[hdus001]

Originally Posted by mohansrides

I tell my PMs that we anyways have a probationary period when both parties can walk away. So, why are we interviewing and wasting time? If he / she says on the resume that they have the skill, just get them to start. If they are not cut out for the job, we will know in a couple of weeks; which is much shorter than the time you will take to get them on board anyways.

Has this approach been successful for you?

To me, this seems very risky. Especially with the majority of resumes being vastly inflated and "aspirational" rather than fact-based. It almost means you have to be in continuous hiring mode for any role, as even after someone joins, you can't tell if they'll be retained beyond the probationary period. Add to that the time wasted in onboarding, the potential damage done by an incompetent person during their short time there, existing employees getting frustrated by this revolving door etc.

Besides, an interview process is not just for the benefit of the employer, it's also a chance for the candidate to evaluate the company and at least some of their future colleagues. Whenever I've been on the candidate-end of an interview process, I've always appreciated taking the opportunity to understand from different people/perspectives what they view as the main challenges I'd face, key outcomes expected, etc. This has been useful to piece together a picture of the role, the company, stakeholders, and then see if I really would enjoy working in that environment. Wouldnt this be lost?

[mohansrides]

Originally Posted by hdus001

Has this approach been successful for you?

To me, this seems very risky…

Yes, it is risky.

But is the current conventional process without risk? As mentioned by so many on this thread, we spend weeks and months doing interviews. Keep in mind that “interviewing” is making it sound simple. In reality it’s never just one interview. At least 3 guys talk to the person - HR, PM and a tech lead; then maybe even an SME of some sort. So the time taken to free up people from their schedules to conduct interviews ranges between a couple of weeks to a month.

After this we roll out an offer and wait the full notice period of 2 or 3 months. During this time, a candidate may call us with a negotiation which we entertain. The candidate interviews with N other companies during the same notice period. Then at the end of the notice period, we get told that he / she won’t join. Many many times, this happens just on the eve of the joining date, or on the joining date itself. Worse, we get the ghost at this very point. On the joining date, the candidate is simply untraceable.

The process didn’t play out like this just during the last year or two when recruiting was a nightmare. It has been like this for service orgs for as long as I can remember. Even when there was plenty of talent available, most orgs have rolled out multiple offers for the same position because only one might join.

So tell me sir, how is this process without risk?

Coming back to other parts of your question, we haven’t done this everyone we hire. But, in my teams we follow this model more than we follow the conventional model. So far it is working as well as the other model. The benefit is that we have burned less time with useless conversations in which both parties are lying.

To be specific, we don’t simply roll out an offer by looking at just the resume. The HR guy speaks to the person on the phone. He tells the guy that the hiring manager is willing to roll out an offer and all evaluations will happen during the probationary period. Only a handful accept; which is fine by us. If we are going to get ghosted, it’s best that it happen at this stage when very little time has been wasted.

In the handful of times when the candidate has accepted our terms as mentioned by HR, the PM has a quick phone conversation to firm up salary terms and to explain that the skills stated in the candidate’s resume will be called upon from day 1. At this stage too we have had peel off. Of those who have actually joined, we haven’t had departures by the grace of God.

For sure I keep getting told that my process is risky. But we can’t tell if we are going to do better using normal processes.

In fact, there was one time (when we followed the normal process) HR came and told me that the candidate’s references did not pan out; that his previous org had some rough things to say. I chose to disregard that feedback and get him in. And the candidate is just fine. He just clocked his 7th year with us. Maybe I got lucky. Or maybe everyone’s performance depends on a lot of things; and a bad employee at another org would function better at mine, and vice versa.

The beauty of the service industry is that we have a forgiving model as compared to product companies. Here if the candidate doesn’t work out in one team, we can try him in another and another (as long as he / she is willing) until they find a fit. Conversely, we couldn’t care less about the merit of the candidate as long as the client doesn’t complain. This may sound like we are promoting mediocrity and I am sure that a bunch of people are going to jump out of the woodwork to preach to me. But the reality is that clients do realise that they are paying 1/3rd the cost that they would pay if they hired full time on-site. So they understand that itne paise mein itna hi milega (you will get this only for the price you pay) so to speak.

Many times as we all know that not only do people with mediocre talent survive, they actually thrive. Many stay in teams for years and become trusted extensions of a client’s onshore team.

Our primary goal in the service industry is to get people in. Once that happens, we have many opportunities to mould the person as long as they realise the opportunities in front of them.

Bottom line, complaining from either side is pointless. Candidates crying a river when they lose a job isn’t going to get them their jobs back. And managers complaining that candidates are unprofessional isn’t going to reform the candidates; certainly no candidate is reading managers’ opinions online and then all of a sudden experiencing an attack of professionalism and good conduct.

Being pragmatic is the only way. When time is valuable, speed is everything.

[androdev]

It really depends on which end of the spectrum one is hiring. As you move towards senior/highly-skilled staff, interviewing is a powerful and an indispensable tool at the disposal of a small entrepreneur. In fact, the most desirable candidates are not cynical and they are very seriously interested in knowing what kind of work they would do and what kind of manager/work-culture they would experience. Obviously, being a small player, one needs to meet a lot more people to find a fit. Keeping the position vacant is better than hiring the wrong person.

[mohansrides]

Originally Posted by androdev

It really depends on which end of the spectrum one is hiring. As you move towards senior/highly-skilled staff, interviewing is a powerful and an indispensable tool at the disposal of a small entrepreneur. In fact, the most desirable candidates are not cynical and they are very seriously interested in knowing what kind of work they would do and what kind of manager/work-culture they would experience. Obviously, being a small player, one needs to meet a lot more people to find a fit. Keeping the position vacant is better than hiring the wrong person.

100% agreed sir. But so far all discussions have been centered on hiring tech workers and not management guys.

Then there is the fact that very desirable candidates with brand name business degrees will hardly choose to work for small companies. If anything they are even more picky than young tech workers. The guys with IIT / IIM degrees have the world at their feet and in 9 out of 10 cases they will choose the biggest companies that offer them the biggest monies and the biggest designations.

In my 20 year career, I have interviewed a sum total of zero IIM guys. I have worked with several of them though and it hasn’t been a uniformly superior experience. But that is a conversation for another thread.

[ralto]

Originally Posted by am1m

That's crazy. When you say senior, how senior in terms of years of experience?

Both were 5+ years and were being interviewed for the Team Lead position. My primary gripe is that they weren't even developers who do tend to be anti-social at times or the ones to ghost, but being a Business/Sales person one ought to show a bit more ettiquites and professionalism, or maybe this is too much to expect in current times.

[NiInJa]

I have been trying to hire a few resources in our team since last one and half years, and this 'ghosting' is something we know people will do, so the HR keeps on dropping mails and calling them to confirm if they are joining once they accept the offer. One month before they join, if they stop responding, we start the hiring process again. Some do tell the HR that they have a change of mind. So, as frustrating and irritating and unprofessional it is, unfortunately, that is what we have to deal with. The process of hiring is heading purely towards luck. Some examples:

As we were losing time, our higher management did try the option of getting a senior person whom they knew for some years and compromised on some part of the job description. I was not a part of the interview or any discussion. Sadly, that has not turned out well for me as the project lead. At his experience, it is a fair expectation to try and find solutions by himself, show ownership, ask questions and follow up on those, and think twice before saying 'I haven't done this before'. We have been giving him extremely trivial tasks and he is faltering at those. I cannot waste my time telling him how to do the basics, especially when we both are hired at same level and have same level of professional and personal commitments. I told all these concerns to our director last week and now he is thinking of asking him to find another job as he is a misfit here. We will be giving him a few more opportunities till end of this year before asking him to start finding another job. (Hope he is not reading this )

We even had a case where the candidate turned out to be having fake experience, a good 9 months after his joining. The best part of this saga was he was doing good on the project work and looked promising candidate for next level. It was a tough situation for me as I dealt with him everyday and was asked to leave abruptly, right in the middle of a critical project. On his last day, I told him that we would have hired him even if he said that he had no prior experience during the interview and he could have got a clean start, now it was up to him to figure out how to get out of the mess as the next company too would do the same background verification that we did. I told the HR and our directors to speed up Background verification process in our organization!

Coming back to hiring process in todays times, I have started telling some harsh truths to candidates during the interview, especially the ones having experience of less than or equal to 5-7 years and asking for a position which they really aren't ready for. I recently interviewed a candidate having just 2 years of total experience and asking salary that is 7 times his professional experience (in our technology, 2.5 to 3.25 times total experience is the norm for people below 6 years of experience). That would mean he would join as a senior consultant. He seemed confident and had an air of dismissive attitude initially. I knew he was just trying his luck to see if he can get a counter offer to negotiate with another organisation. He had cleared the technical rounds. I started asking senior consultant level questions to which he had no answers, which was expected, considering his level of experience. I could see his body language, feeling drained and saying 'leave me alone'. I concluded the interview telling him that wherever he decides to join, he would have to deal with these scenarios and there was no escape. I asked the HR next day to see if he is ready to negotiate, and I got a reply the candidate had an offer already and backed out of the process. This was much faster than dilly-dallying for days. In my mind, I was happy that he was going to be someone else's problem.

Compare that to another resource who joined us, again with just two years of experience. In a very short interview, we told her about her weaknesses and gave an honest outlook on her career and aspirations considering her skillset. We gave her an option to join us now, or try again six to eight months later while upskilling in her current organization and keep looking for other opportunities. The candidate accepted our offer and joined us a month back and has been exceptional resource ever since. She is already taking up challenges and owning up tasks with less inputs from higher ups. She is reading stuff and getting all the knowledge on her own. We are only holding our end of the bargain by giving her the right opportunities that she wanted and she seems very satisfied about it. The one thing she told us last week was that she had multiple offers but not a single interviewer gave her an honest assessment of herself and were more focused on telling how great the company is to work, the culture etc.

[V.Narayan]

^^^^^
Thank you @NilnJa for that detailed sharing of your experience. A genuine noob question - are women software employees more stable than male employees. In my old industry of aviation we had our attrition challenge too with junior maintenance engineers though our employees/ potential employees were not as battle hardened as software job seekers seem to be! I found that the women had priorities different from men - safe work environment for females topping the list,; generous maternity benefits, a good creche coming up next. Of course reasonable career progression, decent wages was a given. And all this made them more stable employees by and large.

[Newtown]

Originally Posted by mohansrides

I tell my PMs that we anyways have a probationary period when both parties can walk away. So, why are we interviewing and wasting time? If he / she says on the resume that they have the skill, just get them to start. If they are not cut out for the job, we will know in a couple of weeks; which is much shorter than the time you will take to get them on board anyways.

Job candidates research companies very deeply. And by that, I mean they use all ways and means to find out the HR policies of the organization. There is significant literature, anecdotes and instances by the online community on what power the HR wields in their organization.

Companies with weak HR policies on employment termination due to below than expected performance, are the easiest targets. So, even if the candidate joins with the skill required, once they are deployed into an assignment/project, they will refuse to work citing that they don't possess the skills or that they have a different skill.

In a strong HR policy driven organization what happens to such candidates? They are asked to leave. But when an organization fears litigation and an impact to reputation as a result of it, HR policies suffer or are not strongly implemented. Candidates know this all too well.

My evaluation is that 85% of the so called 'bench' that service industry organizations claim to have, are people they don't know what to do with. Neither can they deploy them, re-skill them or fire them.

[SnS_12]

Google Layoffs: Alphabet plans to fire 10,000 'poor performing' employees

Google is reportedly willing to let go of 6 per cent of its employees. This accounts for 10,000 people. Google will use a ranking system and the lowest-ranked employees are expected to be fired from the company

https://www.businesstoday.in/amp/tec...705-2022-11-22

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by SnS_12

Google Layoffs: Alphabet plans to fire 10,000 'poor performing' employees

This is floating around in Twitter; not sure of it's authenticity.



Now that Musk has shown a way, everyone has started questioning the number of employees needed to run a tech company.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

This is floating around in Twitter; not sure of it's authenticity.

The story was on Reuters last week, it is authentic.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/h...gh-2022-11-15/

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

Now that Musk has shown a way, everyone has started questioning the number of employees needed to run a tech company.

Actually, it is not a secret. IT companies routinely keep much higher head count, and pay them much higher, because they can afford it. They love having this buffer to handle any sudden attrition or increase in demand.

For IT companies with deep pockets, it is better to have 25% fat vs 5% fat when it comes to head count. However, shareholders don't like this.

[SnS_12]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

This is floating around in Twitter; not sure of it's authenticity.

Attachment 2382783

As Samurai said the letter is authentic. Also, Christopher Hohn would maybe be like Mr. Pichai consider the salaries paid out to Alphabet employees.

According to a US Securities and Exchange Commission report, the average salary for an Alphabet employee in 2021 was around $295,884. The salary exceeded what Microsoft paid its staff by over 70%. Alphabet paid its employees 153% more than what the 20 largest tech companies in the United States paid their employees.

https://www.livemint.com/news/world/...104973302.html

[warrioraks]

Labour ministry summons Amazon India on latest firings

Unless they have already sent similar notices to Twitter, Zomato and other companies that are laying off people, this is a good example of how the government is used by our desi business houses for their vested interests.

[Samurai]

An employee who has served for at least a year of continuous service cannot be retrenched unless served a notice three months in advance and prior permission from the appropriate government.

Whoa! Permission from the government?

What is this new law? As warrioraks pointed out, why doesn't this law apply to foreign funded startups like Byjus or Unacadamy?

[mohansrides]

Originally Posted by NiInJa

…Some examples...

Some really nice articulations sir. You have discussed examples that we have all seen and dealt with. For what it’s worth, we had one interview that was practically a shouting match. I almost choked on my lunch as I heard the noises all the way in our canteen.

Originally Posted by Newtown

…Companies with weak HR policies on employment termination due to below than expected performance, are the easiest targets…once they are deployed into an assignment/project, they will refuse to work citing that they don't possess the skills or that they have a different skill.

Well, I thought that I had heard all possible theories; but this angle is certainly new. I have to say that I have never encountered this situation. It is hard for me to believe that employees seek out orgs which allegedly have weak HR policies. Nor have I heard of a situation where an employee just refuses to work!! Has never happened in my 20 odd years of working with clients and running teams. Plenty of problem employees and managers; but never an outright refusal to work.

Granted that good and robust HR policies are always helpful. But in today’s environment, it is almost impossible to take an org for a ride. Deliberate attempts to undermine an org (for selfish gain) are typically crushed with cold brutality, as they should be.

Originally Posted by Newtown

… My evaluation is that 85% of the so called 'bench' that service industry organizations claim to have, are people they don't know what to do with. Neither can they deploy them, re-skill them or fire them.

This is highly presumptuous. Thinking that we in our individual capacities know more than big and profitable orgs do is a fundamental folly. Indian software service companies are profitable organisations that have thrived because of the value they deliver to clients. These are large orgs that are mostly managed by intelligent people who are well connected. The notion that they are all rubbing their collective temples wondering what to do with “useless” employees is highly misplaced.

As a concept, the ‘bench’ is a polarising topic. During lean times, it is the lowest hanging fruit for everyone to attack. But by and large, a good bench is one of the biggest strengths of service orgs. Companies that have learned to maintain a healthy bench are those that weather many storms as they are better positioned within the classic dilemma - get the work and then get the people? Or have the people ready when the work arrives? And obviously the orgs that have people ready will enjoy a huge advantage in sales cycles. Of course it is easier said than done as tight quarters will create constant pressures to run lean with little to no bench strength. But experienced folk will realise that the cost, in terms of both money and time, of hiring new and dependable people typically exceeds the costs of carrying a curated set of current employees till the tide turns.

I have seen big service orgs pick up very small work items purely to keep a bench. At best they may break even, at worst, they will lose less money. But in any case they would have the people ready when that big ticket job comes from a big logo client.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

..are women software employees more stable than male employees. ...

Sir… you asked this question of @NiInJa. I won’t speak for him. But I will give you my 0.02.

99.9% of the time, we have had excellent experiences with our women employees. I feel that women have an inherent temperamental advantage. Many aren’t easily rattled during trouble as they have huge staminas to keep an even keel. In fact, the more the number of items on a female employee’s plate, the better an employee she is. To be specific, the ones who are wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law turn out to be absolute model employees. They will take every role in their lives and see it through. They also won’t leave you in the lurch at critical times.

With difficult clients, I have found having senior women employees in the team to be a mitigating factor in lowering tensions all around. Even my clients have expressed regret many times when long term female employees move on as they are seen as anchors in the team. All in all, I see hiring women employees as an asset in the long term and I especially look for senior women employees who have big personal responsibilities. As the old saying goes - If you need something done, get ahold of the busy people; the other kind has no time.

Now for that one instance when it turned sour. TLDR, we had a bad employee. But the fact that she was a woman made the situation very hard.

We had a young lady employee who had superb analytical and communication skills. My PM pulled me aside and told me that he wanted me to evaluate her as he wanted to position her in a client facing role given her communication skills.

I spent no more than 5 minutes chatting with her. Then I told my PM, “galati mat kar; isko client ke saamne rakhega tho poora nayya duba degi (don’t make a mistake. If you put her in front of the client, she will sink your entire boat). In fact, if possible send her to someone else’s team. Don’t keep her in ours.” He was surprised as he thought we had hit a lottery in getting someone with such skills in our team. Thankfully he didn’t put her in front of the client. But we could not hand her over to another team. So we had to endure the unfortunate validation I got.

In her time with us, she caused big problems where there were none earlier. To be specific, she was constantly critical of everything. Bear in mind that this was an account running for a decade with no major issues. Client is making money. He is happy with everything we are doing and he is paying on time for 10 years straight. But of course all this went right over her head. Instead she focused on the minutiae of what the team didn’t do - like that piece of documentation that you didn’t keep or that email that you didn’t send to so and so, etc.

What she was doing was akin to criticising Virender Sehwag for having faulty technique while missing the fact that he had just scored a triple century to win us the test match. Total missing of the forest for the trees was happening!!

Being a woman employee her complaints about team administration carried extra weight and my poor PM had to go through the wringer to justify his positions to all levels of management. Finally said employee left us when she got a big job in Big Tech. That was one of those rare times when we have felt relieved with attrition. The management bandwidth that she required threw everything out of sync. We simply couldn’t afford it.

To be clear, her behaviour isn’t specific to women. But the fact she was a woman made resolutions tricky as we had to constantly walk a tightrope. Anything that was said would be taken about her being a woman and not about her being a problem employee with a less-than-positive team attitude. To be clear, if a male employee had created the problems she had created, my PM would have personally chucked him out of our doors by the collar and dusted his hands afterwards.

Those were tough months for me as well. I was a mute spectator as the matter played itself out internally. But as someone who manages client relationships, I was losing sleep as I tried to work out as how this internal matter could manifest externally. For sure, just one email from her to someone on the client side and we would have lost everything. If she had done that she would have lost her job of course. But in all likelihood, a hard built client relationship that we had fought valiantly to control and to keep (in the black) would have vanished overnight. That thought alone kept me up nights.