Skip to main content

Easy Path

Great story about how one bakery hires its workers without making them contort themselves infinite ways to prove they are worthy of the job. Every job I have had in my life where it turned out to be a positive experience for me, the hiring manager had made their decision with ten minutes of speaking with me. The rest was just process they needed to follow to make sure all the boxes were checked and they were being in compliance with company policy. Everyone else involved in the vetting process knew the decision was already made so we spent the time getting to know each other's professional background, I learned about the work they did in their current role and so on. At the bakery they wisely decided to not waste anyone's time and get on with the program. 

While this is not a formula that can be used in all types of jobs, there are many where the person can be trained and on the job, paid some for their efforts and if all works out well they can be brought on board full-time. Those that do not make it would have hopefully learned some skills they could take elsewhere, the company would have benefited some from what little they managed to contribute. It is a decision about where to spend the money in the hiring process which is always rife with uncertainty for both sides. You take a new job because you absolutely look forward to working for your new boss - and for the few months that you do, life is great. But a big reorg happens and the boss and you part ways and nothing is the same after that. You decide to move on. 

This is not the ideal situation for either side but one of many ways a new hire could leave much sooner than expected, fail to provide enough return for the investment the company made in them - including but not limited to a rigorous hiring process that takes weeks and months and involves a few dozen people to invest their time on the candidate. All of that for nothing. There is a lot of room for improvement in the process - the bakery example is definitely worth drawing inspiration from for any company that has a convoluted hiring mechanism. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more