|
Management
Hiring Right
SRINIVASAN IYER reveals how it pays to coach managers on
interviewing skills.
esides the cost of finding a replacement yet again, poor
hiring also involves intangible losses in terms of poor productivity,
lost customers and reduced profit margins. Companies can save
a lot by simply utilising proper interviewing and selection
techniques.
That’s exactly what Chennai-based TVS Electronics did.
The company is part of the 90-year-old TVS Group. Beginning
as an IT peripherals manufacturer, the company has today transformed
itself into an IT transaction solutions provider and business
process outsourcing partner. The business has become more
complex and so has the need for skilled people. To fully exploit
emerging business opportunities, the company has structured
itself into business groups, each vertically focused
yet interdependent: Products & Solutions, Contract Manufacturing
Services, and Contract Customer Services. The job profile,
skill sets and hiring needs of each of these business groups
vary significantly.
Business heads at TVS Electronics are actively involved in
interviewing along with the Human Resources Division. Involving
line managers in interviewing is good, but in the absence
of coaching in interviewing skills, each individual may have
his own style. Hiring decisions would also be based on gut
feeling and trial-and-error approaches. The organisation also
found that its managers were adopting traditional interviewing
techniques with stereotyped questions.
Nowadays, candidates are more prepared than interviewers.
They give more interviews than the number of interviews taken
by an interviewer in a year. And they are thoroughly coached
by job sites on common interview questions and how to answer
them. With this in mind, the management of TVS Electronics
felt the need to orient its managers in behavioural interviewing
techniques.
True to its credo ‘Productivity through Intelligence’,
over the years TVS Electronics has made significant investments
in organisational development, in creating a transparent and
entrepreneurship-driven culture with a vibrant team of people.
In
line with this, the company organised intensive coaching on
interviewing skills
for all managers, including the core manage-ment team.
The team from TVS Electronics included senior managers from
Enterprise & Government Business, Retail Division, Distribution,
HR, Marketing, Quality, Business Development, Transaction
Products, Customer support and the Solutions Business.
M Somasundaram, Executive Vice-President himself underwent
the coaching along with his senior colleagues. TVS
E Servicetec and TVS Investments also
sent their senior management team. The delegation from TVS
E Technologies also included P Parthasarathy, President &
COO,
S Prasad, Executive Vice-President and the business heads
of the Auto and Construction and Industrial Machinery divisions.
For a company of its size, TVS Electronics has the highest
percentage of engineers. And hiring engineers involves conducting
interviews and even finalising candidates over the telephone.
Hence, one of the prime objectives of the coaching programme
was resumé screening. Most resumés look flawless
on paper but the authenticity of facts is questionable. There
are also professional resumé writers who write great
resumés for a nominal professional fee. The managers
learnt how to read the fine print, look out for career plateaus
and career gaps, identify key competencies and conduct reference
checks. The brainstorming sessions focused on how
to probe for multiple shifts in career and qualification gaps.
Often, interviewers like to start the interview and wing it
according to their gut feeling. However, effective interviewing
is more a science than art. First impressions, after all,
can be deceptive. Also, the effectiveness of the interview
depends on pre-interview preparation. The first step towards
a structured interviewing process is to prepare the job description.
This should include the position, reporting pattern, authorities,
responsibilities, and customers, both internal and external.
Once the job description is ready, we need to map
the competencies and behaviour needed
to be successful at that job. The next step
is to prepare two or three probing questions for each of the
skills, competencies
and behaviours identified. All managers
of TVS Electronics learnt how to create
job profiles, identify threshold and differentiating competencies,
and how to probe for the same.
Behavioural interviews assess past behaviour and use it as
a tool to predict future behaviour. The emphasis is on probing
questions that assess the candidate’s competencies and
situational application of the same effectively. The interviewer
asks the candidate about a situation that called for some
action by the candidate. He probes deeper into the actions
taken specifically by the applicant: what led to the actions,
the results of the actions taken and what
was learned from the experience. These questions elicit specific
details about the who, when, where, what, why and how of the
applicant’s experience.
Managers mastered the art of behavioural interviewing through
simulated role plays and mock interviews. Interviews by the
managers during the programme were recorded on a camcorder
and replayed with expert guidance and interview tips by the
coach. Probing skills, listening skills, and how to rely more
on open-ended rather than close-ended questions were some
of the key lessons.
It’s also important to keep good notes during the interview.
While evaluating the candidate on each of the listed competencies,
we need to rank the candidate on parameters of ‘not
demonstrated’, ‘partially demonstrated’
and ‘strongly demonstrated’. Managers also learnt
to make a post-interview assessment sheet. Further, some of
the questions asked by interviewers, especially to female
candidates, such as ‘Are you married?’ and ‘Do
you have children?’ may be legally incorrect. The managers
were coached on how to avoid dis-criminatory and binding contract
statements.
Finally, today interviewing is more than finding the right
candidate. It’s an opportunity for employer branding.
This was impressed upon all the managers of TVS Electronics.
Small niceties of asking for tea, a welcome handshake, adhering
to the interviewing schedule and prompt reimbursement of travel
claims go a long way in enriching the interview experience
of the candidate. As the interview is the first official brush
of the candidate with the company, it gives the candidate
a firsthand feel of the culture, people and values of the
organisation.
A structured premeditated message about the organisation and
its unique features as an employer will help to attract the
right talent. This is especially true for campus placements.
A candidate may or may not get selected; but if he walks away
with a good impression of the organisation, he may talk to
his family
and friends.
The focus of interviews should be twofold: to hire the right
candidate, and to transform the other candidates into brand
ambassadors of the organisation.
Quick Bytes
l APIIC Tower, a skyscraper to be constructed in Hyderabad,
will touch a height of 450 m.
l A consortium led by Reliance Energy and Bangalore-based
Sobha Developers has bagged the project.
l The consortium will design, develop, finance, construct,
market, operate and maintain the project.
l Renowned architect Norman Foster will design the project.
| |
