastly as the name indicates , it’s descriptive and lacks objectivity. This raw data needs to be processed to arrive at the exact selection criteria and the importance to be associated with each of them- preferably using metrics to measure each criterion and a weight indicating its importance. Do companies take the effort? Do they communicate the outcome to all the stakeholders? Most of them don’t as indicated by our survey administered to a representative sample of candidates. There seems to be a communication gap – which is quite apparent to the candidates.
Tendency to share just enough information
After answering all the technical questions, it’s candidate’s right to know whether her answers were right or wrong. Assessment and interview process is a two way communication. Interviewers who can confidently show the candidates their mistakes and share the right answers draw a lot of respect from the candidates. These technical discussions become more meaty when information isn’t withheld. In fact these are low hanging brand building fruits for companies to pick. Unfortunately most of them don’t as indicated by our survey.
Communication gap and lack of co-ordination
As it might be obvious- there are many participants in the hiring process. They aren’t from the same department or team. In fact every job opening has its own set of stakeholders and each one approaches the problem from a different angle. It’s a team with an ambiguous mandate and no clear owner. Each one has a different approach to hiring. The client wants results – he doesn’t care how. The hiring manager can’t tell the selection criteria , but she has an ostensive job definition. The HR manager is basing the job description on what the hiring manager seems to want. The BU head has his own agenda of building high performing teams and the dev lead who is involved in the day to day grunt work wants the candidate to jumpstart with minimal hand holding.
Conclusion
There seems to be a need for a quantifiable metric that will measure a candidate’s suitability for a job. To arrive at it we will require a set of objective selection criteria and weights depicting the importance of respective selection criteria. This will provide a universal understanding of what is required. It will also provide a mechanism to do apples to apples comparison between candidates. Coordination between various stakeholders will improve as they would speak the same language and recruiters would be able to justify their recommendations with confidence. Readers may want to check the rezoomex assessment and ranking system which provides a framework to measure suitability.
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Vinayak Joglekar is a technology & recruitment expert with around 40 yrs. of experience. He is a distinguished thought leader who has changed trends in recruitment and futuristic software development. He is acclaimed for recruiting and developing great talents in IT.
Vinayak believes in empowering IT recruiters with technical knowledge so that they can earn their due respect. Currently, he is the CTO of Synerzip and Director of Rezoomex.