The recruitment cycle completes with onboarding, a process by which new recruits are brought on board and oriented with company objectives and culture. The term is also called socialization, orientation or new employee training program. The aim of onboarding process is to assimilate a new recruit in the organizational culture and make him/her a productive and contributing employee of the company. Usually orientation techniques include videos, printed training materials, seminars and lectures. More than just an orientation program, organization socialization is a contributing factor to job satisfaction, increased performance and higher employee retention.

Like other hiring processes onboarding is also a neglected aspect of recruitment cycle as most recruiters have wrong assumption that their job ends with a candidate joining the company. Onboarding is a crucial component of any recruiter’s responsibility as it is the final exercise that turns a certain hiring process into successful recruitment. Good onboarding makes both clients and candidates more confident about the recruiter.

A recruiter should attain expertise in onboarding techniques as they are the primary contact through the pre-hire process. However before orienting a new employee with the organizational structure and culture the HR professional or recruiter must himself/herself be aware of it. When working with a new client, contract recruiters should always ask for a copy of the training materials they will have for new hires to familiarize themselves with the company’s on-boarding process.

For a in-house HR professional onboarding practices include introducing and helping the new employee know his/her team, department and co-workers; offer one-on-one time during lunch or coffee is nice if possible; helping the new recruit understand and assimilate into the company culture, follow dress codes, know corporate rules and policies; ensuring the new hire understands the path and potential of their new career with the company; making sure that whatever promises and expectations were made to the new employee during the pre hire process are documented and fulfilled; assisting the new employee in getting started with their real job tasks by providing them with software training, understanding of systems and process, knowledge of protocols, password access etc.

It is also essential to get feedback from the new hire and the client and make sure that the employee is settling in and that the client was happy with the service. When doing check-ins, recruiters should also ask how the onboarding process went for both the employee and the client. Good feedback can help the recruiter improve their on-boarding services in the future.

After sorting resumes, screening candidates and selecting the best out of the bunch, the next most crucial task is ‘making and settling’ in with the best offer. 

Negotiation is a very tricky affair and must be dealt with tact. The results of negotiation either leave recruiter with a feeling of excitement or fear of losing a potential or prospective employee. Similarly a candidate can feel wanted or devalued. A successful negotiation is one that culminates in positivity with a hopeful recruiter and an excited candidate.

Discussion on negotiation must not only deal with salary or pay package but also include crucial aspects such as employee benefits, working conditions, job title and career prospects that are going to be offered to a potential employee.

Recruiters usually present offers considering the salary history of a candidate, yet sometimes they do counter unrealistic salary demands that are way beyond what is offered. Some job seekers seem to be contented at the time of the offer but can become disinterested on receiving more lucrative offers from other companies. Hence considering a candidates’ salary history and studying competition is a must before presenting one’s own offer.

Salary is always the deciding factor for most jobseekers while taking up a job. Hence it is entirely the recruiter’s responsibility to make the jobseeker look beyond salary on employee benefits such as paid time off, stock options, bonus pay, sales commissions, car and rental allowance, paid cell phone etc. Sophisticated jobseekers will prefer opting and negotiating the compensating factors.

Career prospects and growth opportunities offered by the job position are another important point to be presented to the candidates. Fascinating the candidate with interesting project or work atmosphere and telling them about the experience he/she is going to gain along with growth and   knowledge the job offers.

Some candidates are not concerned about what their job is called or the job title they would assume. However there are few others who consider their job title as a significant aspect of their career and their status in a new organization. Such candidates are likely to reject job offers that may be higher paying but lack an appealing job title.

Recruiters must also evaluate responses for questions such as how badly is a particular candidate required? Does he/she possess all the required skill sets and experience to perform the job? Is there dearth of required skills for performing the job? Economic conditions of the industry vertical the organization belongs to, current market scenario, organizational culture and pay philosophy and appraisal norms etc. These questions may leave recruiters with anxiety but are still crucial and must be considered before promising a package to the candidate. 

Constant stress, feeling of disillusionment, helplessness, wearing out could all mean a burnout. While undergoing burnout a person begins to feel that his problems are insurmountable, feelings of discontentment and disinterest begin to threaten job, relationships and health.

Burnout is also described as a state of emotional turmoil, mental exhaustion and physical fatigue caused due to long-drawn stress which in turn is caused to failure in meeting continuous demands. The expanding stress begins to make the person de-motivated, apathetic, cynical and resentful.

There are times when all most everybody has feelings of boredom, blockage or dismay. However these feelings lead to a burnout when everyday becomes a bad day, when there is constant exhaustion and a feeling that nothing one does will be appreciated by others.

There are many causes of burnout however most arise due to work related stress and responsibilities that don’t bring along rewards. Anyone can fall victim to burnout an employee who has not had a salary raise from years or a woman having too many household chores, managing young children and at the same time taking care of an aged parent. The other factors that cause a burnout are a person’s lifestyle and certain personality traits.

A workplace related burnout is caused due to reasons like inability to influence decisions that affect job schedule, assignments or workload, ambiguity of expectations from management, working under an oppressive or intimidating supervisor, differences of work ethics and values between employee and organization, monotonous nature of a job or lack of interest or skills that are required for the job,  absence of support, feelings of loneliness in personal life or seclusion in a work environment, lack of time for personal life, family and friends, improper and inadequate sleep, pessimistic view of self and the world or high achieving and even perfectionist tendencies.

The physiological symptoms of burnout are tiredness, low immunity, feelings of frequent sickness, headaches and muscle aches and change in appetite or sleep habits. The emotional symptoms of burnout are sense of failure and self-doubt, feeling helpless, trapped, and defeated, loss of motivation and negative outlook, withdrawing from responsibilities and staying aloof, procrastination, relying on certain foods, drugs, or alcohol to deal with situation, displacing anger on others, lack of control over one’s own work, skipping work

Recognition of the warning signs of impending burnout is the best way to prevent or deal with a burnout.  Relaxation is one of the best ways to deal with a burnout, starting with meditation in the morning along with simple stretches and exercises. A healthy diet, good sleeping habits and adequate rest and a break from technology by avoiding internet and mobile phones also help a long way in dealing with a burnout. 

Importantly the person must also define and mark boundaries for self and learn to say a NO to things that put oneself in a dicey situation and YES only those that one is comfortable in tackling. Harnessing creativity and exploring hobbies and other interests prove to be remedial. 

There are about one billion people on FaceBook, which was the approximate world population in early 1800. While the company managed to achieve merely in just about eight years of its existence.

Apart from the increasing number of online profiles there is also a huge increase in the speed of networking for both personal and professional reasons.

The prime professional factor for networking is to selling, marketing products, services, brands and jobs. Social media has been a great benefactor to the HR and hiring industry, certainly it has been to all others as well.

Our very own job searches have been benefitted tremendously by social media that have facilitated in expanding the horizons and looking out for more opportunities and helped in creating networks with in-house HR managers, recruiters, headhunting firms, employees of our dream companies who can offer referrals in getting us the dream job. 

However like everything else social media and online networking have a not so favourable side to itself.  Ever wondered how a social media profile can mar the potential opportunities that could have fallen in your kitty otherwise? Try googling and check out the online profiles that portray your personality and characteristics to people who don’t really know you in the real world. The nasty pictures that were uploaded on Twitpic/FaceBook or an offensive or lunatic message tweeted/posted recently, all remain as digital traces for others to build a perception about you as a person.

According to a popular worldwide survey one out of every five HR executives working in technology firm rejects a job applicant because of his/her social media profile. The survey also revealed that 40% of hiring managers check social media profiles of potential employees as part of their background checks and have rejected them based on the results they discovered.

So does that mean that you put an end to your virtual life or stop posting and remain as inactive as possible?  Not necessarily.. go back and recheck all the social media profiles, recent posts, tweets, interests, pictures, comments, remove wild pictures posted by self or tagged by friends, delete derogatory comments of friends or strangers posted on your wall/account etc. Set the privacy settings right for only those people or close friends and some family members who accept you the way you are irrespective of what you do and what you don’t. And for the rest of the world to see stop expressing yourself unreservedly and callously instead portray the better, employable and responsible side of you, showcase your expertise, good words received from teachers, seniors, experts and others, skills acquired, etc. These are the things that employers are really looking out for among their potential employees in their reference and background checks. 

On posting a job advertisement recruiters are eager about receiving ideal applications that are an absolute match to the job requirement. More often than not recruiters are spammed with several applications and none of them can be overlooked as there are chances that an ignored application turning out to be the most suitable one.   

Recruiters must have a clear idea of what they are really looking foin a desirable resume. If he/she has taken the effort of writing an appropriate job description he/she will surely hold the standards to seek corresponding applicant information. The requirements listed in a job description are the perfect means to find the most suitable application.

Generally a recruiter can do the matching based on the technical skills and educational qualifications (checking if the candidate has the necessary qualifications to perform the job tasks skillfully) then the experience levels (if the candidate has adequate years of experience in working or managing a certain vertical) and personal qualities (examples citing their success stories of crisis management or their creativity deployment for a certain project/event or the feats of team under his/her leadership as against other fellow teams).

On getting a hold of what is expected of a preferred resume, recruiter can do a swift yet systematic screening of the applications by marking candidates against the requirements they meet and score them accordingly. Although this is a little time consuming it also a critical aspect of the hiring cycle, the top scorers can be selected and the rest can be thrust aside.

Interested and determined candidates always rewrite their resumes in a manner that completely corresponds to the posted job description making the selection process easy and convenient to the recruiter. However the process can be worked backwards as well by first checking and removing incongruous resumes. The usual indicators of a potentially disqualifying resume are recurrent job changes not only in terms of changing companies but also changing various industry verticals as well as the roles managed by a candidate that do not show any hierarchical movement.

The next disqualifying agent is informational deficiency on work experience and the responsibilities undertaken in previous job roles. Finally check for the resumes that have grammatical and spell errors as it reflects their negligence and muddled characteristics of not taking out enough time to write an accurate and impressive resume.

Amidst all these practices of application selection and rejection an important prerequisite during recruitment is a non discriminatory and unbiased recruiter whose conduct is impartial and fair towards all the applicants from the beginning to the end of the hiring process. For more information on unbiased and privacy recruiting log on to www.azzist.com.   

Once upon a time in 2010 there was “one” job and “one” applicant, together they built and enabled a network of human resources that included employers, professionals, recruitment consultants, employees, patrons, vendors, etc.  A journey started three years ago catapulted http://www.azzist.com to become the niche social recruitment network for recruitment needs in the HR/Hiring industry. 

Beginning at zero to reaching a milestone of 20,000 Professionals and 1,000 Employers, Azzist.com has achieved a database with its conceded efforts and today it has been able to influence and provide a platform for people to accomplish their recruitment needs with the power of social networking.    

As a start-up, Azzist.com has maximized its horizons with minimum resources and financial aid. Uniting the two silos of employer industries and professional assemblies Azzist.com takes pride in announcing the 1 lakh mark in Alexa ranking as on Feb 5, 2013.

A free and private social recruiting network Azzist.com enables professionals and employers to register at free of cost in order to connect, follow, engage and recruit.  Professionals’ profiles have a restricted view and pertain only to their qualification, skill sets/experience and expertise. The privacy feature helps candidates to apply for their dream jobs and receive employer responses purely on the basis of their aptitude and abilities.

Employers can then view and match the applicant information to a given job requirement and seek communication with the applicant. Based on the applicant responses the employer can ensue with the recruitment process else look for another interested applicant.

Azzist is a revolutionary recruitment platform that facilitates direct interaction between employers and their prospective employees defying the conventional approach of majority jobsites of screening, selecting and recruiting by consuming tremendous amount of time and effort. Azzist is the first social recruiting network in India or perhaps the world that offers faster and flexible communication without comprising on privacy and efficiency.

Besides this the other unique feature of Azzist is the benefit of view an uploaded resume in its original format which is not offered by any other jobsite. The Azzist Team is also working on building intelligence for the search and recommendation process and is nearing completion. With this upgrade the Azzist platform is better equipped to offer recruiters and professionals an edge over all other recruiting platforms. 

A good start is most likely to reap the best results. Similarly while hiring a recruiter must make a good start with thorough job analysis. By accomplishing this critical task in successful manner the remaining processes involved in recruiting are also likely to be completed successfully.

Unfortunately job analysis is the most neglected aspect of recruiting and often performed in ad hoc and haphazard way. Each job demands its own set of qualifications, skills, experience, aptitude and attitude and analysis should be based on these criteria. Well executed job analysis provides a key to understand the prerequisites of a job position and helps in sourcing, selecting and hiring in right person possessing the required talent.

Hence the first and foremost duty of a responsible recruiter is to get an in depth understanding of a given job requirement and put down the same in a job description. While analyzing a job, a recruiter must evaluate questions like the need for the job requirement, level of the job position in an organizational hierarchy, role and responsibilities of the job, skills and qualifications required to accomplish the job, remuneration and rewards offered and process of assessment and appraisal.

However the fundamentals of any job requirement are the educational qualifications and professional certifications for the job; skills required both mandatory (those that are obligatory for a particular job and cannot be compromised upon) as well as additional (those that are not specifically essential for the job task but are an added benefit to perform better); total experience and relevant experience in a given technology or sales vertical or management; the job location and geographic preference of applicants; and what are the benefits of working for the company, the career prospects offered by the employer or why a professional must apply for the vacancy.

Hiring process is important for recruiters and an effective job analysis reduces a great deal of time, effort and money by searching for the right person based on the needs of the vacant position.