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Raja Simhan T.E.

According to sources, large organisations such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Coco-Cola and Wipro have started appraising recruitment agencies in the last few months. The IT companies started doing this in 1998-99.

CHENNAI, June 12

RECRUITMENT agencies/consultants constantly appraise candidates to get the right person for the right job.

However, today, large corporates have started appraising recruitment agencies on their performance and the quality of manpower provided by them. The appraisal move follows a spurt in the number of recruitment agencies/consultants in the country in the last couple of years.

The appraisal system was mainly to get rid of the non-performing agencies providing unsuitable candidates, and "fly-by-night'' operators (typically one man run firms). Further, corporates had started moving towards service delivery standardisation across providers and across locations without any glitches, said sources in the recruitment industry.

According to sources, large organisations such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Coco-Cola and Wipro had started appraising recruitment agencies in the last few months. The IT companies started this in 1998-99 and had been picked up by firms in other sectors too.

Recruitment agencies welcoming the appraisal, however, felt that such a move had also put "enormous'' pressure on them (agencies) while recruiting people. The pressure was more even as the recruitment cycle - from the time a placement advertisement was issued till a placement was made - was short, in certain cases even a fortnight. "We need to screen thousands of resumes in a couple of days, and pick up the right candidate, which is a tough job," sources said.

According to Ms Saundarya Rajesh, Chief Executive of the Chennai-based recruitment firm, Avtar Career Creators, an appraisal was basically to get rid of non-performing agencies, not providing the right candidates to a company. Further, large firms were now looking at engaging only reputed agencies having strong domain knowledge, she said.

According to Ms Rajesh, the appraisal system would help a company avoid getting the same resume from two different agencies. In 1997-98, there would have been about 100 consultants (with one personal computers and one chair) in Chennai, while today there were over 500 of them, she said.

According to Mr Ajit Isac of the Banglore-based PeopleOne Consulting, an appraisal was more of an endeavour by corporates to empanel various recruiting agencies on the basis of merit, than as a structured appraisal process.

Today, most multinational companies had a structured process of vendor approvals based on set parameters on which they evaluate recruitment firms too. "Over time, we can see this grow into a structured process. We welcome such a move since such a process would aid corporates to start seeing the benefits of professionally run companies, with specialised practise, in the recruitment space".

Further, corporates too would like to be complimented by a "powerful and successful'' corporatised recruiting firm as a business partner rather than working with firms whose internal systems were not in the best in class category, said Mr Isac.

Since entry barriers to get into the recruitment space were less, it was possible that individuals, and small or unprofessional players might enter this business to cash in with short-term goals. In this context, it was important for corporates to do a thorough research on the recruiting agency before empanelling them, he said.

According to Mr Rajiv Puri, CEO, JobsAhead.com, the appraisal system was still in the nascent phases. There was still a wait and watch on this move. This move was evolved from the model where clients fixed a certain payment for the recruitment agency on the performance of the personnel they had placed.

According to Mr E. Balaji, General Manager - Staffing Solutions Group of the Chennai-based Ma Foi Management Consultants Ltd, the appraisal system was mainly to rationalise the recruitment vendors to not more than two or three. The appraisal system was more prevalent in those firms, which had a flexi-staffing system, wherein the employees were on contract and on a third party's pay roll.

The evaluation system had been active in the last 15-18 months. Some of the companies were even going a step further by getting feedback from the candidates, successful or unsuccessful. The feedback included the entire process that a candidate went through during recruitment, he said.

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