Hiring is a tricky business. Even the renowned business brands, with big dollars stocked up as human resource procurement budget, struggle hard to hire the suitable talent; for startups the challenge is amplified by leaps. Since the traditional hiring techniques are no longer working to help procure the best resources, the startup world is always on the lookout for innovative ideas to up the hiring game. One such latest fad is that of speed hiring. The likes of Snapdeal, Ola Cabs, Food Panda and Quickr have reportedly benefitted from speed hiring. Which brings us to the important question:
What Exactly is Speed Hiring?
Speed hiring is a 12-minutes interview process during which the candidates are tested for their cognitive abilities. The Cognitive Ability Speed Test (CAST), developed by assessment platform CoCubes Technologies, carries 50 objective-type questions on English grammar, ratios, percentages and inductive reasoning to assess the cognitive abilities of candidates. The candidates who pass the test are given the offer on the spot. The idea is to save precious man-hours that otherwise would have gone wasted conducting several rounds of interviews.
Why Is Speed Hiring Working for few?
The primary reason why some businesses are benefitting from the process is because it saves a considerable amount of time and effort of both the employer and the prospective employee. The entire hiring cycle – from the circulation of CV to the release of offer letter- can be cut short from as many as 5 days (on an average) to just a few hours. And that becomes one of the crucial factors for any startup that has competition in the market. Your potential hire can be lured away anytime between those 5 days that you are busy interviewing, sorting and contemplating on profiles.
Startups are generally looking to save money, therefore, each resource requirement in a startup arise only when it’s absolutely needed and urgent. In such a scenario, waiting for significant positions to be filled can obstruct and pause a crucial chain of workflow. Also, startups and the most new age businesses are expected to move things around at a fast pace by the investors which calls for a recruitment process that is also quick along with being efficient.
Why Is It Still Not the Most Popular Hiring Trend?
One of the major challenges that come with hiring a candidate in 12 minutes is not only that you might end up hiring the wrong candidate but it is that you may easily believe that you have. Most organisations that make speed hiring a practice do it with the intent of testing a candidate for a few days before deciding whether to retain or fire him. One can argue that the traditional ways of hiring have a counterpart method in the form of probation period. Why the former is different from the latter is that an employee on whose hiring a company has invested significant amount of time has more chances of being given an opportunity to improve his performance when it becomes a bone of contentment between the two. An organisation might not feel inclined to give a second chance to an employee who has come on-board instantly as the loss of man-hours is reduced magnificently in this case.
Why this practice is harmful for startups is because even an employee with the right talent might need some time before a startup begins benefitting from him directly. A hasty decision to fire such an employee may cost heavily as talent is gold when it comes to the hiring matrix of a startup.
The Verdict
Like most things in life, speed hiring might work very well for a few startups and it might not work at all for others. The key is to find a balance between the traditional methods of hiring and speed hiring so that you can validate which techniques are working for you the best with the help of primary data collected as a result of your own initiatives.
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