Cos look to build on employee strengths now
What are your weaknesses? The most frequently asked job interview question might soon lose its relevance with companies and HR consultants focusing on hiring people for their strengths.
By Sreekala G, TNN |
HYDERABAD: What are your weaknesses? The most frequently asked job interview question might soon lose its relevance with companies and HR consultants focusing on hiring people for their strengths. Besides saving candidates from the trouble of parading strength into weakness or camouflaging a weakness into strength, recruiters believe that the new paradigm shift will help retain talent pool in attrition-ridden industries like IT.
“The new recruitment mantra is to select people for talent and focus on strengths rather than wasting time on patching weaknesses. Globally, companies like StanChart and Stryker, a leading medical device firm, have already adopted this hiring practice. Slowly, it is catching up in India too,” said Prashant Srivastava, managing partner, Gallup India.
Gallup is currently developing a customised recruitment model for Bangalore-based IT behemoth using its new strength analysis tools. “An FMCG major in India has already been using our new tools to recruit executives. This model can offer great advantages to IT industry as recruiters will be able to select the right candidate to the right positions. Attrition rate is mostly driven by career dissatisfaction. Job-hopping can be prevented if a company could assign suitable job functions to its employees based on their talents and strengths,” he explained.
According to him, the new model is different from the traditional psychometric analysis used by many companies to gauge attitude and leadership qualities of employees. “Though implementation cost of the new model is about 5% more than the traditional tools, it can increase efficiency levels considerably. One of our case studies suggests that a company is able to improve a single person’s output by $1m with the help of these tools,” he added.
The tool developed by Gallup is able to analyse mainly five talents — focus, strategy, relationship management, analytical skills and responsibilities. “We don’t gauge a person’s weakness. It is a futile effort to work on his deficiencies to increase output. If used properly, strengths could bridge gaps in a person’s competency skills,” he said.
Though not many companies have employed the new tools developed by Gallup, TCS has been using similar methods to recruit people at the middle and senior management levels. “We don’t have to analyse a person’s strengths at the entry-level because the work profile does not demand that. As middle and senior mangers are involved in strategic decision-making process, we need to gauge their strengths,” said S Padmanabhan, executive vice-president (global human resources), TCS.
According to him, attributes cannot be trained. “One can impart skills and try inculcate right attitudes. But if the person does not have any complementary strengths, all training efforts will go in vain,” he said.
“The new recruitment mantra is to select people for talent and focus on strengths rather than wasting time on patching weaknesses. Globally, companies like StanChart and Stryker, a leading medical device firm, have already adopted this hiring practice. Slowly, it is catching up in India too,” said Prashant Srivastava, managing partner, Gallup India.
Gallup is currently developing a customised recruitment model for Bangalore-based IT behemoth using its new strength analysis tools. “An FMCG major in India has already been using our new tools to recruit executives. This model can offer great advantages to IT industry as recruiters will be able to select the right candidate to the right positions. Attrition rate is mostly driven by career dissatisfaction. Job-hopping can be prevented if a company could assign suitable job functions to its employees based on their talents and strengths,” he explained.
According to him, the new model is different from the traditional psychometric analysis used by many companies to gauge attitude and leadership qualities of employees. “Though implementation cost of the new model is about 5% more than the traditional tools, it can increase efficiency levels considerably. One of our case studies suggests that a company is able to improve a single person’s output by $1m with the help of these tools,” he added.
The tool developed by Gallup is able to analyse mainly five talents — focus, strategy, relationship management, analytical skills and responsibilities. “We don’t gauge a person’s weakness. It is a futile effort to work on his deficiencies to increase output. If used properly, strengths could bridge gaps in a person’s competency skills,” he said.
Though not many companies have employed the new tools developed by Gallup, TCS has been using similar methods to recruit people at the middle and senior management levels. “We don’t have to analyse a person’s strengths at the entry-level because the work profile does not demand that. As middle and senior mangers are involved in strategic decision-making process, we need to gauge their strengths,” said S Padmanabhan, executive vice-president (global human resources), TCS.
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According to him, attributes cannot be trained. “One can impart skills and try inculcate right attitudes. But if the person does not have any complementary strengths, all training efforts will go in vain,” he said.
Parvathy Kirishnan, chief executive of Cucumber Consultants, which handles HR needs of IT & ITES, manufacturing and engineering segments, said it was necessary to understand a person’s strengths for all kinds of recruitment. “We define strengths in terms of soft skills, relationship management and leadership abilities. We don’t emphasise on weakness as our focus is to capitalise on strengths,” she said.
According to her, strengths will be the differentiating factor in selecting a prospective employee from a group of people with same qualification.
However, all companies are not ready to agree with the new concept. Dell for example believes that companies should use training methods to improve upon the weaknesses of its employees. “We conduct in-house development programmes, where the focus will be on increasing employee efficiency by working on their weaknesses. While hiring people, along with technical skills, we analyse leadership qualities, attitude and soft skills based on their job profile. What we look for in an employee is the right attitude and if the person has it, he/she will be able to overcome weaknesses,” said Jaideep A Pradhan, site director, Dell International Services.
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