The Hindu Business Line : Wrong size? Outsource the right fit!

While companies are making hectic plans to recruit in thousands every quarter, pressure is building on the HR department not only to hire, but also hire right.

Helping the recruitment team in this process are competency assessment companies that aim to give companies the `right-fit candidate.'

The Bangalore-based MeritTrac Services, a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) company, has so far assessed 8,00,000 candidates for the BPO sector.

Says Madan Padaki, Director, Business Development, "RPO not only gives a better company-candidate fit but also reduces the hiring cost by more than 20 per cent."

MeritTrac designs and administers tests to prospective employees in the IT and ITES sectors and plans to foray into banking and other financial sectors soon. "We have both standardised tests and custom-made tests for our clients," says Padaki.

In fact, MeritTrac has set up a dedicated assessment centre for HP in Bangalore where exclusive tests are held for candidates for HP. The company plans to set up more such centres across the country soon.

Explaining the RPO process, Padaki says "We are a skills-assessment organisation and offer the entire suite of services in the area." Currently, MeritTrac is offering this service to over 100 IT and ITES companies.

Recruitment process outsourcing helps companies replace the fixed recruitment costs with a flexible `pay-for-performance' model that employs rcruitment rupees more efficiently.

Apart from this, it gives them better quality of employees because MeritTrac's tests are standardised and endorsed across the IT and ITES industries, says Padaki.

MeritTrac has developed its own battery of tests as "none of the existing tests is suited for the Indian marketplace," according to Padaki. It has over 100 tests in its repertoire now.

Recruitment process outsourcing can give a company that edge, Padaki says. Thestandardised process ensures consistency of quality, does scientific testing of the candidates' abilities (communication skills, cognitive skills, domain skills, technical knowledge) and does all this in the budgeted time-frame, he says.

Campus recruitment is another challenge area for IT companies. The most common problems companies face in campus recruitment are low ability to handle large volumes, lack of standardised methods for evaluating candidates and missing out the right candidate.

Students too face problems such as too many different organisations to choose from, too many selection processes, and confusion about where they stand in the selection process.

"The biggest challenge for them is that they may not be at their best when they take the written test or the interview," says Guhesh Ramanathan, Country Manager, Professional Aptitude Council (PAC).

PAC, a US-based company, offers pre-employment aptitude certification for IT professionals. The PAC exam has been designed based on research into personality traits and aptitude required for software programming-related positions.

In the software industry, almost 60 per cent of a company's human capital is recruited from campuses. "Companies are getting increasingly confused about which college to hire from. While not all students from Tier 1 colleges may be good, there are some really bright students in Tier 2 and Tier 3 colleges," says Ramanathan.

PAC scores help companies choose students with the `right fit and attitude.'

The PAC exam measures the students' aptitude in nine different areas, including technical, behavioural, general skills, coding skills, problem-solving skills, etc. The three-hour test is administered in secure facilities and the results are available for students and companies that want to hire these students.

PAC, which started offering its certification services in India in March this year, already has over 3,00,000 registrations on its Web site and over 8,000 students have taken the exam since then, says Ramanathan.

More than 20 companies in the country have started using PAC scores to select candidates. Microsoft, Satyam, TCS, Aztec and Infosys have begun short-listing their candidates based on the PAC scores and Oracle has already utilised the PAC database to make offers to 150 prospective employees, according to Ramanathan.

anjali@thehindu.co.in

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