Dear Fellow Collegues,

Sometimes, I wonder whether the Recruitment at the Junior Level and at the Senior level is the same? NO..thats my answer.

Though, I am not an expert at recruitment and have been able to sit as a panel in recruitment in both senior level and junior level at a few instances only...I could feel the difference.

I have worked in domains other than Direct Recruitment, and have handled both Line HR and Consulting HR functions. My experience is, the employer (ie. Panel of Interviewers) tends to ask more questions about the WHAT has been the interviewee's experience so far and HOW did he manage the show. Here usually, the interviewee tells his/her major achievements/projects and how they managed. Whereas, to my surprise, at Senior Level, employers tend to ask only "WHAT" question and HOW has been missing as a question. If interviewee himself/herself describes that how did they manage, its fine, but somehow I have felt that the Interviewing Panel tends to take it granted that HOW thing automatically comes at Senior level and hence, only WHAT questions are relevant. However, this is very deceiving....isn't it? Many a times, HOW thing is as important as WHAT thing because, ultimately, it show the ability to manage things. Becasue the persons has many years of experience, HOW things is not important is the thing in the minds of the Interview panel. But its a risk. It can jeopardise the functioning of the organisation is a mistake is done during the Recruitment.

Perhaps the most evident reason for not asking HOW is the reluctance being the senior level position and the pre-occupied mind with the assumption that at Senior Level, HOW is already developed.

Regards,

Shawn

Dear Shawn & Colleagues,

As far as my experience goes, a senior level candidate is not asked the “How” question often a times, assuming the fact that he has been thru the core of the functions that the job requires & that’s the reason he is on the senior level. Hence, the management or in that case, the interviewer would not like to act foolish by asking the candidates about questions like “How did you manage this” and “How did you implement it”, coz that might also portray a negative impression on the interviewee’s mind as to the interviewing capabilities of the interviewer, also putting the organization’s human capital at stake.

The junior level candidates are asked these questions many a times, coz these are the people who might be actually using their skill and answering the “How” question, whereas the senior people might only be required to answer the “What” questions such as “What did you do to reduce attrition” and “What were your measures for employee development & retention”.

Consider this :

A Human Resource Manager may not be asked about how did he streamline the HR Policies but he may be asked as to what steps had he taken while developing HR Policies considering the development & welfare of the employees.

A Regional Manager may not be asked as to how did he achieve the sales and the collection targets of the region, but he might be asked as to what were the strategies that he adopted for his successful effort.

I hope this might have answered the core issue of an excellent topic raised by Shawn.

Hoping for more views from the CHRM'ites……

Regards,

CHRM

That was a wonderful point from chrm (what & how). Yes for Senior profiles, the emphasis on questions will be more on conceiving / forecasting and for Junior level the emphasis will be more on execution.

Regards,
Vishal

Hello Friends,

I agree with you.....that is also right.....I believe the type of questions will change from person to person...Let me share one incident....my friend is working with an IT firm and they selected the person for the post of the Sr.Engineer - Sys Analyst. After he has been placed, the person came to him and said that he had not passed B.Tech, but mentioned it in his resume....Actually he is a B.Sc.... after few months his attitude is bad and was disturbing other fellow team members.....

I believe....there should be certain methods to be followed while interviewing the person on his attitudinal, behavioural and Cognitive skills.....At the same time the interviewer should also have the right approach or else the interviwee may have bad impression / may not come with exact answers. Probably he may act smartly with the type of questions we pose....

I believe we should try to put him more on the stress level mainting eye contact, with few noddings and also probing more into his past experiences and the situtations handled in certain times and giving him some kind of situations that usually occur in our organisations.....so that we can understand their level of acting towards the probelems....

More views ??

Regards,

Chintan

Hello all,

People are usually stuck between " What & How" who are in the learning stage.

We have senior people here with their experienced answers..i would also like to present my opinion..am not very experienced, but according to my learnings till now....There is definitely a difference between interviewing Sr/Jr ppl..Basic Process remains the same,but one has to take care of the Basic things ,and handle it with a different approach.

For Example ,while interviewing a Junior member, the concern areas are always his/her education, potential, basic work and clarity of projects done and the "HOW " Concept.
While Interviewing some Sr. Guy, the concern area is his acquired skills and demonstrated ones, here is the concept of "WHAT". People management skill and his/her achievements are the important ones.

Please add to this since this is the basic concept i follow..and need to know more.

Regards,

Boman

Well, the career graph of any profession is divided into two – Execution (Clerical) and Managerial (Supervision). The higher you move, the more is Managerial (Supervision) and Less is execution.

I tell you the process of recruitment at higher level (GM and Above). The person will be invited to spend a day in our organization and he will be meeting all the division heads, will discuss his plan for the organization, how he/she can add values to the growth of the organization?

In recruiting the person at a middle level, he/she will face two-three rounds of interviews. We will discuss about his professional plans? What he is doing to realize those plans? Where he/she see himself/herself after five years etc.

In recruiting a person at entry level, it is an attitude of a person, his knowledge about the subject and communication skills, which are required.

I think…the process is clear.

Regards,

tesmian