Recruiting can be a very tricky business. There is no doubt about the prestige that is attached to the position of a recruiter. A recruiter is a specialist who knows a particular subject-matter very well. A recruiter generally belongs to a middle or a senior level of management. A recruiter also has to know HR practices and policies very well as recruitment is an important part of human resource management.

Who Are the Recruiters?

For this very reason, sometimes two people or a group of people or a board have to involve themselves in the recruitment process. If one person is the subject expert, the other is the HR expert; if a few people question the candidate on various branches of the subject, the others question the candidate on HR-related issues. To make it comprehensible, let me give you an example. If a company wishes to recruit a finance professional, the recruiters will have to have senior finance experts and professionals as well as senior HR experts and professionals among themselves. While the finance experts will question the candidate on his or her experience as a finance manager and knowledge of finance, i.e. all about mergers, acquisitions, equity, initial public offerings, options, futures, swaps, stocks and shares, etc.; the HR experts will have to question the candidate on his or her future aims, check his or her emotional intelligence quotient, on where he or she would like to go five years down the line, on his or her background and family, etc.

Recruitment Questions

Questions naturally vary according to the position or designation that you are recruiting for. Questions are obviously simpler if you are recruiting people for junior positions and complicated if you are recruiting people for senior positions. You might have to interview just ten candidates if you are recruiting a receptionist or a sales executive and seventy people if you are recruiting a Marketing VP.

Recruiters Are Not Mind Readers

But the main problem that most recruiters face is the problem of gauging the candidate. Candidates are very difficult to gauge. Most candidates put their best foot forward when they come for an interview. While their qualifications and work experience may be verified from their college degrees and work experience certificates, there is no way by which recruiters can understand and trust the minds of the candidates. A candidate might be very promising and you and your team of recruiters may recruit him with a lot of optimism and hope. But after a week or so when you begin to happily think that he has settled down, he just stops coming to office. You ring up to find out what's happened and he tells you that he's got a better opportunity!

You might have made candidates go through a tough examination just to make sure you're taking the best. And someone does crack your test and impresses you and your team of recruiters at the interview with her strong, enthusiastic and bright personality. You think that she's the best person for the GM- Marketing's position. You appoint her and explain to her all the perquisites and benefits that she will receive. But after a few days at the job, she informs you that she isn't interested anymore, that she's leaving. recruiting agency

Recruitment Frustrates

So, recruitment can get really frustrating. When you find that you and your colleagues have wasted valuable working hours correcting examination papers, taking rounds of interviews, and appointing personnel only to find them disappearing after a few days, you might feel like blowing your top.

Recruitment Tips for Successful Recruitment

So, how are you going to recruit the right candidate who will stay for a minimum of one year? With sky-high attrition rates nowadays, an employee who stays for one year is called a 'senior employee' in companies. I list here the following tips by means of which you can recruit a candidate who will stay in your organization for a minimum period of one year. If you follow these tips, the time and money that you spend in advertising for candidates and recruiting, will not be spent in vain.

• Besides ensuring that the candidate satisfies your basic criteria, check whether he or she is married and has children. It is always preferable to take married candidates with kids. Such candidates don't change jobs fast. They tend to be more stable and stick to jobs definitely for a year or so.

• Check the candidate's background of work experience. If he or she has not spent more than 6 months in any company, please reject him or her, despite his or her brilliant performance in the entrance examinations and in the interview. Candidates who spend 4 months here, another 2 months there, another 5 months elsewhere must never be chosen. Only choose candidates who have their work experience in terms of years. For example, 2 years in some place, 1 year in the next, 2 years in the third company, etc.

• Candidates in their thirties are more reliable and trustworthy than twenty-something candidates. When people are in their twenties, they tend to be very excited about their careers as about everything else. They have lots of foolish and impractical dreams and are adventurous and flighty. By thirty, one realizes that life is tough and that it's stupid to build castles in the air and live in Ivory towers. Real focus comes when you cross thirty. So, recruiters are advised to choose candidates who are thirty or above thirty if they want stable candidates who will stick to their jobs.

• It is advisable to have at least one psychologist among the panel of selectors. A psychologist is able to understand the interviewee better than anyone else on the panel. While a psychologist may not have any knowledge of the particular post for which the candidate is being interviewed or the nitty-gritty of the HR policies, he or she will be able to tell whether the candidate is telling the truth about his or her intentions, about whether he or she really wants to work for the company, and other matters.