Offer Declined or Offer Accepted

The bitter-sweet experiences in the hiring process.

How does it feel to talk to a candidate for over a period of time , see the person get through the interview rounds of discussion , release an offer and finally see them decline it !

Terrible right?!

We as recruiters or organisation/org. builders as we call ourselves at Sahaj Software are constantly trying to understand an individual and understand their interests rather than approaching them as a “candidate” to fill up an open position.Some of the best and most transformative people we’ve hired didn’t necessarily bring in all the skills on day one. Most often, we don’t bring people onboard for who they are but for who they could be.The very reason why we consider it organisation building and not merely recruitment.

Of course, all of us who have been involved in the hiring process know that we absolutely cannot have a 100% success rate for all of the offers released but we definitely can do much better when we approach people with an interest to understand them instead of just seeing their resume as a match to our job description.

Here are some of the ways we,Org. Builders at Sahaj engage with people we wish to hire:

• Our Initial conversation can be with an active job seeker or a passive one. We believe it is important to reach out to people by talking to them, understanding their interests and discussing what we do. Getting people into our interview process need not be the only end result of our discussion. Sometimes, it so happens that we speak to a passive job seeker who in turn might refer us to someone who might be interested. So we are more than happy to discuss our work /our culture and about the challenging problems we solve even if that means that the candidate may not be ready now but with the hope that we can make an impact and connect with the person sometime in the future!
• When we engage in conversations, only much later in our discussion do we talk about the job description or role

— Primarily, we need to understand why the person is looking out for change

— What is he/she passionate about?

— What are the future plans in their career ?

— What is their willingness to learn new things ?- be it technology stack, domain knowledge or exploring different roles.

And we don’t get the answers to these questions in a single conversation. Sometimes it takes interaction over days, weeks or even months! But, we believe that it is necessary to invest that kind of time and interest to seek the most suitable people out there with whom we can work together.

• Do you sometimes as a recruiter feel that you do all the talking and the person on the other side seems to be only listening? Most often than not, these conversations don’t usually go any further. It is very important to understand whether the person is equally interested in the opportunity as we are with them.

— Do they know about us ?

— Have they read through our websites/blogs/articles?

— Do they have any questions to ask when we start talking about the opportunity?

These are points to be considered when we engage in discussions. If someone is making a decision to join us, we are sure that they would be curious to find out about the way we work.

• Being effective in our communication and providing prompt feedback all through the rounds of discussion is very important. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, we need to respect the time and effort somebody has put in to be involved in our process and the interest they have shown to be part of our team. This speaks a lot about the culture of a company and the way to communicate within our teams as well.

If we are looking at hiring as a pure numbers game wherein we have to meet targets of hiring “X” number of people within a stipulated time, then the likelihood of losing the humane method is high . We, at Sahaj, focus on the quality rather than the quantity when it comes to hiring. I was once asked by a job seeker why our headcount was “just 150” when we have been in the industry since 2014. The answer to that question is we are in no hurry to increase our headcount. For us, growth does not necessarily mean increasing our size in terms of numbers. It is the impact we can make with our clients/partners and the learning we get from solving these complex problems for them.

What is more important is that we shouldn’t have to face the consequences of a wrong hire. Sometimes, even if a person’s skill sets and technical expertise match our requirements, it is equally important that there is a cultural alignment.

At Sahaj, we take pride in our culture. Our culture of openness and trust is the glue that holds us together and helps us grow. We are a team of people who believe in taking ownership of what we do, where we are encouraged to voice our opinions, where we are not judged based on experience level or job role (as we don’t have any designations and work in a flat hierarchy within the organisation). Where we are constantly challenging ourselves to learn new things while working together as “Sahajeevis” of the Sahaj family and not “employees” of the organisation.

If you are reading this and curious to know more about us — Let’s chat and get the conversations started!

Please feel free to reach out to me through email — nitag@sahaj.ai