Are you hiring overqualified candidates?

“Sir, I understand that there is a position of Assistant to CEO position. Can I apply for the same?”

“Why? You are not happy with your current job?”

“No sir, I don’t like this job, it is like a salesgirl job. I have to go in the market and sale the product. It is very embarrassing for me.”

“But you knew that this is sales job, when you join the organization. If you don’t understand the market, how will you understand the business?”

“True sir, but….”

This was a conversation between management trainee and HR manager.

We hire MBAs to sell insurance products, customer support and for jobs which can be done by B Com graduates.  We hire BE for the maintenance job. We hire Graduates and diplomas for the position of machine operators and so on…

Hiring overqualified people for the position is the main reason behind big attrition. In management institutes and so called business colleges, they are taught management, strategy, blah blah blah, but, at the end of the day they have to work on shop floor, on the ground of the market. Management students have different perception about their career and job. Industry expectations are different. If you hire bright talent, your business will grow. But who is responsible for developing the talent. Management schools (except top few) don’t teach them business.

In certain states of India, qualification is the mockery. They don’t go in schools and still get the degrees. When you hire these students just have a look whether they have done it full time or just through distance course. It is applicable for graduation also.

“If I get diploma or graduates in same salary why should I hire under-qualified candidate for operating machines and testing in lab as per the SoP? And I call them associate! I can fire them anytime.” One more misconception among industry people.   

I personally feel (and you will agree with me) that the person should be the exact match for the position. If you do so, you will have at least some control on attrition.

Oh boss, help me to stay here!

I always surprise why all HR related matters are placed on HR table. Off course, it is the responsibility of HR to look into all HR related matters. But most of the times, HR is not responsible for all HR related issues. Employees work with their team and line manager for more than 8 hours. The real issues are with this. Most of the times their line managers are responsible for HR issues in the organization.

You must have identified few reasons during exit interviews. The list goes like this:

a) Compensation

b) Learning opportunities

c) More responsibilities

d) Organizational Culture

e) Employer Brand.

There can be other factors apart from this. The exit interviews are conducted by some junior HR person, mostly getting filled the exit interview format.

When I had grilled such employees, most of the times, the reasons which I find which nobody wanted to put officially are as under:

Relationship with bosses:

The fact of the life is bitter and compensation is definitely important. But when any employee decides to change the job as per the market he gets 25-30% rise on his current CTC. And the cases I have seen most of the times are not the compensation. It is the boss, line managers who are responsible for the attrition.

New learning opportunities is the another reason employees tell. The programmer ends up doing the same job what he was doing in his earlier company. The maintenance engineer gets the title of Executive Maintenance, not adding any further value to his personality. Off course every experience is the learning.

Employees are like elephants. They remember and they act. You need to manage them properly. Sometimes, employees need emotional support. When you takes extra care of new employee and ignores old employee, he get hurts. Logically new employees struggle to create their position in the organization and hence may be more effective than old employees. But most of the managers favour this behaviour and give more weightage to the. The “left out feeling” creates dissatisfaction.

Generally speaking, when any employee leaves the organization, he assumes that he is going to get 4 more things in new company assuming that 10 things what he is getting here will also be available in new company. But when he joins there, he comes to know that yes he is getting 4 more things, but missing almost 4 another things which he was getting in his earlier company. 4 things, which can be more important in totality. That can be respect, culture, challenges, and even may be other benefits.

When line manger and off course HR will be able to gauge these factors, attrition can have little impact.