Recommendations

RECOMMENDATIONS & SUGGESTIONS Compress the "white space" in your hiring process. White Spaces are delays in hiring process that are unproductive, waste time, and virtually assure you'll lose talented candidates. Often the longest delays occur between critical selection events. For example, a recruiter may need several weeks to screen a few hundred resumes from the Web job boards, or candidates who make it through screening may wait weeks to interview with a hiring manager. Here at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, the delays occur when the outstation candidates are called for interviews at Regional branches like Delhi and Mumbai. Sometimes, because of busy schedule of senior managers and sometimes because of tight schedule of candidate, the interview has to be postponed. This delay could be minimized by scheduling interviews in the regional locations. It is recommended to reduce the turnaround time for the recruitment and selection process. It must be made mandatory for the candidates to take the test, filling up forms etc within the stipulated time, this will make sure that the candidates do not hold casual attitude and take the recruitment process more seriously. Additionally it can send across a positive image about the company. White space in recruitment can be compressed by the use of IT also. Technology (such as automated or Web-based tracking) is ideal for eliminating unnecessary steps and reducing delays.

Tie up with more & more consultants from multiple segments

Since the limited placement agencies are sourcing candidates to all insurance companies, there often comes the problem of duplication of data. Therefore it is recommended that more and more consultants should be tied up from multiple segments to attract large pool of new and fresh talent.

Know what you're looking for in candidates. It is observed that the candidates sourced by placement agencies and send for further rounds of interviews are rarely found suitable by the hiring managers. Therefore, in case there is need to utilize the service of a placement agency, then it is recommended that these placement agencies be given a well drafted job description and job specification. This can also be circulated to internal employees under the employee referral scheme. This will help people to get a clearer picture and provide for most suitable candidates. Thus making efficient utilization of the existing resources.

Reduce the pre offer formalities: Pre-offer documentation includes filling of a lengthy Blue form which includes all personal, educational and professional details of candidate. This is very time consuming and even after taking these details from candidate its not sure that offer will be made or not. This also becomes frustrating for the candidate sometimes. So, it is recommended that unnecessary details should not be asked before we make the final offer to the candidate. Blue form should be made consise.

One size doesn’t fits all An effort must be made to study local condition, education levels. Since applying common test for all candidates across entire country can overshadow a candidates capabilities. This factor must be given importance since Indian society is divided on various parameters such as education,

language, infrastructure etc. A test with high level of English and complicated sentence structure can be a hurdle in areas where language itself is barrier. An option is to have different tests for different regions.

Blend technology into every aspect of your recruiting and hiring process. Web-based technology lets you increase hiring speed and quality while reducing costs. Currently, job boards constitute the biggest use of the Web, offering access to thousands of resumes within hours. But the Web can also be a powerful tool for screening and qualifying that flood of resumes. Companies have begun to use the Web to collect and instantly match data on candidate skills, motivations, and experiences against job criteria. Other uses of Web-based technology include online interviewing, candidate assessment and testing, applicant self-scheduling, and tracking. Work the Web wisely and you save time for recruiters and hiring managers and nab top candidates before your competitors can. 

It is recommended that apart from the person-job fit, method must be devised to check for person-organization fit. A person-organization helps to assess how well a candidate is suited the organization. Whether the attitude he/she carries will promote both organizational as well personal goals. This takes a great importance especially when attrition is high. It will help the organization to retain its employees for a longer period of time and less burden on recruitment staff.

Build and manage your candidate pool as a precious resource.

A "candidate pool" is a group of individuals who have shown interest in

working for your company and are qualified for and ready to fill certain positions. Rather than undertaking the time-consuming process of filling one job at a time, you draw on the candidate pool and fill jobs as they become available. How do you keep a pool active? Some companies send their newsletters to pool candidates, give them product coupons, and keep in touch through e-mail. Pool management is not easy in a tight labor market -good candidates often go elsewhere. But many organizations, especially those with a reputation as a great place to work, are able to fill positions quickly using the pool concept.

Create winning impression even on those who are not selected Its very important to create a favorable impression of your organization on all those who come for interview. Those who are not selected in the first round of personal interview should also carry this impression that they have missed the opportunity to work in a great company. For this, there must a proper coordination of the interview of the candidate and greater degree of professionalism. A candidate when invited for a interview must be attended as soon as possible and should be made to wait for hours together. Interviews conducted on a scheduled time leave a good impression on the candidate. Even if he is not selected, a good impression about the will make him recommend the name to his people.

CONCLUSION Insurance is confronted with high attrition rate. Therefore it makes recruitment a critical function in the organization. In order to grow and sustain in the competitive environment it is important for an organization to continuously develop and bring out innovations in all it activities. It is only when

organization is recognized for its quality that it can build a stability with its customers. Thus an organization must be able to stand out in the crowd. The first step in this direction is to ensure competitive people come in the organization. Therefore recruitment in this regard becomes an important function. The organization must constantly improvise in its recruitment process so that it is able to attract best in the industry in order to serve the best. Thus the organization must look out for methods that can enable it to adopt best recruitment practices.

LEARNINGS Every endeavor undertaken to accomplish challenging goals, can only be successful under the experienced and encouraging guidance. I am privileged to have undergone training at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance. As learning never stops, my learning at Kotak has come from a lot of exposure, on the job training and close interaction with the corporate. In brief my learning and achievements can be summarized as under: Understanding of person and profile fit. Convince people about the job profile and to sell the job to the prospective candidate; Following up with the candidates during the entire selection process; Learned to convince candidates about the offer rolled out and making them accept the offer through effective communication; Learning about salary fitments. Communicating with the corporate; Performance appraisals, its various types, implications and significance; Handling queries received from various quarters; Managing HR department in the absence of HR manager;

Reply to official mails; Prioritize issues according to their importance; Field work exposure to tap candidates that further strengthened the learning