{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.020474209101116175, 'fraction_numerical': 0.006868766924245426, 'mean_word_length': 4.832819722650231, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 1, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 1, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 2, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Understanding the Recruitment and Selection Practices of an Indian IT SME (Small and Medium Enterprise)

Recruitment and Selection is the major function of the HR department besides the other functions, it is the solution to not only hatch the talent for a sector or any organization that is moving with an exponential pace, but also to provide quality employees for any organization, this article is a case study about the recruitment and selection process in an Indian IT MSME. The company was already facing some issues like pending projects and subsequently other problems sprouting because of that to which the only solution,that is, resolve all these issues was Recruitment and Selection. As a matter of fact this was being followed by the company as daily chores, in-parallel with the problems. The purpose of this study was to understand each step of the process in-order to get some in-sights out of it.


About the Sector
India has always been a rich source of both knowledge and skills, it dwells people with an average age of 29 years old (Bloomberg, 2019), with the advent of LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization) in 1990 it has become favorite destination for mushrooming IT hubs, since 1990s India has been nurturing the IT(Information Technology) to that extent that it has started to grow in the same field under the banner of MNCs and SMEs due to which it has successfully able to establish over 1000 global delivery centers(IBEF Report, 2019) across 80 countries. India's IT and ITEs companies grown upto $181 billion (USD) in 2018-2019, while the exports has grown to US$ 137 billion and domestic revenues to US$ 22 billion. The capability of India in IT sector has been very promising that it has attracted the cumulative Foreign Direct Investment(FDI) to spent US$ 37.23 billion from April 2000 to March 2019, according to a report by Department of Promotion of industry and International Trade(DPIIT).

SOURCE:
https://www.ibef.org/industry/informationtechnology-india/infographic India being one of the biggest hub of IT resource has always been a favourite destination for MNCs for IT outsourcing services, the ample talent with promising results has made India a big talent pool nation however it is still a challenge to find a right candidate for the recruiters thus the selection process of many IT companies has always been a unique part of the whole process that can actually help in getting the desired result. However, this part of the HR function is sometimes not taken seriously with many of the firms which fail to get and retain the talent.

About the Company
The real success genome of every enterprise is its digital presence which actually tentacles it to expand and grow significantly, this has been itself a key for many IT companies to run. It caters the similar need as discussed above; it is seven years old company founded in 2012 headquartered in Pune, India, with wider geographical presence and resounding historical success. It has been recipient of international awards like Red Herring (Previous winners include Facebook, Linkedin, Yahoo etc.), Bid Paris & SiliconIndia. The company is not only technology partners with a number of companies but also the consultant. Empowering the brands with digital outlook henceforth enabling them to increase their end-to-end 'User-to-Customer-to-Endorser' engagement strategy by devising easy to use websites and mobile applications. This IT company is sum total of 60 talented individuals honing to craft digital embodiment for start-ups and other brands, the company has been through all the extremes of the phases of its life, it has proved itself to stay sturdy because of the un-match-able experienced and talented hand-looming of the CEO Shhrigovind Tiwari, it has been the roller-coaster journey starting from scratch in a rented bungalow to now a strong digital enterprise successfully creating its presence in 4 continents.

Problem Statement
However, it has been observed that the Human resource department of the company has also been unstable since its birth, it has not been up-graded in terms of man-power or talent. Being a mid-scale software company attrition one of the terror that set-back its progress deterring its growth, the HR department itself is one affected by it besides the IT and Sales. Being smallest of all the departments at Exceptionaire it has failed to sustain any HR personnel to more than 2 years, thus, this could be one of the reason for its' mostly high number of requisitions across all the verticals throughout the year and thus has slouched the expansion and productivity as per information the company had the total employee strength of 100 which has now dropped to 60.

Motivation for the Research
So, as observed that the company was facing shortage of man-power to proceed with its projects due to which many projects were already getting delayed and also salary issues started in the company due to which the employer was facing the attrition as well as the absconding issues. The problem was not only low rate of the recruitment but the quality of recruitment as well due to which the company was unable to get promising employees especially in the IT department. Thus, recruitment is the only major task in its HR department that was delayed as per the requirement across many verticals and majorly in IT.

1.
Review of Literature According to Barber, the most important part of Human Resource management is recruitment and selection. It is one of the essential function of attracting an important resource of Human Resource into the organization (Barber, 1998). Selection "is the process, practices and activities in which the primary purpose is to choose or select the most suitable candidate for the requirement, to fill the vacant position in the organization". Recruitment "is the process, practice or activity in which the primary purpose is to identify and attract the potential and suitable candidate for the required job". According to Barney, the emphasis has always been upon the need to attract and hire the best potential employee in order to gain the competitive advantage over our competitors. (Barney 1991; Barney and Wright, 1998;Wright and McMahon, 1992). According to Bartram, video conferencing these days provides the organization with the possibility of a halfway house between the telephonic interviewee and interviewer. It helps the organization in cost and time saving by conducting single, pair or panel interviews of the candidate who are unable to come to the venue of interview because of the distance barrier or any other kind of barrier (Bartram, 2000). According to Dave Bartram, there are multiple series of events which are involved in recruitment and selection. The whole cycle starts with job posting. Job posting involves posting of jobs on different job portals in such a way that the best suitable candidate comes to know about it. So job posting is part of the 'attraction' stage in which probable applicants are made aware of the job and are encouraged to apply for the same. Then the next process of recruitment involves gathering of the pool of candidates and then eliminating the candidates who do not even match the minimal requirement which is called 'screening', this is done keeping some pre-defined criterion for the particular job profiles which would be discussed during man-power planning. According to Edwin B Flippo, recruitment can also be defined as a process to discover sources of manpower to meet the requirement of the staffing schedule and to employ effective measures for attracting the manpower in adequate numbers in order to facilitate the effective selection of an efficient working force. According to N. Kumari, "Recruitment is the process of searching or finding the suitable candidate for employment and then provide them with jobs in the organization. It is the selection of new employees from the bunch of application. On the other hand, this helps to meet the requirement of the staffing schedule by constructing effective measures for attracting the manpower not just for the purpose of filling the vacancy but also for the efficient working force." (Kumari, 2012). Ongori Henry and Temtime Z (2009) say that in their paper the recruitment and selection practises of the small and medium enterprises and make them to improve their HR practises (R.D. Omolo, 2012) According to David A De Cenzo the recruitment needs are of three types which are as follow: (a) First one is Planned Needs: These are the needs that arise from the changes in the organization and retirement policy creating vacancy for new jobs. (b).Second one is Anticipated Needs: These are those movements in personal which an organization can predict by studying trends both in external as well as internal environment.
(c) Last one is Unexpected Needs: These needs arise due to various reasons like deaths, resignations, accidents, illness, relocation etc.

Research Objective:
The purpose of this case study is to understand the recruitment and selection practices of Exceptionaire Technologiesand all the steps involved in it so that the problem of slow or delayed recruitment can beimprovised to meet the targets of the company, focusing on the requisitions on priority.

Research Design: 3.2.1 Exploratory Research-
Since, the aim of the study itself was to understand to get insights about the process and steps involved. Moreover the source for the study was mere observation and practical implementation of the steps as defined by the company.The exploratory study is often used as an introductory phase of a larger study and results are used in developing specific technique for larger study. Tasks Given: To achieve the given target of requisitions.

Selection:
The selection process involves multiple levels for IT and non-IT profiles both. There are multiple assessment tools available to select the candidate for example face to face rounds, psychometric tests, assessments center exercises, aptitude tests, telephonic rounds, video conferencing etc.

For IT Profiles:
First is the aptitude and logical test; second is the face-toface interview/ Telephonic/ Skype interview a technical or domain assessment discussion (basically to assess the concepts and relevancy of the skill-set level); third is the Machine test(for different profiles it is designed different for different IT profiles only) to assess the practical approach of the candidates; the fourth will be final face-toface interview with the CTO(Chief Technical Officer) as a final nod for the selection of the candidature; final round is the HR Round to assess the candidate an organization fit candidate and also for the negotiation of the salary package. For Non-IT Profiles: First is the aptitude and logical test; second is the face-to-face interview/ Telephonic/ Skype interview a technical or domain assessment discussion (basically to assess the concepts and relevancy of the skillset level); the last will be final face-to-face interview with the CEO(Chief Executive Officer)/Director as a final nod for the selection of the candidature; final round is the HR Round to assess the candidate an organization fit candidate and also for the negotiation of the salary package. Offer Letter: The offer is made via mail and the acceptance is also reverted back via mail over the given salary bracket, date of joining, profile etc. Joining Letter: The joining letter as well as the offer is given on paper on the day of joining. However the scanned copy of offer letter could be sent on request of the candidates. The above list of requisitions are in descending order of the priority as per given by the management.

III. LEARNING &FINDINGS
The process of recruitment and selection in the HR department was always taken as the daily chores so it was never performed strategically earlier keeping the targets in mind with priorities and time limit, however this time it was limited to target of 2 months with the priorities of the profile given. Since there was a single Naukri.com portal and around 4 members to access it, so profiles like Quality Analyst, Business Development Executive, HR Recruiter and mostly the Non-IT profiles were sourced through unpaid portals like Indeed etc., thus reducing the manhandling access to a single source Naukri.com. Recruitment is taken very lightly as a usual work but if taken seriously and strategically screened and evaluated it could minimize the errors thus would increase the accuracy and efficiency as well, mere job posting and calling is feeble attempt as per observation if taken seriously all steps it will give firm positive results. Also the attitude towards given profile, how one takes it and its candidates that includes follow ups, give and take,also influences the candidate to stay engaged and involved in the process, the process is longer in the later steps of selection so it is only the attitude of the HR that can hold them on. The selection process is very time taking, even though the candidate has come up on time she/he is made to wait for long for every step between each levels of selection, it takes more than 4 hours sometimes to process the candidature, the level of motivation and engagement of any candidate for the organization starts from selection process itself, if that gets delayed, hampered, or too often rescheduling over a period of time it makes their level of engagement low and actually it becomes a challenge to further persuade them to proceed with other rounds or join. HR department is the core department so if the company wants to seek stability and strong rigorous work on recruitment to move ahead to other aspects of the HR functions the department needs to make itself strong, upgraded with skillsand technology so as to stimulate its processing faster with quality recruitment that can resolve problems like control over attrition, absconding issues and also slow recruitment and selection process. Communication also plays a major role, if at any point of time it is delayed or not conveyed clearly it will create problems as well.

IV. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
The recruitment and selection process as discussed is one of the most important function of HR which is subject to other aspects like productivity, engagement, growth of any organization. The number of requisitions would be endless at any time but it is possible to cover-up it by smartly implementing each process/step keeping the track of each step, follow-ups, which is key factor in successful completion of the whole process. Also best possible alternatives like telephonic or skype interviews can come into picture to save time and cost, to not only improve the quality hire from the scratch i.e., screening till onboarding follow ups with clear communication at each step should be conveyed but also to improvise the process to keep up with the trends and changes. Also the HR department itself should be dynamic in nature so as to be capable enough to hold and get into the flow of the dynamism at each level of each department of the organization with respect to technology and other changes.