Curious Case of Potential Hire

Having spent last few years in the talent industry, I have often heard the phrase ‘there is a talent deficit in the country’ through various people and in various places. In a country, with apparently 65% of the total population under the 35 years of age-bracket, talent deficit if true, is something that we all should be nervous about. But what if we had to reimagine this problem and find solutions in areas we have control on.

Traditional hiring processes are heavily based on the rejection process, full of various qualification criteria used to funnel out candidates to the last mile. Why has our minimum eligibility criteria become our maximum eligibility criteria that only a fraction of our population can clear.

To explain with a case-study, we recently saw a very good candidate getting rejected in the screening round even though the person had 10+ years of Dev Ops experience. Reason? He didn’t fit in the minimum educational criteria of 10+2+3 since he was 10 + 3 years of Diploma. Since, we had access to the decision makers in the organization, we could reason a case for this candidate on how this person would be a great fit for the organization considering his work experience perfectly met the requirement of the client. With special approvals, we got the candidate processed and he was one of the few individuals who ended up clearing all interviews and getting selected! To be honest, we come across many such stories in our day to day business.

This really makes me think, haven’t we reached a time where we need to relook at the way we are screening our candidates and make the process more inclusive for people who don’t come from traditional backgrounds? Can we truly claim to be inclusive organizations if our hiring processes are still so exclusionary? Can we reimagine hiring and look at candidates from a potential perspective rather than proven track records?