***Hi Rodinhoods, below is a reblog of my last post on my startup’s blog. Would love to hear your feedback, since I’m sure everyone handles the issue of hiring differently!***
Over the next couple of months, we’ll be focusing on expanding our team with people who can help us connect with current users and bring on brand spankin’ new ones, and continue to build our product. Right now, we’re looking for a PHP + chai lover, drop us a note if you’re interested (or know someone who is!)
This is the third time we’re going through this process, so we thought we’d share our learnings from previous experiences. We take team building very seriously at DFT… it’s been ingrained into Dhruv [FBPay cofounder] and I for over 5 years now, back from when we tried to build a team to lift a giant plaster dome onto a Taj Mahal we built in college!
1. SEEK OUT [good] APPLICANTS
Friends and family are always step one. A referral candidate is not only pre-vetted by a trusted source but more likely to share the job posting with friends. After we garnered a couple strong applications it was off to the online races and oh man, SO many platforms to manage! Here is where we posted and our results:
- www.Naukri.com
lots of applicants but very low quality of applications, will not be using them again - www.LetsIntern.com
few interesting applicants but pretty clunky to manage, will post anytime were looking for interns but will stay away for any part time or full time hires. even for interns we have found better results by just contacting college groups directly - www.Monster.com
better than naukri but not by far, we didn’t end up interviewing anyone who applied from either platform - www.HasGeek.com
the absolute best for tech hires however we kept getting tech resumes for non tech roles! But it never hurts to have great dev applicants in our back pocket - www.Shine.in
better than monster and naukri and ended up interviewing the highest # of people from Shine, will use again although their interface is quite possible designed by the same folks as irctc - www.LinkedIn.com
eh kind of have to do to for credibility sake although we weren’t active on it - Facebook and Yahoo groups
REALLY productive, best candidates
It’s clear that there is no end-all hiring site or service in India yet so referrals are still the strongest form of finding great candidates. Hence why we think the FB and Yahoo advertising was so successful as the connection to candidates is far more transparent – in both directions.
2. FIND WHO FITS
“Weeding Out” – Pic by ColinBroug / sxc.hu
When we were looking for our communications lead (Sabaa), received about 50 odd applicants from all of the platforms above and weeded that down to 30 via the following process:
- 10% were knocked out right away because they were applying to a communications role post asking to be a coder or accountant or something (lol…yea seriously, at least we have some resumes in our back pocket for dev team expansion)
- Another 30% removed after we started contacting and scheduling interviews over 2 weeks (btw use www.slottr.com for scheduling… this was clutch)
We followed a slightly different process while looking for our front end dev lead (Siddhant)last year. We received over 400 applications on Naukri. All we had to do was send a simple test (see it here: https://bit.ly/1dO3L4C made with www.balsamiq.com) to easily get 4 qualified candidates! (they were the only ones who responded) However, that alone doesn’t always work. When I worked at Deloitte Consulting in the US we often hired development resources from India. Applicants regularly cheated on tests by having more skilled programmers take them. When we started doing Skype interviews with live tests, candidates had experts in the room feeding them answers!
3. INTERVIEWS!
“So Lonely” – Pic by pmdash / sxc.hu
This is where the real hungama came in and the major differences between hiring in the US vs India was seen front and center.
- About 80% of applicants who scheduled an interview didn’t show up. Baffling – why submit a resume, answer some screening questions, schedule a time, confirm the time, and then not show up? Not even call???
- Only 4 applicants showed up on time (13%), 2 showed up early. After working in India for a year now and working with India based teams for 3 years I completely get IST but this is ridiculous for job interviews
- A lot of applicants didn’t do any research about the company, product or the position – which meant a lot of time spent explaining who we were and what we were doing instead of us getting to really know the applicant
- Everyone said they wanted to work at a startup, but didn’t really want to work at a startup. After we told them about the ownership, learning and hours it would entail, we never heard back from them again
- Finally, we barely got any questions! This is the first rule of interviewing we learned, show interest and intelligence by asking interesting and intelligent questions about the business, interviewer, product, weather…seriously ANYTHING other than staying silent
We were left wondering why we had such a miserable turnout. After some discussion with our team and other founders we pinpointed a couple reasons:
- Our Address! https://mapjam.com/fbpay
Our office is in Delhi Blue Apartments. People were immediately thrown off that the office might be in a residential complex and thus didn’t show up. Found this funny because at least we were a startup fortunate enough to have an office… - Lack of Interviewing Experience
Many freshers have never been through an interview or had interview/job hunting training. At CMU Dhruv and I were prepped nonstop by either our college’s career center, business classes, or the company websites where we were applying - Already have a job
With so many interviews scheduled many of these candidates might have already taken an offer elsewhere - Extra Effort from our End
We didn’t call every customer the day before and an hour before the interview to confirm they will be there – will definitely do that next time
Still none of these really justified to me why people didn’t call or email or text or send an owl that they weren’t coming! They burnt a bridge and for what exactly I still don’t really know.
—
We did get to meet a lot of interesting people (thank you for taking out the time to meet with us), refine our pitch (harder than pitching to investors, for sure) and realize that we need to publish a lot more content about ourselves ASAP. Hence this blog becoming a weekly endeavor and our FB page getting some color. The final decision was still tough but we made the hire and are happy but all in all it still was a lengthy process with lots of time wasted.
As we look towards a growth filled 2014 we know hiring will be a key aspect to fuel that engine, and so learning and iterating on this process is just as important if not moreso that lean development of the product. It’s a struggle to find the best but in the end it is kind of fun and to tell you the truth we’re looking forward to it.
We hope this gives you ideas on how to find the right talent for your team, and post in the comments if you have ideas/ thoughts on how we can do this better!
asha chaudhry
rohit,
i love the way you’ve shared your learnings here – this will really help others.
#4 is a must in hindustan. you will be surprised how one is forced to follow up with others or re-confirm a call/meet/interview. i feel the younger generation is a tad bit too casual (i know you fall in the younger gen – but you are exceptionally awesome!!)
Saraswathi Pulluru
Good Read Rohit, I can personally relate to candidates not doing enough research..
Karthikeyan
Thanks for sharing! But If you make the compensation part a highlight, I think the turn out ratio would be higher. I do know as a startup that would be a problem many a times but still..
Rohit Kabra
Haha this is the catch-22 of startups I guess. coming from the US unless your in silicon valley there really is no expectation of a high salary so if your applying to a startup thats certainly not a top 5 concern. We mentioned competitive salaries but are being more direct about the offerings. However given the range of experience that apply its tough to pinpoint. or maybe we should just look for a very specific level and offer compensation for that, what do you think?
Rohit Kabra
It was really surprising! Not just for the lack of interview preparation…but wouldn’t you want to know where you will potentially work? Or is a job is a job is another job
Rohit Kabra
Thanks asha, always super sweet. We are definitely going to go after the candidates we see as even slightly promising with a fervor like none other this time 😛
Smit Ganatra
“Still none of these really justified to me why people didn’t call or email or text or send an owl that they weren’t coming! “
I agree with you,scheduling an interview and not showing up is unjustified. But you may want to put yourself in their shoes and think about it;They don’t feel being courteous is really that important in the job market. How often do you see a company informing candidates who have been rejected after the interview? Pretty rare right? So naturally, why would recruiters in general expect a different attitude from the candidates?
Anamika Joshi
Hey Rohit
I realized it’s no different for anybody out there. After days and hours of headbanging on various sites, you end up with handful of applicants out of which few appear for the interview, out of that only few join or none joins. And then it’s the same cycle.
There was a time when I was really worried and surprised about this lack of commitment showed by applicants. But today the surprise factors for me have changed. I get really surprised when someone comes ON TIME for an interview, when they actually CALL YOU and tell and they WOULD JOIN OR NOT, and when THEY DO JOIN on the committed day with no excuse of they being lying with cough and cold or their fast friend being admitted to the hospital on the very morning of their joining.
The scene changed so fast in past couple of years that we perhaps find it difficult to adjust to the fact that today interview is being considered as just another day for many. They don’t dread being rejected which wasn’t the case for me. Rejection mattered a lot and it meant we are not competitive enough.
Yours was a good read and guess what I ended up with a sigh realizing it’s no different anywhere. Wishing you the best with your hiring. Have a great day!
Perzen Darukhanawalla
Rohit and Asha,
Agree with you both on #4 – am really amazed as to why someone wouldn’t show up for an interview but it seems to be a very common occurence. Really bizarre that a recruiter would need to follow up rather than the other way around!
Perzen Darukhanawalla
Hey Rohit,
A very well written article on a pain point most of us can identify with! Just an idea perhaps – why not schedule Skype interviews instead? I really that meeting a person face to face is important but it may help you all in saving time too. I work for Ennovent through a virtual setup and went through 4 rounds of interviews/tests – only the last interview was face to face and all the rest were through Skype. We’ve managed to grow our team from 10 to 20 in just over a year so the technique may be worth trying and also a time saver if they don’t show up?
Naveen Bachwani
Very useful… thanks for sharing!
Abhishek Kumar
We always keep saying that there is a dearth of Jobs in the market… This even went on to become one of the biggest rhetoric in the recent elections but when we went out in the market offering positions with challenging roles and competitive salary, all we got was nothing but a near 0 show.
So it forces me to think that is job only about the C level positions and 7 digit salary?? Is this what everyone is Hindustan considers as a job? Do other positions do not come under the gambit of credible jobs?
If that’s the case then Aache din Kabhi nahi Aayenge”…..