PROJECT FORECOURT CATALOGUE

Raju – SriRam – Nirmit

Kartavya – Athir – Sanjeev

06-10-03

Project ForeCourt

The important elements of this project are:

➤ Mass Recruitment of 700–900 persons

 – Never done by us before / not by anyone else.

➤ Very Tight Time-Frame (zero date)

 – Just 10 / 12 weeks from green signal

  (i.e., receipt of commercially clear Purchase Order accompanied by retainer).

➤ Scope of Work

 – Drafting of Advertisements

 – Receiving & rating 2 lakh applications

 – Tele-interviewing of 40,000 candidates

➤ Resource – Mobilization

 – space / H/W / S/W / Tele-lines & Instruments

 – 11 raters

 – 22 Tele-Interviewers

 – 8 / 10 Help-Desk Operators (not seated)

 – 10 / 15 Online / DB Operators

 – 4 / 5 Telephone Operators

 – Recruitment Platform

  etc.

Quite possibly, RPL will give us no more than max. of 4 weeks (from zero date) to mobilize our resources.
Any over-run here will eat into overall project time. There is every possibility that RPL may attach a PENALTY CLAUSE / RISK-PURCHASE CLAUSE / LIQUIDATED DAMAGES CLAUSE for time overrun.

For us, resource-mobilization means finding / selecting / appointing 60 persons & putting them into a large enough / furnished office — all within 3 weeks!
This is going to be tough.

One possible solution could be:

Group A

→ 11 raters +

→ 22 Interviewers

These people shall be asked to work from their homes.

At home, each will be given a PC + internet connection (phone line).

Raters will get one phone connection

– to log into Recruitment system & carry out their rating (A / B / C / R) online.

Interviewers will get two phone connections.

 

➤ One for logging into Recruitgum online and making “Interview Evaluation” entries on resumes.

➤ Second for dialling up the earlier shortlisted candidates (as per daily schedule/program available online on Recruitgum).

This means we do not need Tele-operators. Interviewers to do their own dialling. Each phone number dialled & duration of phone-call will be recorded by phone-service provider (Reliance Infocom?).

We can take 2 wireless landline/mobile phones of Reliance Infocom for each interviewer.
These phones can connect to Internet also.

(Nimit has got one for his residence.)

Thus, log will know that a particular candidate did actually get called-up and did get interviewed & duly followed-up.

So interviewer (because he is operating from his home) cannot simply fill up Interview Evaluation Sheet without even phoning the candidate concerned.

We can even consider asking the candidates to send an email saying he was interviewed by so-and-so, on such-and-such date.

 

What are the advantages of getting raters & interviewers to operate from their own residences?

➤ No limit on the number of persons that can be pressed into this service. Everybody has a home (most likely with a PC / a phone-line / a study-room / a wife to serve tea / an AC if it gets warm etc. 😄).

➤ The raters & experts could be in any city (as long as they can log in).

➤ We don’t have to hire/rent an office space, so we save this mobilization time & cost.

➤ We don’t need tele-operators to dial the candidates. Interviewers will dial themselves.

➤ Even though raters & interviewers are spread out all over, our central supervisor can centrally monitor their minute-to-minute performance directly from Recruitgum console.

➤ Interviewers can pace their interviews on their own, taking more or less time depending upon the candidate.

 

➤ We need not indicate to the candidates precise date & time at which to remain present near his phone instrument.

Now we can just tell the candidates only the “date” on which he should keep himself free.

Although the interviewer will see, on his “Interviewer’s Console,” the day’s interview schedule — and will generally follow the sequence in which the candidate names appear — he can always skip one & go to the next if he finds the first candidate busy or if the candidate is in the toilet! He can always dial again a little later or leave a message.

By only giving the “date”, we can have some interviewers start as early as 8 a.m. & go on till 10 p.m.! They don’t waste 3 hours on the road.

And they will be free to take their tea-break / lunch-break at their personal convenience (and their own cost).

There’s no need to control / monitor that they are —

➤ available in our office, or

➤ using their time most productively.

And, we can pay them by “No. of interviews” rather than by “hours put-in”.

This will be a powerful incentive for recruiters to earn more by working longer!

 

Of course, to ensure that in a mad rush to earn more money, quality must not suffer, we will stipulate:

➤ Base load (No. of daily interviews)

➤ Maximum permissible daily interviews

➤ Minimum No. of minutes/interview, etc.

In our contract/agreement with the interviewers, we will also stress that whether they will get from us repeat assignments or not will depend upon —

➤ not only their quantitative output

➤ but their qualitative output as well.

We will check their quality of interviewing/judgment by plotting the percentage of candidates shortlisted by him who finally got selected (appointed) by RPL.

Those with a higher % age will get a higher reward.

We can fix a Quality Bonus based on this % age.

Same logic will apply to Raters as well.

 

Of course, as far as raters are concerned, I do not envisage any difficulty for them to work from their homes.

When each morning as they log-in, they will find a list of resumes to be rated & start their work and continue as long as they like (with or without breaks).

But here again, we must specify in their contract:

• Base load/day?

• Max load/day?

• etc.

and same type of quality-control stipulations.

➤ Group B

→ 8 / 10 Help Desk Operators

→ 10 / 15 D/B Operators

Although theoretically these persons can also operate from home & get paid on a per-piece basis, I feel in their case, the best solution would be to hire so many seats in an existing Call Centre, because these people will require joint training right at the beginning. By working next to each other, they will also learn from each other.

In such a Call Centre, in addition, on top of that, a supervisor should be available to guide them.

 

We should negotiate/contract with the Call Centre concerned for availability of these persons from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. These timings should be boldly printed in job-advt of RPL so that candidates do not call-up at odd hours.

One thing is quite obvious.

If the entire exercise is about “remake” of the Employer-Brand of Reliance, then RPL’s name has to appear in bold in the job-adverts released all over the country.

If not for benefit of themselves, why should RPL spend lakhs of rupees to provide a “WOW” experience to candidates?
After all, why do we / RPL want to give to the 2 lakh jobseekers this WOW experience?

(For whom the bell tolls?)

Despite this, if RPL has their own internal compelling reasons not to put their name in the job-advert, then at least let us ensure that our 3P & Recruitgum names do appear — in moderate independent size.

If our name is on this historical job-advert, it will form part of all our future proposals for mass recruitments to national / multinational companies coming into India in a big way in RETAILING.