Like the rest of the planet you started off your career at the bottom of the food chain. Everyone around in the office knew you weren't expected to accomplish anything imprtant in the first few days or even months. You were paid to just exist and crib - which you did in plenty. You cribbed to other low life around you and complained that you were underpaid and overworked even while you took long coffee breaks and longer lunch breaks. You complained how unfair life was treating you because you were doing all the grunge work while your manager got all the attention.
It happens when you are a starting off your career at the bottom of the food chain. It again happens each time you change jobs. Heck, it happens when you get transferred to a new office/ branch of even the current employer. The newbies all have horror stories to share about how on day one they have been made to feel lost, angry and even humiliated in the office. If that happens to be the first day in a new organization, it leaves the employee wondering if it was indeed a smart decision to have left the previous employer in favor of the current monster. Having spent oodles of money wooing the hotshot talent from the competitor, we now leave them to stumble and fall till they find the roads in our neighborhood and learn how to find their way around. Sounds really convoluted you would say, but it happens everyday in most offices. Chances are that you have experienced it yourself.
How many of us are really good at hiring great people? OK, I can see many hands up in the air. Chances are that you are wrong - unless you suffer from depression. Twenty odd years back two grad students from Univ of Pennsylvania found out that depressed people are better judges of how much skill they have. Others carry a widely inflated opinion about their skills. 90% of managers rate themselves to be among the top 10% performers. How do I know this? Claudio's book says so. Why do you think people get hysterical during appraisal discussions unless they have allowed to wear their personal halo and wings.
In a market where demand for talent far outstrips supply, the organizations continuously face the task of keeping the talent from being snared away by other employers. Over the last few years as India became the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) capital of the world, a new breed of employees started to step into the office cubicle. They were the millennials.
You flip through the set, smiling at your own cleverness. The trick is to choose something that everyone can be trained on. Finance for Non Finance comes to mind. Everyone needs to do it - including some of them in the Finance department itself. Didn't they all go for it last year? Fuggedit. Going through spreadsheets can be painful. How about Marketing for Non-Marketing or Human Resources for Non Humans... naah... they don't even offer these much needed training programs.
Organizations have to make a choice. Should they just buy out managerial talent or grow their own. The short term solution is a no brainer - buy the talent. That usually means fishing around in organizations which have faced similar business challenges as you are. In hiring talent from another organization it works well if besides the work experience fit, there is a match between the values of the two organizations.
Your favorite team member just walked up to you and announced that she wants to quit. You feel a rush of anger creeping up your spine. Here is the person for whom you went out on a limb and got an extra bonus payout and not to forget the schmoozing time with the big cheese that you spent highlighting this team member's achievements. As they say in T-Group labs, "This is the time to get in touch with your feelings."
Hiring Managers have had this nagging doubt. Besides delaying the process or adding one more roadblock in hiring someone, why should someone from HR interview a potential employee?








