Under pressure to recruit and beat competition, employers are bending many rules these days. Companies are now negotiating on basic hiring standards, i.e. misleading candidates on salaries and other areas & making false promises to lure job seekers. “
Companies often seem to be saying — damn the process, just get them on board,” says Ronesh Puri, head, Executive Access, a headhunting firm, adding that scarcity of talent is pushing employers to another level of talent hunting.
At a premier B-school last year, a Mumbai-based business conglomerate hired graduates amid stiff competition promising an exciting job profile and career path. Six months into the job, they quit because promises seemed too unreal and fudged.
A senior executive with a South-based retail chain feels short-changed. While hiring he had been promised a good designation and an impressive job profile, but the company failed to live up to it. “Hiring from a premier B-school has a tag value for companies. As a result, most come and promise the moon”, an IIM alumnus says. “Companies do an oversell — hide the bad things that might put them off and inflate the good things,” says Gita Puri, Director, Personnel Network.
Perhaps salary is where the conning happens the most! CTC is the most abused & deceptive mechanism for companies, as they realise that the young upgrade-brigade has a special weakness for money. So they puff up the CTC with all kinds of things under it to make it look impressive. A Delhi-based company even included EMI on laptops it gave out to its employees as part of the CTC!
Companies are definitely compromising on quality as well. At a Mumbai-based hypermarket, 25-year executives have been made procurement managers and are put in charge of sourcing goods of over Rs. 200 crores. Seasoned executives say it’s a critical function that requires experience and expertise.
Reference checks, detailed interview with key executives before finalising senior appointments, eligibility criteria and screening standards have taken a beating as companies try to get the candidates on board as quickly as possible.
Employers are worried that executives sitting on multiple job offers may jump the gun and hence they are fast-tracking the employment process. Senior level appointments that stretched over three months with many rounds of interviews today are wrapped up within a week or two.
“Doctored resumes have surged. As a result many companies, especially MNCs are now looking at outsourcing reference checks to third parties (it is normally done internally),” says Rajeev Karwal, who recently quit Reliance Retail to turn entrepreneur.
“Reducing threshold of experiences is also happening across the board at all levels”, says K Sudarshan, managing partner, EMA Partners. Functional head positions that typically went to people with ten plus years of experience is also coming down. “This will have its impact,” he says.
It goes without saying that companies know very well that they are overpaying, despite compromising on hiring quality, in these frenzied times. “These are heady days with breathless growth and companies aren’t thinking too much right now,” says Puri. Wait for the wave to die down and sanity to return, stocktaking of rights and wrongs will happen then.
Companies often seem to be saying — damn the process, just get them on board,” says Ronesh Puri, head, Executive Access, a headhunting firm, adding that scarcity of talent is pushing employers to another level of talent hunting.
At a premier B-school last year, a Mumbai-based business conglomerate hired graduates amid stiff competition promising an exciting job profile and career path. Six months into the job, they quit because promises seemed too unreal and fudged.
A senior executive with a South-based retail chain feels short-changed. While hiring he had been promised a good designation and an impressive job profile, but the company failed to live up to it. “Hiring from a premier B-school has a tag value for companies. As a result, most come and promise the moon”, an IIM alumnus says. “Companies do an oversell — hide the bad things that might put them off and inflate the good things,” says Gita Puri, Director, Personnel Network.
Perhaps salary is where the conning happens the most! CTC is the most abused & deceptive mechanism for companies, as they realise that the young upgrade-brigade has a special weakness for money. So they puff up the CTC with all kinds of things under it to make it look impressive. A Delhi-based company even included EMI on laptops it gave out to its employees as part of the CTC!
Companies are definitely compromising on quality as well. At a Mumbai-based hypermarket, 25-year executives have been made procurement managers and are put in charge of sourcing goods of over Rs. 200 crores. Seasoned executives say it’s a critical function that requires experience and expertise.
Reference checks, detailed interview with key executives before finalising senior appointments, eligibility criteria and screening standards have taken a beating as companies try to get the candidates on board as quickly as possible.
Employers are worried that executives sitting on multiple job offers may jump the gun and hence they are fast-tracking the employment process. Senior level appointments that stretched over three months with many rounds of interviews today are wrapped up within a week or two.
“Doctored resumes have surged. As a result many companies, especially MNCs are now looking at outsourcing reference checks to third parties (it is normally done internally),” says Rajeev Karwal, who recently quit Reliance Retail to turn entrepreneur.
“Reducing threshold of experiences is also happening across the board at all levels”, says K Sudarshan, managing partner, EMA Partners. Functional head positions that typically went to people with ten plus years of experience is also coming down. “This will have its impact,” he says.
It goes without saying that companies know very well that they are overpaying, despite compromising on hiring quality, in these frenzied times. “These are heady days with breathless growth and companies aren’t thinking too much right now,” says Puri. Wait for the wave to die down and sanity to return, stocktaking of rights and wrongs will happen then.
By POST A RESUME (www.postaresume.co.in)
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