Looking for a Good Fit For Your Company? #7 Tips to Hire the Right Employee While the companies may possess adequate hiring skills and have processes in place, however at the end identifying the right talent is an art!

Hiring the right talent has always been and will continue to be a key imperative for HR to deliver to any organization. While the companies may possess adequate hiring skills and have processes in place, however at the end identifying the right talent is an art! Searching for the best talent and hiring the most suitable candidate for any organizations leads to increased performance, productivity, employee engagement and retention. Recruiting suitable candidate is indeed tough, but it is a job that can always get better. If hiring is done right then even a small team of employees with high calibre can perform better than a large group of staff with mediocre capability and efficiency.

Best Practices

Bringing along stakeholders on board, involving them, and taking perspective before hiring the right fit – these are some of the popular practises employed in the companies all over the world. In addition to these, conventions like following a structured interviewing process, cross functional perspective/panel interviews, using behavioural assessment tools based on the level of position the company is are hiring, are also greatly in vogue.

HR head honchos working with Amway India and Jindal Stainless Limited have shared their views on hiring the right resource with Entrepreneur. Here is what they have said.

Arriving at a Consensus is Important

Shantanu Das, Chief Human Resources Officer, Amway India, is a seasoned HR professional with over two decades of extensive work experience across all verticals of the people domain. Shantanu informs that Amway has a series of activities towards hiring talent which include face to face interviews by a multiple set of interviewers, psychometrics as a

decision support and not a decision maker, reference checks and finally a decision arrived at through a general consensus. "It is important to note that in case of a lack of a consensus, the benefit of doubt cannot be given to the interviewee and if this principle is compromised then comes the probability of hiring the "wrong fit'," he points out.

Ensure Fairness by all Means

Interestingly, in one of the recent strategic internal Sales hiring process in Amway India, wherein the company hired 10 from a pool of 80 aspirants, in order to ensure fairness and neutrality, it appointed a consultant to take the full selection process through, barring the final interviews. This, according to Das, ensured "fairness' to the hiring process thus eliminating the bias which is also critical to hiring the right employees. "However, the existence of intuitive feel which tells you that "yes, this is the right guy" cannot be denied and that also needs to be factored-in while finally deciding on the right person," he is quick to add.

Both Right and Wrong Choices Make a Difference

Nida Khanam, HR Head, Jindal Stainless Limited, one of the largest stainless steel conglomerates in India with an annual crude steel capacity of 1.8 MTPA and an annual turnover of Rs 14,500 crore, is of the opinion that right people always make a difference and so would the wrong ones. For Nida, hiring mistakes, if any are pricey in terms of the effort and money that is paid and lost, the time that is wasted that could have been invested with a better candidate/s.

Devoting Time and Having Good Judgement are the Keys

"The key aspect for a HR manager is to hire the right people. For any passionate manager or HR, spending maximum time on hiring to find the right fit is worth a job. Besides, well thought of actions and steps for effective hiring, and good recruiting processes, are critical to evaluate and judge potential candidates to make sure that we are hiring the best person for the available job," shares Nida, who has avid experience in different facets of HR function - HR Strategy, Talent Management, Change Facilitation, Organization Design and Structuring, and Business partnering.

Assessing the Candidate is Vital

Khanam who has worked with global majors like Rockwell Automation and Grohe before joining Jindal Stainless in June 2016 strongly believes that candidates' values, strengths, culture fit, attitude, aspirations, competencies, and learning ability are most important parameters to assess and evaluate the right fit for any organization. "Recruiting the appropriate talent is a winning mantra for any leader - after all, the new employees either raise the competence of the organization as a whole or lower it by dragging it towards failure," she expounds.

Professionalism and Clear Job Specification are the Deal Clinchers

With close to 15 years of rich and diverse experience in various aspects of Human Resources, Nida feels that in order to hire the right resource every time, you need to do away with the amateur hour attitude and attend to the hiring process with the same degree of cut-throat professionalism as you would for the growth of a strategic plan for your function or organization. "However, there is no proven successful formula for hiring but to keep striving to get best talent for your team. It's important to have job specification clear," she reiterates.