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With only a quarter of the talent pool
employable, evaluating and identifying the right candidate
presents a major challenge.
Waiting to play
Once hired these new recruits are 'benched' for a certain
period of time and are not given any project to work
on. However, organisations know that they will be given
some kind of work/project for all the recruits at some
point in the next several months. Many firms involved
in the hiring spree are the cash rich companies who
can afford to pay these employees to just sit on the
bench for some months.
Organisations have their own way of managing the benched
employees. Once they are recruited, they are put on
training of new skills or are placed in various in-house
projects. In many of the big IT firms, the percentage
of on-bench employees is nearly half of the total head
count, if not more.
"Experts say that certain organisations do not believe
in the term 'bench', rather they call them the 'under
deployed talent' which comes to about 20 per cent of
their total head count. It include people working on
in -house projects, undergoing training, people earmarked
for future project, talent undergoing trainings for
new skill and back up for the projects.
As per many industrial sources, there is no need for
the employee on bench to be skeptical about their job
as there is no discrimination in IT firms. They get
equal payment and other benefits at par with their counterparts.
Companies however do not discriminate between anyone
in the organisation in terms of salary or any other
benefit. Every employee is given equal opportunities
to nurture their career.
Various opportunities to choose a career of their choice
are offered on 'internal job opportunities' forum across
the organisation. Identifying the skill matrix of the
internal talent pool and putting to good use during
business exigency optimizes the manpower utilization
at any given point. Better resources and manpower redeployment
management would be one of the key to the success of
future workforce planning.
Some overseas projects force companies to recruit many
people at a short notice. Such brisk hiring many mostly
results in the employment of those who are not adequately
qualified or entry of candidates with fake CVs, etc.
In order to avoid such repercussions, companies focus
on the advance ramping up of the talent pool. Organisations
have realized that it is best to be equipped with a
buffer or a pipeline of suitable candidates to avoid
any last minutes surprise.
Organisation which has gone on rampant panic hiring
spree to manage their short-term business needs without
considering the flip side of lay-offs has lead to negativity
of the market credibility. If a company is more efficient,
it can avoid such unpleasantries images tarnishing for
themselves.
To get the right person for the job is a big challenge
that all the companies face as recruitment is a tedious
Process. With only a quarter of the talent pool employable,
evaluating and identifying the right candidate presents
a major challenge.>
Organisations have realized that it
is best to be equipped with a buffer or a pipeline of
suitable candidates to avoid any surprises
Owing to the scale, interviews lose validity as a reliable
selection tool and scientifically designed assessments
have become the backbone of selection processes. With
the talent pools hugely dispersed, reaching out to multi-
location within a limited time frame severely tests
the bandwidth of recruitment teams while challenging
the standardisation of processes in multi-location recruitment
drive. Given the facts, it is impossible for firms to
avoid people on bench.
Only way out is hiring more people, as no firm wants
to be pushed off the market due to lack of enough manpower
to handle a new project.
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ON
THE BENCH