RECRUITMENT SELECTION AND RETENTION ASSIGNMENT

RECRUITMENT TRENDS AND

CHALLENGES

SUBMITTED TO

DR. ANSHU YADAV

SUBMITTED BY
BHAKTI BHARDWAJ (G-20)
COL. RISHI RAJ CHARAN (G-26)
AYUSH MANCHANDA (G-46)
PRABAL GARG (G-51)
 1. TRENDS
1. Increase in the Gap between the volume of people hired by an organization and the budget
they set out initially for hiring.

According to a report by Linked In Indias Recruiting Trends 2016, 2015 was an year the recruiters
exhibited significant gap between the hiring volume and budget allocated which meant that it
became difficult for recruiters to absorb top quality talent from the greatest of talent pools
available. Thus recruiters had to identify cost efficient and creative ways to meet their goals such as
employee referrals. Attached below is an image from an article posted on the social talent website
covering the same.

2. Quality of Talent being hired

Even though high attrition rates in some industries have forced recruiters to keep a deadline in mind
while hiring, the quality of talent to be hired remains of utmost importance to recruiters. Recruiters
find measuring this quality a big challenge as there is no defined procedure or way prescribed
officially to measure such a thing. Early attrition, new hires performance evaluation and time to
productivity comparison are some of the common ways various managers go about solving this
problem. Thus employers have now started to realise that they need to train and managers
responsible for hiring so as to build their capability to hire the right people as absorbing an
employee into the organisation usually comes with a cost of training and induction attached which in
some cases may be extremely high.

3. Employer Branding

Senior management are now known to have shown keen interest in their companies employer
branding, as companies have started to realise that employer branding can have a positive impact on
the brand value in the eyes of the top candidates thus shifting the power position to the employer
from the employees. Recruiters are now teaming up with marketing teams to help achieve the same.
Linked Ins own report says that social media use for this purpose on the rise and in contrast,
channels like Linked In are losing preference from social media. Some companies are also resorting
to using famous or well performing employees as mascots or brand ambassadors to create a sense
of a distinguished employer brand. The images below are again from the Linked In report mentioned
earlier.

4. Employee Referrals

This practice is on a high and one of the prime reasons is that it helps reduce the cost per hire and
opens up chances to hire passive talent which would otherwise be unapproachable or inaccessible
by the recruiters. Linked Ins reports findings show that India leads world over in employing and
exploiting this practice.

5. Data Analytics

People Matters and Aon Hewitt have stated that 65% of Indian companies have teams dedicated
that assess talent before hiring using data analytics and technology. However the Senior Vice
President of Talent Acquisition Strategy is of the view that companies lack the ability to make sense
of the data and numbers themselves. They rely on third party services which means they have to put
complete blind faith into what these services advise. Glassdoor in a report on recruitment challenges
and ways to overcome them has identified some key metrics (given below) that recruiters in India
may use.

6. Mobility, Flexibility and Employee Wellness

With more and more millennial falling under the first time job seekers, perks like work from home,
flexible work hours and employee wellness programs in combination are what job seekers look for
first while evaluating employer options.

7. Variable Compensation Component

Employee Stock options and compensation parts linked to performance are another trend gaining
priority leading to the specialists receiving more than the generalists.

2. CHALLENGES
1. Best level talent at a high price tag!

To overcome this by retaining talent, employers in Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Energy and
Infrastructure, Power and IT are now offering joining bonuses to entry level candidates. This is
usually 10 to 20 % of the CTC offered to the employees.

2. Omnipresence

Companies who have not had an online presence are now beginning to realize that job seekers, land
on social platforms first to evaluate their options. Companies like Ernst and Young and Sodexo are
now making efforts to project themselves as the best places to work on Social Media platforms.

3. Quality Candidates

Companies have started to realize that most job seekers in various roles are as good as they were
when they passed out of high school, thus realizing that they have to induce and include coaching
and training as a part of the induction every time they hire. Not only does this keep the capability of
the absorbed employees in line with the needs of the company, it increases chances of retention as
the employee begins to understand what is expected out of him or her better and may start to see
ones future career map within the organization one starts the career in.
4. Employee Snatching

In a world that is transparent and competitive than ever before hiring experts have realised that job
seekers are hungry to start at the very instant of an opportunity thus making a recruiters list of
candidates a variable one with no surety of available of the candidate after a gap. In many cases
recruiters have lost certain well deserving and potent candidates to other recruiters or companies.
Thus recruiters are now placing the applicants within 10 days from the day of selection process. It is
said that about 75 % of recruiters are resorting to using something known as Applicant Tracking
Software to get candidates on-board faster (following the approach that an assembly line follows
wherein halting or pausing is not an option and that a given task or procedure has to be one within
stipulated time failing which the product may be incomplete or not available for further processing).

5. Policy Changes

With the impact of policies like the 26 weeks of paid maternity leave for women, recruiters have
now had to develop strategies to recruit temporary talent. Also, in the software industry, the H-1B
and L-1 visa policies have forced recruiters to be able to choose only the best of the talent available.

6. Communication

Most top recruiters end up having the same set of talent pool which they try to communicate with.
The aggressive candidates/job-seekers at times do not respond to e-mails, phone calls (thanks to
Truecaller) or even Job listings on platforms like Shine, Naukri.com etc. Most famous names in the
industry have been suffering from a spoilt image by job seekers who were not happy with their first
jobs who ultimately put the blame onto such recruiting platforms irrespective of the real reason.

7. Candidates power position to choose

As the demand of job seekers and the number of jobs available have risen, candidates have become
more choosey of their options thus ensuring more than one job offers in their hand and ample
evaluation and analysis before selecting one and ditching the rest. This proves to be disheartening
for those recruiters as they are in the assumption that they have the talent pool to filter from or
have a solution for their partner employers until they realize that the candidate is no more available.
In the process they end up spending a lot of money as well. Creating a wonderful experience
throughout the process for the candidate is the only way recruiters can try and ensure that the
candidate is available till the last minute.

8. Overconfident Recruiters

Surveys have shown that the percentage of recruiters that feel they have an understanding of the
job they recruit for, - or that the hiring managers in the companies have what it takes to build
relationship with candidates to and understand them in and out so as to evaluate them, - turned out
to be higher that the percentage resulted out of an analysis to define the magnitude who actually
were right about their opinion. This overconfidence thus hinders the efficiency of hiring cycles for a
company. To avoid this, recruitment processes have to be a more collaborative effort along with
hiring managers.
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