How to recruit the right candidates to meet the job requirements, fit the corporate culture, and commit to the development of the company is always the top concern of businesses. With many years of experiences in the human resource recruitment at multinational corporations, Nguyen Ngoc Anh Tuan, Deputy General Director in charge of Human Resource Development of the International Consumption Products Company (ICP), talked about the appropriate recruitment criteria on the sidelines of the nationwide survey on “Talent recruitment trend – Job fit or culture fit”, organised jointly by the Ho Chi Minh City Branch of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI-HCM) and Le & Associates (L&A), a human resource solutions company . Giang Tu reports.
Known as a person who is directly responsible for the human resource recruitment and development, what trends of recruitment are Vietnamese companies focusing on?
Due to the development needs, the company always needs to make gradual approaches to the advanced technology and management models based on the general development trend of the world. The demands for manpower with high capacity and qualifications corresponding to the job positions become imperative. Due to the nature of the business model as well as each development phase, each company adopts different human resource solutions. The low-level recruitment and training programmes are applicable for low-level jobs that the companies are able to and available to provide training and recruitment programmes. The middle level recruitment is adopted by the companies of whom the candidates have equivalent experiences for some competitive segments of low or mid-level jobs and that the company has the own evaluation experiences and capacity to choose the right candidates. The high level recruitment is right for the multinational companies or large companies with advanced management models who have demands to employ the candidates at high-level positions requiring new capabilities and higher qualifications.
However, choosing the appropriate ones is not easy at the moment. How can employers identify the right recruitment criteria?
Vietnam just opened its market to the world roundly 20 years ago and large companies in Vietnam, which are owned by Vietnamese people or foreign investors, have been only well operated for over recent 10 years. The human resource managers who are trained and accessible to the professional working environment and equipped with practical experiences in the multinational companies have equivalent years of experiences. Therefore, there are few candidates with in-depth knowledge and professional skills in management. The scarcity of senior management personnel, in terms of both quantity and quality, limits the choices of the employers (companies in Vietnam). Most current recruitment decisions are made, based on the profile of the candidate, the reputation recognised by the success of the candidate through references, introduction, direct meetings, indirect contacts or direct interviews.
Therefore, the wrong recruitment decisions leading to the wrong candidates are caused by wrong evaluations of both the employers and employees. The wrong evaluation process may relate to some criteria such as: the ability to meet the job requirements as well as fit the corporate culture to engage with the company for sustainable development. Normally, employers often overlook or underestimate the matching between the candidates and the corporate culture in the recruitment processes. In my opinion, these are two inseparable sides to choose the right people. If the individual values may not match the values and culture of the organisation, the individual will not be able to work passionately or constructively to promote their capacities or hardly commit with the company for a long time; meanwhile, the company cannot see that employee as a reliable member of the company.
To determine the appropriate capacity criteria, employers often use job descriptions and criteria for the job to select the right candidate. From my experiences working in recruitment, I usually define the capacity requirements based on the expected outcomes of the work, determining the correct working tasks, identifying the appropriate set of behaviours for candidates to do the working tasks and thereby, determining the appropriate capacity to generate the set of behaviours.
After determining the criteria to select the right candidates, I start defining the methods of selection. Some of tests related to ability, personality and behaviour and some interview methods such as behaviour based interview, competency based interview, and performance based interview could be used during the selection.
Could you share some of your recruitment experiences?
The big challenge facing the company during the recruitment is how to evaluate and select the appropriate and capable candidates among a few candidates by the traditional qualitative recruitment at present.
Although there is none of official figures for the rate of recruitment and retention successes, especially retaining good people, of the Vietnamese companies. Few candidates for senior positions employed by the Vietnamese companies from the multinational companies have committed to work for a long term.
The frequent changes of the high-level personnel, which is most likely to be recruited into the strategic planning committee of the company, has made a negative impact on the stability of the company as well as slowed down the growth of the Vietnamese companies.
In the context of the rapid growth, the Vietnamese companies should employ a screw of talents that is strong enough to meet the growth and respond quickly to the big competitors who are giant multinational companies. This requires the companies to drastically devise and adopt the human resources strategies as well as choose the best for their own. For example, in the context of the rapid development and urgent recruitment of talents to build the ICP's brand, our company has chosen the "Build a house from the roof" strategy for the goals: 1. Recruitment and stabilisation of the senior staff for the company's strategy committee (i.e. deputy general and general) to make responsive decisions and maintain enough time to obtain the outcomes of the strategies; 2. Creation of a collaborative strategy board consisting of people who could work together rather than just doing well in their respective fields for the purposes of increasing the decision-making process for consensus and limit the conflicts at work; 3. Increase of the individual contribution and fostering of the individual success as key factors to retain. The recruitment criteria set out at the time include: Does the candidate have shared values with other individuals to fit the current culture of the organisation? Is the candidate able to establish a long-term commitment to the organisation? Does the candidate have high qualifications, which help her or him to have been successful in other organisations in the relevant fields? Is the candidate able to and willing to take on multiple roles in the organisation?
Vietnamese
