People Matters
Leading People
Building Organizations
Sunday, May 26, 2013 | Home› Articles
Candidates lack basic skills
Given the nature of our business, we hire in large numbers for sales and distribution where we hire close to 400 employees every year. The fundamental problem is that the numbers are far too many as compared to the availability of such people in the marketplace. And once you start meeting the people, the ratio of those who qualify is one to ten. While the number of applications is large, the screening and short-listing process often lands us with probably three candidates and then only one might be selected. Fundamentally, the employability of these people is a big question mark.
The problem is firstly due to the absence of clarity on the part of these candidates on what they want to do or what they seek from their job. Secondly, while we are not asking for more than basic ground level skills, most candidates fail to deliver even that. In our business, most of the processes and activities are system-based and we require our employees to understand fundamentals of the sales and distribution process. Therefore, the skills that we look for are basic mathematics and computer skills, but we are not able to find those easily. Most of the candidates fail to cross the first hurdle of our simple tests.
When looking for talent at the entry level, we hire a lot through references. Being a ‘sales and marketing’ driven organization, our own people are active in the market, which acts as a very big recruitment source for us. Especially for people at the entry level, we prefer to involve consultants as less as possible. Almost 40 percent of our recruitment is done through references. We also have an internal referral program called SEARCH where we pay employees for good references and about 10% of our recruitment takes place through this channel.
Since most of these people hired at the entry level do not come equipped with the required business skills, we do invest in making them productive on the job. We run a program, called FIRST (Field Staff Induction Reference and Sales Training), which is a two week program to orient employees towards the organization, its sales policies and procedures, sales IT infrastructure and skills that they must acquire to perform well in their roles. And lastly, we have prepared certain audio visual modules, which enable us to scale these training initiatives across the various locations where our field staff operates.
While our intake is about 400 annually, we face an attrition of approximately 20 percent. Therefore, we need to run the refresher programs on a regular basis, which is easily possible with the use of these audio visual training modules. Further, we also use this channel to train our external partners who distribute our products, but not necessarily employed by Dabur.
We also partner with ITIs for our manufacturing facilities. A bulk of these units are located in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh where we partner with the local ITIs there to provide people with the skills specific to our manufacturing needs. For example, in the last financial year 2011-12, we had hired 50 ITIs in Himachal Pradesh alone and we plan to hire another 50 ITIs in Uttarakhand in 2012-13. These candidates go through a structured apprentice program in ITI, and they join us as ITI trainees in manufacturing. However, for the field staff, we do not have any arrangement with any institution.
6 Comments
Post your comments
Article Features
Subscribe to the
People Matters
print edition
Subscribe to peoplematters.in and you will receive our magazine at your door step.
People Matters
Most Read
MOST RECENT POSTS
 |
Gender Inclusion Survey Report A TCS - People Matters Survey |
Crystal clear clarity in the process followed currently in your organisation, indicates that your team trying cost cutting hiring methods, using basic hiring sources using referral programmes(Employee references)good to know that. Would like to understand one point here, has the quality check analysis done on the referral data? Did team check the attrites source of hiring? am sure you might have checked these under your expert guidance, reason am sharing these things, when we tried using referral programmes, lot of branding work done prior to referral programmes, we also ensured to check the leakage reasons,hiring source of attrited employees. It is found, that every performing employee shared non performing reference, it is also observed post analysis that no performer bring another performer into the same organisation. Correct me if I am wrong. Post this experience, we decided to hire 10% using referral programmes, 10% references from walk-in sources, 20% social network/professional network, 20% Job postings, mass mailings, 10% consultants, 15% freshers using campus hiring, ITI institues, another 15% using Advt in leading news papers, Job postings on professional sites. We could consistently achieve 0% hiring from consultants, attrition level dipped, ensured quality hiring across Zones, even in smaller locations for Sales Driven organisation. Thank You.
This is the absolute truth there is no dearth of candidates looking for the job, but this is also a fact that true mirror is not seen by both the parties. Expectation from both ends is immense. The employer expects a lot from the candidate and the employee expects fast return in return of little efforts. Even the hiring process is not result based. Eg: a lot of company takes aptitude test which might not be required for the job, the job requires proficiency in English, so here the whole process of hiring goes wrong. Today as we are giving training need based, we need to redesign our hiring process too.
Hi, Sorry to intervene with the topic, but as I am working with the grass root level I need to say that there are NO SCARCITY OF TALENT in our country. The thing what I feel is no one ready to take the initiative for proper allocation of talent. As I am an owner of a manpower consultancy firm and always work with the candidates, I have observed that everyone thinks for short time goal achievement. The candidates are looking forward for high salary in short time… the company ready candidate who can achieve 100% of target from the first day of his career…..the consultancy(the most pathetic with it’s ethics) earning whether the candidate/company satisfy with the job/candidate or not. We need something different.................We do something...either total/partial compromise..We at myshriji.com try to break the trend..We groom the candidate for their required job..which he/she can do without any compromise...and we can assure the company for the best result...as the candidate love to do jobs without any compromise......There is no shortcut..
India is a populous country and the demographics suggest that we are a young country. This would automatically mean that there are a large number of people available for employment. This is also proven whenever you run an ad campaign. We have seen long lines of young people eager to take up a job. Though the numbers are large, the employable population is not really that large. I agree with Mr. Sudhakar that the right talent is not available for employment even at basic or entry level. There are only two solutions to the problem, either get your education system to improve and force them to give more employable candidates. Or, for the organization to get into the education system and tweak the system to create employable professionals (at least for the skills you are looking for). A third solution is to extend the learning/training for the kids and train them for 3 to 6 months after you have hired them. Unfortunately, none of them are easy solutions and also are not feasible for the mid to small sized organizations. This is a revolution waiting to happen where the large organizations will have to play a key role.
It is a myth that there is no talent available in the market especially at the level you are seeking. Or it could well be one of those messages which large corporates want to give out suggesting they are in expansion mode. There is no dearth of sales and distribution executives in market.
Though there is no dearth of candidates looking out for job, I agree to the fact that there is scarcity of talent who are readily employable , or whose skill sets or competencies are in line with the business requirements, In most of the education institutions the learnings are not aligned to the practical scenario that students have to face in corporate. In such cases, ITI programs become handy as they fill in the gaps between student transition from college to corporate. Anushri Verma - HR