Campus Recruitment as a B2B Exchange

Every year, corporates have to spend a significant amount of money and management time to visit engineering and business schools and select candidates for recruitment. Competition for talent is intense at the few, well-known and popular schools and corporates are not sure of being able to attract the good students. On the other hand, good candidates are available at a large number of lesser-known schools but the cost of reaching, evaluating and selecting them is very high. The Campus Recruitment Exchange (CRX) could be to a way to avoid the these horns of a dilemma.

The 12 Step Process

Conceptually, the CRX is nothing but a labour market, where students will sell themselves to the companies that bid the highest, or offer the best opportunities in terms of pay and job profiles. However restrictions are necessary so that the normal rules of campus recruitment, like single offers to each candidate and the sequence in which students are allowed to interact with a company ( “day 1” etc ) are followed. Without these restrictions the market will degenerate into a common job portal like naukri.com or timesjobs.com.  To avoid this, the following sequence of activities should be followed

1. A company will register on the CRX through an authorised principal HR representative (HR manager) who in turn will introduce other authorised representatives (HR executives) into the CRX.
2. Company HR reps will be responsible for creating various job profiles to be offered by the company -- each with its own job description and corresponding CTC. However these profiles will not be  visible until step 6.
3. A college will register on the CRX through an authorised and duly validated faculty member who in turn will introduce the student members of the school placement team into the CRX.
4. Students of the college will register and upload their CVs into the CRX. These CVs will be validated by the placement team of the college but will not be visible to companies until step 9.
5. College placement team members will interact with company HR representatives until specific company ( say Company A ) agrees to consider specific school  ( say School T )
6. Job profiles created by Company A will now be made available to placement team of School T.
7. School T placement team will now make Company A profiles available to general students of School T.
1. A Pre-Placement talk can be delivered on Skype and shown on a projected screen at School T
2. HR reps of Company A can be available on chat  or on forums to answer FAQs about the company.
8. Students of School T will decide whether they wish to apply for Company A or not -- this can be done through the CRX itself or even offline on school premises.
9. Placement team of School T will select students from School T and make specific profiles visible to Company A. The date on which Company A gets access to the student profiles will depend on the discretion of the placement team of School T.
1. It could so happen that Company X could access to shortlisted profiles of School T before Company A -- if School T believes that Company X is a better option than Company A. [ Company X gets a better “slot” than Company A]
2. It could also happen that not all student profiles from School T may be made available to Company A. The decision will be based on match of profiles or on whether specific student has got one or more jobs as defined by placement rules of School T.
10. Company A will create its own shortlist from the list of students provided by the campus team from School T. This could be based on a simple study of the data provided or could be through an online test. [ Identity of individual students participating in the online test will be validated by placement team of School T. If necessary a trusted third party could be used as well at additional cost]
1. If necessary Company A can conduct Group Discussion on a standard teleconference bridge. [ Identity of individuals participating in the GD will be confirmed as in the previous step ] -- this is perhaps the weakest link in the process  because Company HR reps may not be able to identify individual speakers by voice but with some effort, for example two webcams placed in the GD room, this can be overcome as well to an extent.
11. Final shortlisted candidates will be interviewed on Skype video. Multiple video interviews can be scheduled for the same candidate to address technical and HR concerns.
12. Company A will inform School T of final selections and issue appointment letters through the CRX. School T placement team will remove selected candidates  from shortlists of any company that comes after Company A unless
1. School T rules allow a student to get multiple offers
2. There are special cases like “dream company”

This is a first cut outline that provides a high level view of the process. Details can be filled in if necessary.

The trust factor

Developing the software to create the CRX engine would not be difficult -- far more complex exchanges, typically B2B exchanges,  have been created in the past but to make it work one would need :

1. Market players who will have to inject the appropriate amount of liquidity into the exchange. This means that
1. There should be a minimum number of recruiting companies (“buyers”)  who together will offer a certain number of job vacancies, and in parallel
2. There should be minimum number of schools (“sellers”) who will put up a significant number of students who are available for recruitment
2. A trusted, neutral market operator -- like a Stock Exchange or Commodity Exchange -- who will ensure that market rules are followed.

It is possible there could be some behind-the-back or below-the-table activities. Some students may directly approach companies of their choice bypassing the CRX

However if most companies and schools participate honestly -- as in the case of the regular campus recruitment -- then that should not be viewed as a major problem. The benefits accrued in terms of time and cost savings would more than compensate for the cost of aberrant behaviour exhibited by a small number of players.

While getting a neutral market operator may not be too difficult to get -- in fact, some of the existing job portals may be more than willing to play the role, earning the trust of a certain number of market players who will be willing to adapt to this new way of doing things may be more difficult. The real challenge would be to sell this idea to some big, anchor companies who would be willing to try out this new way of reaching an otherwise difficult market.

Education Delivery Model : Encouraging Creation, not Consumption of Knowledge

"You can lead a horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink"

In the context of enhancing the delivery capabilities of the education system, we should perhaps rephrase the statement as "You should lead a horse to the water, but desist from spoon feeding it"

As it is, those who manage to get into IIT -- either at the UG or the PG level -- have their originality and creativity ironed out of them, or at least significantly degraded, by the coaching classes that tutor them for the entrance examination. To compensate for this, teachers in IIT must go the extra mile to erase the effect of cramming and learning by rote -- the hall mark of a successful coaching class -- and awaken in their students a sense of wonder about the world of knowledge and instill in them the confidence of stepping out of their zone of comfort and address intellectual challenges of the highest degree.

What this could mean in practice is a reduction in the importance of the text book and examinations as tools and the progressive usage of the world wide web, as well as the library, as a way to not just gather facts but also publish analyses and interpretations into the public domain.

The Indian education system is perpetually dominated by the grim dark clouds of an examination -- right from kindergarten, all the way through X, XII, JEE, CAT, mid terms, end terms and comprehensives -- and a person's "success" is measured by marks obtained at every step of the way. Here the definition of success is debatable but instead of splitting hairs on this let us explore what all we can do.

Obviously, this lethal cocktail of text books and examinations cannot be done away with completely -- the system would collapse into an unstructured academic anarchy -- but four specific ideas could be introduced.

1. Students should be encouraged to locate multiple sources of information, preferably newer sources of information, well beyond what is written in a text book, if at all there is one that is prescribed. Ideally this would be websites, blogs, discussion forums and scholarly archives. Library books and journals are also equal candidates
2. Students should be encouraged to "publish" not just in peer-reviewed journals -- which may call for effort not normally expected in a normal UG or PG course -- but on their own blogs and in case studies, term papers and working papers that are uploaded in web2.0 communities. The ability to collect ones thoughts --and the facts that have been picked up through the process described in point 1, synthesize them into a unique point of view and articulate that in a cogent and understandable manner is an essential foundation for future research leading to traditional publications in refereed journals.
3. Collaborative learning should be the key because the image of the "mad" scientist working alone in his den-like-laboratory has either become dated or was never quite correct. Modern science and technology calls for significant collaboration within and across communities -- department, institutes and even countries and this collaborative approach should be woven into the fabric of our delivery process in the form of cross-functional teams. These should be tasked to not only identify problems and evolve solutions and but should also participate in the evaluation and if possible implementation of the idea.
4. Failures should be tolerated as these are the pillars of success. The person who has never made a mistake is perhaps the same person who has never done anything new in this life and the society for which we wish to prepare our students does not need such people! Experimentation should be encouraged, recklessness should be cautioned against but failures should be seen, not as objects of ridicule but as a learning opportunity. Practically this means rewarding not just results but also activity.

Consumption of knowledge should be replaced by creation of knowledge