The Hindu Business Line : `Companies should relax recruitment parameters'

Companies often look for a certain `profile' of candidates while they set out to recruit. The parameters they set — sometimes unnecessarily — shrink the universe of eligible candidates. Companies could therefore relax the parameters and train candidates to suit their requirements, says Ms Gangapriya Chakraverti, India Business Leader, Mercer Human Resources Consulting.

"Information technology has simplified most conventional challenges thereby reducing the overall quality of work done by an employee," she said at a seminar organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry - Southern Region. Companies could thus recruit mediocre candidates and train them to handle jobs.

Mr T.K. Srirang, Head, Human Resources - Retail Banking, ICICI Bank, spoke of how the bank looked for behavioural competency in candidates and not functional competency. "About 80 per cent of candidates we have recruited have non-banking backgrounds," he said. Functional competency could be taught through induction and training programmes, he said. He suggested that companies be open to accepting candidates without domain knowledge and train them post recruitment.

The seminar discussed employee retention techniques. Ms S. Muthumala, Human Resources Head, Congruent Solutions Limited, said flexible compensation could be a solution. "Our employees design their pay packets. With help from tax planners, they decide what component of their pay should be taken home and what should go into savings," she said. This freedom to choose made them bond better with the company, she said.

Mr M. Ganesh, Deputy General Manager - Human Resources, Ashok Leyland Ltd, said one of the main reasons for attrition among junior employees was lack of challenging work. Ashok Leyland has started a Young Executive programme that identifies active junior employees and makes them part of important projects. Mr Ganesh said a team of 26 such employees had worked on the company's budget for 2007-08.

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