Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Why Campus Hiring Is Risky


Mr Pannvalan says -------

I criticize the campus recruitment undertaken in India – be it by MNCs or Indian Companies or Public Sector Banks – because of the following strong reasons.

1. From the beginning, there is lack of transparency in the whole process followed for campus recruitment.

2. The eligibility criteria and the final selection process are not properly intimated in advance, by giving wide publicity through reliable means/media.

3. The companies/institutions do not employ qualified and experienced professionals for conducting campus selection.

4. There is no consistent and established procedure adopted for successive batches of selection and recruitment. Each time, the tools and methodologies adopted undergo drastic changes, without prior notice to the candidates of the particular batch.

5. In addition to subject knowledge, aptitude, attitude and preferences must be examined by administering simple but comprehensive psychological tests to all the candidates uniformly, without any favour or discrimination.

6. The ‘Placement Officers’ in majority of the educational institutions act as brokers and agents of the recruiting companies or institutions, for whatever reasons. This is highly condemnable and it shall be ruled out at any cost.

7. There is a strong bias towards candidates from urban and metropolitan centres. This is highly incorrect and preposterous and it does great harm and injustice to candidates from rural background and from smaller towns.

8. Those who do not have access to any coaching or training institutes are the worst affected.

9. At the end of the process, many a time, it has been found that many sub-standard candidates have been selected on some unknown criteria, while real gems are left out. This leads to great demoralization of the really meritorious candidates.

10. Ultimately, I reject the hypothesis that a person’s true worth can be found out in verbal interaction that lasts less than an hour.

11. Several rounds of interviews by the 'same team of examiners' will not yield the best results (either to the recruiting company or to the candidates)

From my own observations made at some of these events, I wish to share these points.

1. Over-emphasis is laid on ‘problem solving ability’ at the time of selection.

2. Fluency in English (spoken form) is often mistaken to be proficiency in English.

3. A high score in academic pursuits does not guarantee that one will be equally successful in real life situations too.

4. Overall performance of a candidate – both inside and outside their college/university – is not considered for arriving at the final score of each student.

5. Many candidates selected and recruited are very weak in Language and Communication Skills, Public Relations Skills, Emotional Stability and Teamspirit. 

6. These candidates have been found too selfish to describe in words.

7. They do not have any kind of loyalty to the organization that has recruited them. At the earliest available opportunity, they ditch it and jump to any rival organization in the same or related field. They have no qualms in doing this.

1 comment:

Danendra Jain said...

It is still not clear what the learned High Court has said.If the banks have issued call letter or selected anyone for any post, banks are supposed to honour its decision.I have however forwarded your copy of high court verdict to office of 'Times of India which published the news saying that Mumbai High court held campus hiring as illegal and unconstitutional.

You are right in saying that privat ebanks are rising through campus hiring only.You have further pointed out that when campus hiring has resulted in growth of private banks, why state run banks will not benefit from it?

I would like to say here that management of private banks as also employees of these banks works and have to work for the growth of and for the gain in favour of promoters of the bank. They are loyal to their organisation in 90 percent of the cases.

On the contrary leaders of public sector banks are only 10 to 20 percent a honest and devoted for their organisation. Officials of these government banks will go to campus where sons and daughters of their relatives and their Godfathers are admitted.They will pick a few talented candidate to show the common men , but they will pick some of their relatives, they will sell some post taking some money, they will oblige some seniors to get early promotions and choice posting etc.

This is why there is always possibility of misuse of power of picking unemployed youth from campus. Hence court has rightly directed to carry out recruitment in more transparent manner giving all unemployed youth equal opportunity. Rampant corruption in PSBs is one of the key reasons why public sector banks are not growing as private banks have grown in a span of only two decades.

It will not be an exaggeration say here that majority of top ranked officials in government banks have bad history and they perpetuate corrupt culture only. This is why bad assets is increasing year after year in public sector banks whereas in private banks it is coming down.