How hard can it be?

How hard can it be? Really, how hard is it to recruit good people? Last experience I have with recruitment is recruting for Microsoft. Now, you see why don’t I have the “right insight” into how difficult it is. The Microsoft hiring team does such a good job with the shortlisting based on resumes and HR interview that the technical team only sees average and better than average candidates. (Of course, they spend a hell lot of resources and attract much better resumes also)

Now, something that I experienced yesterday – the biggest (yet, not too big) recruting event that we organized for the software company that I have founded with another friend of mine (more on the company profile, later). After realizing that we need some kind of bulk hiring to save time and reduce cost, we decided to organize this half day screening test plus interview session. Now, the numbers that came up there are quite interesting:

So, in the time window that we sent our job advertisement for , here is the data:

Resumes received: ~ 100
Relevant Resumes: ~ 35
Shortlisted for test after the first round of basic telephonic interview (communication skills, basic aptitude and technical skills): 15
Turned up for interview: 10
Cleared Screening test (Interviewed): 7

Jobs Offered: We, still, have to decide on the numbers.

Learnings from the exercise:

• Better idea on what to expect from a person based on the resume and telephonic interview.
• Hiring is expensive – both in terms of money and time.