One of the biggest worries that plagues companies of all sizes, locations and so on, is managing attrition of good experience and talent.

And yet, there are VERY FEW companies that really wake up to this call, till an employee decides to call it a day. They all wait for the proverbial axe to fall on their necks, and then decide to either get a patch and heal it back to its old ways, or try to stitch in a solution.

Every man, woman in an organization, irrespective of rank, function, location, designation etc, has aspirations.

An aspiration to get bigger, become better, and shine brighter.

Status, capability, commercial, all these aspirations keep growing, and growing within an employee.

Organizations do try to keep up with these through performance management systems, regular benchmarking cycles and so on. And yet attrition happens.

Why ? Because of any one of the following reasons:
a) The person’s capability has stopped growing (no more challenges)
b) The org is not proactive enough to encourage and reward capability growth.

Its time orgs learned.

Managing employees is not just about passing down doles in the form of increments. Its all about managing aspirations, presenting them a way ahead to grow into their desires by managing their competencies and capabilities, credibly.

More on what my thoughts are, on various aspects of “aspiration” to follow…

And from what I’ve seen of it, I would call it a purely lead generation exercise. Volume games. For a single requirement, a recruiter has not done his/her job till he/she has supplied the client with 10 resumes. It’s what the client demands, for the percentage value that is paid to the recruiter.

I have been trying to evaluate paradigms related to issues like fitment analysis, skill mapping and rating, and so on. They don’t seem to work, not within the current scope of things. It seems to be a routine, that for X% recd as commission, N number of resumes should go, irrelevant of how close they fit a requirement.

Face it. A recruiter is not an SME. A recruiter is an intelligent keyword matching engine.

If the requirement says JAVA, 2 years, salary between X and Y, thats all they scan for. And based on how close the fitment is, they send it across to the client. The intervention they get to the table is nothing more than calling a candidate, checking availability and disposition towards a change of job, and following up on tasks like interviews and so on.

Sadly, there seem to be no technologies that automate processes, not yet at least, and leave the recruiter to do better fitment.

This seems to have the following downsides. Recruiters just become glorified search engines / scheduling machines. Nothing more than that.

Recruiter Skills and Training

For some reason, there is no basis for monitoring skills of a recruiter, for the simple reason that there experience is the only recordable component here.  So a recruiter is analyzed purely on the basis of how many years he/she has spent in the industry.

Recruiter skills have escaped the industry totally. No one seems to want to focus on “what makes a Good recuiter” and work on a program to enhance recruitment skills. I’m not talking about the capability to search a resume database. I am talking about the capability to see a resume for what it is, before recommending it to a client, to see a candidate in terms of value add for a client, before recommendation.

Most recruitment cos that happen during a boom phase, are nothing more than mom-n-pop shops that spring up for “spare time” money making, sending mails, connecting and passing on “leads”. They are not trained on understanding JDs or fitments or anything at all. They just say “job available” to as many people as they can, and hope that one of them bites.

Focussed, well designed Recruiter Capability Enhancement is really not happening.

And in all probability it won’t happen. The recession has gotten people to start talking about “Recruiter Capability”. But the moment the markets swing back and volumes come back, the rat race will start. That of sending a 100 resumes more than the other recruiter, to be labeled better.

1) Plans are not good for the biz if you are in a role that demands you to deliver. Delivery is king, and beats all “plans” hollow.

2) Revenues are the only credibility points for attitude. Nothing else holds water. Attitude without revenue is just faff.

3) Don’t come blitzing into ecosystems and pointing out faults, especially if don’t intend rectifying them. And if you can’t rectify them, don’t call them constraints. Call them your failures.

4) Don’t ever do business with friends. You can’t kick their ass when they don’t clear payments for services rendered on time.

5) Accept failures gracefully, without trying to fire from others’ shoulders about their “incapabilities’

6) Above all, understand that there are other views that hold and probably hold more water than yours.

7) Last but not the least, if you don’t have the capability to perform, have the humility to learn and accept your shortcomings.

Return promised revenues, and be as accountable towards returning revenues to the organization you work with, just as you expect the organization to be towards your payments.

Says it all, I guess

Sanjeev

I had an opportunity to attend a “team building” program a few months back, that cost the company around 150,000 for a team of 30 people (Approx 5000 per head for a 2 day program)…

The spirit of participation I saw in these programs was awesome, and teams that were formed, functioned like efficient well oiled unit, to scale walls, complete jigsaws comprising units created out of personal abilities, and come up with amazing capabilities on display. The spirits simply flowed during the event, and so did good music, bonhomie, good food, luxuries of a 5 star service and so on.

The manager who sanctioned budgets for the program, was aglow as he presented report after report that showed how people had geared up to the concept of “sharing, aligning, and participating as a unit”.

The teams returned to their workplace, and for 15 whole days, the program was the talk of the dept; memories were re-lived, picts where shared and pored over, the coffee machine served to continue the bond and so on …

… till 15 days later,  the parent co located somewhere in the US decided that they need to drop “non-performing people” in the workforce. And they introduced a novel idea called “throw yourself out if you can’t prove you’re better”

….

Can you complete this story ?

I’ve been accused of this.

What happened:

Someone I work with in the org,  asked me to be “polite”  and “get off the high horse” in front of a whole lot of other co workers, associates, and clients.

What I did:

Said, “I don’t need to learn that from you”

Interpretation

Bossy

My Take

I don’t ever advise people on talking, eating, breathing, sitting, dressing and other habits, except as a mild joking rebuke, mostly in pvt.

What I positively HATE is anyone trying to put anyone else down through words, tone, or any other episode. I react to tones, words and styles of expression. I will not permit public rebukes in the organization, across the entire line, level, hierarchy or whatever of operations.