VIP VIRTUAL INTERVIEW PORTAL

Rahul / Saurabh / Pranav
cc: Rajeev
19/06/06

Virtual Interview Portal (VIP)
(– M.)

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TCS to hire 30,000 people globally (Economic Times clipping dated 18/06/06 attached)

For TCS to hire 30,000 professionals
(I suppose, mostly s/w developers)
within 12 months, would mean:

• Interviewing 300,000 (1:10 ratio)
  (i.e., 1,000/day × 300 days)
• Getting 3,000,000 email resumes (1:100)
• 100 interview experts
  (each interviewing 10 candidates/day)
• Huge physical infrastructure
  (cabins / tons of resume print-outs / interview experts / receptionists / transport / canteen / etc. etc.)

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This is mind-boggling. HR managers must be getting nervous breakdowns!

 

And, it would be the same story with —

• Infosys
• Wipro
• IBM
• Accenture
• Satyam
• HCL
• Google India (?)
• Oracle India (?) etc.

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Also, consider:

• Campus Interviews requiring several teams of interviewers from each recruiting company to be travelling to 40 leading campuses within a window of 4/6 weeks.
  So, everyday, on every campus, there could be 10 teams (from 10 different companies).
• Many (final year) students would appear for interviews with 4/6/10 companies during those 4/6 weeks!

A literal “merry-go-round”! — keeping “placement officers” very busy and happy.

• Onsite Interviews:
  These would require thousands (maybe lakhs) of candidates...

 

Travelling (from Kashmir to Kanyakumari) to Mumbai / Pune / Bangalore / Hyderabad etc., spending crores of rupees in tickets & millions of man-hours — total waste!

Of course, during the heydays of the H1B rush, American interviewers used to conduct “telephonic interviews” of Indian s/w professionals. They still do.
But the disadvantages are:

• Slang:
  Indian candidates fail to follow the US “slang” & end up giving no answers / wrong answers!
• Time:
  When Americans want to interview, it is sleeping time for us.
• Proxy:
  A “dumb” candidate (who has cleverly faked his email resume in the first place), gets substituted with a hired “expert” during telephonic interview.

 

• Verification:
  Certificates (Birth / Education / Salary etc.) cannot be verified over telephone.
• Record:
  Interview is generally not “taped” / recorded for subsequent reference (while preparing offer letter or during subsequent tenure with the employer company).

When a recruiter is conducting 10/15 telephonic interviews every day, it is not possible for him to remember even the major details / impressions about each candidate. Assessment becomes very difficult unless recorded on a piece of paper or in a computer immediately as soon as the interview gets over. You cannot rely on memory at the end of the day if you are interviewing 10 candidates in 6 hours!

In absence of record/transcripts, there is a possibility of
→ genuine errors
→ malpractice

 

If the same candidate “re-appears” for a telephonic interview after 3 months, the recruiter may not even remember having interviewed and rejected him earlier!
How can anybody remember each and every one of the last 1000 candidates interviewed?

There is a strong possibility that a candidate rejected by one recruiter gets “accepted” by another recruiter from the same company and for the same position!

All that a (clever!) candidate has to do is to keep emailing his resume again and again to the same company or even against different job ads, over a period of time.
Ultimately, the law of probability will work in his favour!
If he is lucky, the manager who interviewed him last time (and rejected him) may have himself resigned and left!
There are thousands of instances like this (in big companies), where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing!

For all the problems/shortcomings listed earlier, one solution (though not perfect) could be:
Creating on Global Recruiter, and on all of its partner websites, a

Virtual Interview Portal (VIP) – M

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Brief Concept Outline

• Candidates & corporates would need to register on GR or become members to be able to use VIP.
• On VIP platform, corporates would create interview schedules for 10/15/30 days in advance.
• “Schedule” will clearly indicate:
  a) Interviews-by-invitation only jobs
  b) Interview-by-virtual walk-in jobs

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For one type of jobs/interviews, jobseekers would need to “Apply Online.”

Corporate HR managers will select those worth interviewing (virtually).

…and click a link “Interview Call”, somewhere on the Profiles.
Then a pop-up message can be sent:

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Dear [Candidate Name],

Thank you for sending your Profile for the position of [_________].

Kindly appear for a VIRTUAL INTERVIEW by logging into IndiaRecruiter’s

Virtual Interview Portal (VIP) page

Date: []
Time: []
Est. Interview Duration: [______ Minutes]
Venue: VIP / [_________]

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After logging in, click on our Company Name link & enter Venue Details shown above.
When you do, one of our interviewers will conduct your ONLINE / VIRTUAL interview using IndiaRecruiter’s online Instant Messaging (IM) software.

During the interview, you may be asked to upload files containing documents / images of your:

• Birth Certificate
• Photo (Passport size)
• Education
• Salary slip (if applicable)
  etc. etc.

 

If, by any chance, the candidate logs in late (say 10+ minutes), then some appropriate message will direct him to contact the Interviewer / Administrator via mobile phone, to take a fresh appointment.

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(b) “Interview-by-Virtual Walk-In”

This type of interviews are primarily for fresh graduates and for positions like Trainees / Apprentices, etc.

There would be:

• s/w developers
• BPO staff
• Sales
• Retail
• etc. etc.

Mostly positions which do NOT require any prior experience.

These are virtual mirrorings of physical walk-in interviews, for which we see a lot of ads in newspapers and even on websites, which simply ask candidates to WALK-IN with their resumes on a mentioned Date / Time / Venue.

In these cases, a company’s job ads on IndiaRecruiter would read:

“Those interested may appear for a
VIRTUAL WALK-IN INTERVIEW
by logging into
VIRTUAL INTERVIEW PORTAL (VIP) page of IndiaRecruiter.”

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Process:

• Log into VIP using your User ID / Password
• In the dropdown, click on our Company Name
• In “Interview Request Box,” enter:
• Your PEN: [_________]
• Advt. Job Code: [_________] (in IndiaRecruiter ads)
• Our Administrator will display online the following instructions:
  “Thank you for showing up. You are allotted…”
• Date: [_________]
• Time: [_________]
• Interview Cabin No.: VIP / [_________]

 

  When you return for Virtual Interview (from IndiaRecruiter’s VIP page), as per above instructions, please re-enter:

• PEN: [_________]
• Job Code: [_________]
• Interview Cabin No.: [_________]

  Our interviewer will conduct your Virtual / Online Interview using IndiaRecruiter’s Instant Messaging (IM) software.

  During interview, you may be asked to upload files containing documents / images of your:

• Birth Certificate
• Photo
• Education
• Salary slip (if applicable)

 

Functional Specs for VIP Software

• All interviewing will be using IM Software (Google?) which is compatible with all IMs (e.g. AOL / MSN / ICQ, etc.).
• Only registered Corporate Subscribers can conduct Virtual Interviews.
  Obviously, all jobseekers wanting to use VIP will also need to be registered on IR/GR.
• Only the concerned corporate HR manager will have access to records/transcripts of any particular candidate interview.
  No other corporate can access this.
• Records/transcripts will be preserved for 2 years (from the date of interview) in some easily accessible fashion.
• By entering any candidate’s PEN into the Corporate’s Admin Tool, it should be possible for the concerned HR manager to see/view all previous interviews of this candidate within his company during the last 2 years — including all past “Assessment Sheets.”

 

• Each corporate subscriber should be able to design & use his own unique Assessment Sheet (right-hand bottom corner).
  Of course, he should be able to modify/alter this sheet anytime (ADMIN TOOL MASTER).
• Each corporate subscriber should be able to create/build up (over a period of time) his own/unique Question Bank (bottom left-hand corner).

He should be able to “categorize” this Question Bank database under any category/function/type/subject/skills/knowledge/industry/attitude/aptitude etc.

• Of course, we will “aggregate” such questions of hundreds of corporate subscribers (anonymized) and build up our own Knowledge Base.

 

• We will need some Admin Tool of our own so that we can determine exact usage of VIP by each & every corporate subscriber and “charge” him predetermined fees (Rs. 100 per candidate interviewed?).
• The corporate himself should be able to see his VIP charge debit from his own Admin Tool.
• The VIP page itself should be capable of handling 1,000 simultaneous interviews to begin with.
  Software should be so designed that we are able to ramp up to handle 10,000 simultaneous interview sessions by addition of servers/hardware.
• We should not design/develop IM itself — only its application layer.
• This VIP should be capable of morphing into a video interview in future — with a small window in interviewer’s display console.

(Signed)