Prerna Rawat had been staring at her laptop screen for the last 15 minutes and yet her mind drew a complete blank. She was expected to draft a detailed recruitment plan in view of an IT outsourcing project the company had landed with a new Fortune 500 client.

She sat immobile, confounded by stark contradictions between organisations’ recruitment policies and the ground realities in the wake of a recessionary environment.

Contradictions galore
Despite a global economic meltdown and layoffs, finding the right talent has remained one of the biggest issues faced by organisations. Even in times of uncertainty, employees have remained far less loyal to their organisations than in previous years.

And yet, “One of the biggest faith-shattering news (for employees) has been the mass layoffs by many IT majors across the globe,” say HR experts like Ashish Chhillar, director at Job Connect. “This totally contradicts the ‘people are assets’ philosophy that most companies try to espouse these days,” he adds.

Such prevailing contradictions had made Prerna indecisive about the recruitment line to be towed.

But with the customer delivery beginning soon, she was required to hire fast. She did not have the luxury of waiting for a couple of months to get the best talent on board. And she could ill afford a hiring decision that she would regret later. What if a new employee failed to deliver? That could cost her organisation far more, both in terms of time, money and delivery issues.  

This set Prerna thinking. She felt the need to go far beyond the recruitment plan she was asked to present. She wanted to contribute strategically towards the achievement of overall business objectives of her organisation rather just serving as a recruiter.

End-to-end ownership
Prerna set out to develop an integrated staffing plan instead of just a recruitment plan for the project.

While on one hand the plan enlisted the steps to be taken, on the other hand it also listed out the deliverables and milestones to be achieved corresponding to each step of the process.

The approach adopted by Prerna is something that most professional recruiters follow. “We help companies develop a staffing plan that standardises recruitment practices and ensures that the recruitment that happens is consistent and mitigates any risk and uncertainty,” says Sankalp Popli, director,

Absolute Recruitments, which is a niche recruitment company active in the BPO, KPO and IT areas.

Adopt best practices
A key objective for Prerna now was to implement the best practices to get a strategic plan that delivered value, in line with the objectives spelt out by the client.

But before she got cracking on the plan, she wanted some answers. Prerna picked her desk phone and reached out for the account director of the project to set up a meeting.

“A variety of global staffing experts suggest that HR start with asking questions that help create a singular alignment of the HR’s efforts in getting the right candidates,” feels Popli.

Between the doodles on Prerna’s yellow pad, the following key questions waited to be answered by the account director.

• What are the deliverables of the project as a whole?
• How many new employees will be required to achieve the deliverables?
• What skills, both technical and soft, should these employees possess?
• Why are these skills critical? Can they be replaced with similar of other skills?
• When will these new employees be needed?
• Will all of them be needed on board when the project goes live or can their recruitment be staggered?

Also, there were questions related to the length of the project and the placement of the new employees (onsite or offsite).

Global best practices suggest that IT staffing plans must use objective, performance-based criteria as the basis. And that is possible only if the HR team works to create job profiles for each employee revolving around measurable criteria that is benchmarked against an ideal performance.

The benchmark should be a normalised average of the company’s standards and the standards of top performers in the IT industry.

A clear deliverable in this phase should be the development of a structured interview process, as it neatly helps to get the right information out of the applicant. Two aspects of the structure must be attended to—content and method.

A sound planning is essential to get the right content and method for evaluation. Both, content and method must be aligned to check applicants’ past job performance on the measurable criteria.

“A structured interview provides a standard approach that ensures everyone hires to a consistent standard,” feels Chhillar. The company must understand that the interview is the most critical component of the selection process. In a few minutes, the interview should be able to bring out all the inputs needed to make an informed and correct decision, one that will affect the fortunes of the company and the individual.

A structured interview brings the required objectivity to clear all haze that is often there in a subjective assessment.

The next step is to create a pool of potential candidates from across a variety of sources such as staffing agencies, and also from the list comprising redeployment, promotion, and reassignment candidates.

Benefits outweigh effort
“The benefits of a well planned staffing plan far outweigh the effort put in by the organisation, and the time spent by it,” points out Popli.

Two key benefits of such staffing plan accrue immediately and are very important for project-based requirements. The plan not only significantly increases the odds of hiring the right people, it also helps create consistency in the hiring decision-making process.

“A long-term benefit is that when existing people leave, new hires come into the system on the basis of processes and standards specified in the staffing plan. This results in an improvement in the quality of workforce over a period of time,” points out Chhillar.

Six steps to IT staffing

• Create the profile or job description for an ideal candidate
• Develop a structured interview plan. Focus on content and method of selection
• Assess the quantity and periodicity of demand for new employees
• Develop and have access to a pool of qualified prospects and applicants
• Screen the candidates based on various pre-defined parameters, including the job description and qualifications/expertise
• Do a reference check after the final interview