Predicament of a Recruiter

At one of the peak seasons of the recruitment drive, one fine morning the HR dept. gets a call from the Security guys’ stationed at the main gate. They pass on the information that a lady has come and is asking to meet the HR Manager. So they have let her in since she said she’s from a far off place, and she’s on the way to the HR Dept. Much to the departments’ surprise, there she is standing at the door; when half the folks are annoyed with the Security guys’ decision without being consulted. Yes a recruitment drive is in the process, but a walk-in wasn’t something that was welcome; after being overwhelmed with CV’s that kept pouring in every hour.

With the kind of atmosphere a manufacturing organization has, even one lady would raise enough eyebrows to be noticed. So while this lady walks into the room and is seated right across me, the next I expect is a CV laid out in front of me. But like it’s said, ‘Always expect the unexpected!’ she looks around painfully and giving uncomfortable glances, she places her purse on my table and walks out. And here I am looking at other colleagues who are equally quizzed with her behaviour. Twenty minutes and still no sign of her return, which triggers a sense of panic into us. I am contemplating of opening her purse and searching through her belongings and finding some identity of this mysterious prospective employee who wanted to so badly meet the Manager. A few hurried calls were made to the security guys and the reception, enquiring whether anybody has seen her roaming about the factory unit. And there the colleague at the reception confirmed, she saw her on the way back to the HR Dept., just 2 minutes back.

When finally she does enter the room, I start off my inquisitive notes directed at her. What we learn are astonishing facts of a person desperate to get employed in this downturn of economy! We get to know she’s originally from Kolkata, and has travelled all these distances to be in Bhilai just to chance upon getting herself employed someplace. She didn’t have any acquaintance or relative in and around Bhilai, and was put up in a Dharamshala. At a certain point of time a colleague asked her, whether her parents are aware of her ways of looking out for a job? Were they aware she was in Bhilai? She recently completed her MSW from Lucknow University and placements that didn’t happen, made her look over Internet for Companies across India, and she planned to visit every city of the country she could!

With the way she was dressed she looked from a good family, but the desperation that we saw in her eyes, were enough to shake each one of us. Maybe for quite few it was just another day, but for us as recruiters, turning her away became the most difficult task. At one point we got her talking to the HR Manager, coz he was good at mentoring and we felt she needed somebody old enough to tell her she get back home and quit roaming around like nomads. When she finally produced her CV, it became the most dismaying moment. It was just a plain sheet of paper, like the formats found in cyber café, which hardly bore some details of her. Being an HR and done a regular full time course in MSW, one would always expect a good CV if not a benchmark. And then we realised through her communication she was not just desperately waiting for employment to happen, she was mentally unsound as well. It started looking like a Herculean task to persuade her leaving the boundaries of the factory unit. And when she started begging to be allowed to do any kind of job, even as an attendant; it started feeling like loss of human dignity.

From Recruiters we were transformed at one instant into this other human being, who needed to show empathy. But that wasn’t enough, the Organizations interests were always primary to us, and no matter how much we tried being concerned of her well-being, it was always a deadlock situation for us. With more than 40 minutes spent in persuading her to leave, accepting her so called CV and agreeing to get back to get, when openings would come; finally the security guards were called to let her out. And with her being at the other side of the closed gates; within no time her CV was shred into pieces, yet the predicament of the recruiter remained!