Hiring Right: First step to HR Success

People as Assets
People are intrinsic to any organization, irrespective of its size, scope, function, or business domain. In fact, they are one of the critical elements; they add to the organizational value in both tangible and intangible forms. They add value through their skills, bring business/ revenue, create/ improve environment conducive to working, and gel their own image with that of the companyís. So getting the right people and retaining them is very important for the growth of any organization.

Costs of Hiring
Hiring is a long-drawn process, which starts with the decision that recruitment needs to be made. Some of the direct costs, which can be measured in monetary value, are:
Cost of placing an advertisement.
Hiring a placement agency or a consultant.
Loss of productivity for interviewers.
Purchasing materials such as stationary, computers, etc., if required.

Other indirect costs, which cannot be measured in monetary value, or no attempt has been made to do so, include:
Cost of personnel involved in recruitment process
Time spent in the whole process of recruiting
Skills, such as negotiation skills, put to use by interviewers
Time spent in training and orientation

Why Hire Right
We say people are the most important asset of an organization. Actually, RIGHT people are the most important assets. So we need to hire the right people, who have the right skills for the projects the company is working on, and are the right organizational fit. A person who has the required skills fits into the job role faster and better, increasing his/ her chances of staying with the organization longer, and hence the organization gets maximum returns on its investment. Also, it diminishes the costs of rehiring if the person is there to stay.

Besides, having right people builds strong, motivated teams that would eventually increased productivity and add to the bottom line. The right person with the right skill set can enhance the skills of other people working on the same project.

What if You Hire Wrong
The cost of hiring wrong people is two pronged ñ while the person is there in the organization, and after they leave. The wrong person would take a longer time in fitting into the organization and job role, increasing training costs and loss in revenue. While there, they would have poor productivity and be the weak link in the team. The performance of the team will suffer, as they would be unable to meet the deadlines, resulting in delayed project execution and loss in revenue.

Once the person leaves the organization, the first direct cost to the company is in the form of recruitment cost:
Cost of compensation package if the employee has been terminated
Cost of advertising for the job
Cost of consultancy

The indirect costs are in the form of:
Depletion in the skill pool of the company
Cost of retraining new people for the project
Loss in revenue
Lost opportunity
Loss of investments made in recruitment and training

These are the tangible losses for the organization, which can be measured, but there are numerous intangible losses that often the companies donít even bother to assess. A person leaving an organization can affect the motivation level and loyalty of the existing employees, especially that of the team they were working with. If itís a recurring phenomenon, the employees can lose their trust in the management and even right people might start looking elsewhere for opportunities.

Recruiting Effectively
There can be no doubt that recruitment is as important a function for any organization but still it is not given due attention. It is still very much an unstructured activity in most of the organizations and hence ineffective.

The HR department or the people responsible for hiring should undertake this process such that it is effective in catering to the organizationís requirement. Activities such as periodic HR forecasting will help the organization plan the recruitment in advance.

The broad steps in the recruitment process can be the following:
Know what you want or in other words get the details of the job profile ñ skills, experience, educational qualifications you will be looking for.
Decide on the type of person you want ñ personality and natural abilities.
Brainstorm with relevant personnel and have a ready list of some of the aspects you
Screen the resumes to arrive at a shortlist of candidates.
Interview.
Final decision.

Starting right is half the battle won, so if you are clear about the profile you are looking for, you have much higher chances of recruiting the right person. Screening of the resumes is the most time consuming and tedious part of the whole process. Also, the personnel need to remain focused and objective throughout, which can be quite demanding. Using online assessment can eliminate the human error, while treating each applicant equivalently. Competency-based testing should be introduced at both screening and interview stage, because this type of assessment increases the chances of successful recruitment.

It is easier for the IT companies to implement competency-based tests, as they know the specific skills (software tools, languages, etc.) they are looking for. Objective tests can be designed for each of the skills or a combination, and used for preliminary screening.

Online Assessment as a Hiring Tool
Online assessment is the latest trend in screening and evaluating applications for jobs. With more and more jobseekers going online, it makes practical sense to go for hiring online too. Initially, resume screening and keyword searching can be done. For online tests it is possible to have customized competency-based tests designed for the specific skills required for the job. The results can be obtained immediately, numerous reports generated in no time at all, and everything can be viewed by the authorized people across the globe, via the Internet.

The recruitment process is the first interface between the candidate and the company. Opting for some sort of online screening adds to the image of the company too. An IT organization claiming to be in sync with the latest cutting-edge technologies can amply demonstrate it if it uses some form of online assessment.

Whizlabs Solution to Hiring Right
Whizlabs offers a wide range of skill assessment solutions for recruitment through its Assessment Management Server (AMS), especially for IT companies. Starting from the low-end solution for the companies with IT workforce less than 25, we also offer high-end solution for the companies having IT workforce of more than 1000.

Whizlabs AMS provides high-quality assessment content for various IT Technologies such as Java, .NET, Oracle, networking. If the standard tests do not map to the specific job profiles of your organization, Whizlabs also assists in designing customized tests. The most important features of the test designed by Whizlabs are multiple-choice questions, where one or more than one choice may be correct, and timed testing. For each candidate the question is chosen from a pool of questions, which can be shuffled, as can be the choices.

Using Whizlabs AMS, online tests can be designed for the job applicants, facilitating the recruiter in short listing of candidates. After the tests various reports, such as user-based and group-based, are generated, which provide further insights into the competency of the candidate vis--vis all the applicants.