Hiring - Is Not Difficult

David Ogilvy, Founder of O & M warned and expressed views on hiring –

"Never hire your friends. I have made this mistake three times, and had to fire all three. They are no longer my friends.

Never hire your client’s children. If you fire them, you may lose a client. This is another mistake I have made.

Never hire your own children, or the children of your partners. However able they may be, ambitious people won’t stay in outfits, which practice nepotism. This is one mistake I did not make; my son is in the real estate business, secure in the knowledge that he owes nothing of his success to his father.

Think twice before hiring people who have been successful in other fields. I have hired a magazine editor, a lawyer and an economist. None of them developed an interest in advertising.

And never hire your clients. The qualities which make someone a good client are not the qualities required for success in the agency business, I have made this mistake twice."

Hiring & firing (Recruitment, selection and separation) are the vital issues for HR and Owner of company. If I use other words…Headache? No? Not always if done properly.

Recruitment is the process of finding and attracting capable applicants for employment. The process begins when new recruits are sought and ends when their applications are submitted. The result is a pool of applicants from which new employees are selected.

There are five interrelated stages in recruitment process.

1. Recruitment Planning
2. Strategy development
3. Searching
4. Screening
5. Evaluation & Control

Just like a simple management process!

On other end, how job hunter should follow? What does job applicant look for? Or should look for?

Osborn relates imagination with job hunting. "Job hunting should call for strenuous idea hunting. And yet a famous employer reports: ‘in my experience, not one applicant in 500 uses any imagination in applying for a position. Anyone who suggested ideas of possible use to his prospective employer would stand out and be almost sure to get preference- even though his suggestions were unusable.’ Sidney Edlund’s principles to go after new jobs are:

1. Offer a service instead of asking a position
2. Appeal to the self-interest of your prospective employer
3. Be specific as to the job you want, and as to your qualifications
4. Be different, and still be sincere

All these principles call for thinking ahead or thinking creatively or both."

Planning Recruitment

Plan to attract more applicants than to be hired.
Through job description and job specification, reveal your wish of kind of people you are looking for.

Develop Strategy

Make or buy is a strategy in recruitment. Make means to hire less skilled employees and train them. Buy means hire already trained and skilled employees.

Advancement in technologies brings advancement in recruitment as well. Use technologies and curtail time in moving here & there.

Searching

Message is passed through advertisements to search applicants. Use of medium or media needs to be done with a lot of care.

Screening

Step to remove unqualified applicants.

Mark McCormack said " A lot of us, when we’re evaluating job candidates, tend to be so impressed by braininess, by what’s inside a person’s head, that we seriously undervalue the passion that person brings to an enterprise. You can rent a brain, but you can’t rent a heart. The candidate has to throw that in for free."

Knowledge, skills, abilities and interests are basic criterias to identify while screening applicants.

Interviews, resumes, reference checks and application blanks are few techniques to screen candidates.

Evaluation

Measure success in finding applicant. Retention of applicants and benefits to organization from hire employee are ways to success for the hiring process.

Attitude seems to be critical element in process either before selection or after selection. You can never hide it off for long time. Many a times, attitude is found as major problem in applicants after hiring.

Goulston recommended "What a terrific waste it is to be fired because of your attitude, rather than because of any lack of talent or ability. Because attitude problems, unlike a lack of talent, can be fixed."

Through evaluation such hidden problems can be found and rectified in future.

Anyway, hires the person who can do the job, what’s in thinking too much in advance!

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them." – Henry David

Cheers!!

Source
Human Resource and Personnel Management: K Aswathappa