We were looking for a lot of positions for which the talent was
limited in market. Thus, we had to capture the attention of all
the possible talent. Had we made it an overt recruitment page,
only those looking out for a job would visit the page. Thus, we
started pushing various fashion trends prevalent across industry,
new things happening in the organization and the fashion news
through that page and subsequently started adding the people
from the industry to our network. Only, once in a while we pushed
the recruitment opportunities through that page. Apart from this,
when you fill multiple openings at a time, you get access to a
lot of professionals from the industry who have come from various organizations and know a lot of people who are qualified to
do the jobs that you need talent for. Hence, a challenge for any
recruiter is to constantly converse and get references from such
people. Each conversion saves organisation the consultant fee
and earns you a brownie point in the eyes of your manager.
Apart from this one more thing which is true with for recruitment
in any setup and not only ones going through transition is that
it is a sensitive issue. You are handling a lot of information that if
leaked within office or otherwise can make the employees bunch
of gossip mongers out to make each other’s and consequently
your life, hell. Just absorb all the details such as compensation,
designation etc. and let things be. If you got someone with similar
qualifications on board at a premium price, make sure the contemporaries never meet and if they do, make sure you are not the
matchmaker.
As a final part of my project I had to design an induction program
for new employee orientation. Each day, number of new people
came into the office with no knowledge of how things work in
the system. Thus, to a normal corporate professional for whom
induction is a job done by good for nothing fellows, induction
just becomes the most important process that he feels the need
to undergo. He needs to understand what his department does,
who his customers are, who his suppliers are, what are the policies governing his stint in the organization, where he can get his
seat allocated from etc. etc. etc. and answer to all this is a welldesigned induction program which is exhaustive enough to give
one a working knowledge of everything but concise enough that
organization doesn’t suffer loss of productivity.
Hence, the key to designing such a process is to get a hang of
the systems in place, make a plan and project it as quickly as possible. Even if there are some errors, let them be. They would get
eliminated after a revision, but if the process is not there then you
would hear a lot of intercom bells ringing in the office, each being
answered by - ‘I am not the one who takes care of this’ at decibels
which, well, aren’t very pleasant to human ears.
Thus summing up the experience, a post-merger integration is
an excellent platform for any managerial function to learn and
grow, but it is more so for an HR professional because s/he gets to
set systems in place that decides the culture of the organization
which is the lifeline of any organization.
30 • Designfreebies Magazine • www.designfreebies.org
B