Companies look for niche skills, do away with group discussions

Time was when clearing the group discussion stage by a candidate was considered one of the most important steps in the hiring process. Although a large number of companies still resort to this traditional mode of recruiting to save time, some companies have entirely eliminated this tedious process. Companies such as SAP India, Dell India and Godrej Group have discontinued group discussions in hiring, whereas others such as Cummins believe for assessing the character and values in a person – there is a growing demand for these traits today – group discussion is not the best tool.

While for companies such as Hindustan Unilever, GDs are still an integral part of the hiring process, experts believe in the current recruiting scenario, companies are shying away from holding the GD process owing to its high cost.

SAP India, which earlier used GDs in selective focused groups, has discontinued using the practice on realizing that the tool may not be effective for analyzing people’s analytical bent of mind. “…it is more helpful when choosing candidates for roles where oral communication is very important,” said Nagraj Shriyan, head – talent acquisition, SAP India. One of the ways in which SAP India assesses candidates is by asking people to write a note on either a customer, technical or business situation they have faced. This, said Shriyan, helps the company in analyzing the thought structure, grasp of language, and communication skills of the candidate.

It is for similar reasons that Godrej Group decided to do away with GDs. “While this format has worked well in the past, allowing for recruiters to observe a larger pool of applicants within a short duration, it is limiting in approach and has also become rather predictable,” said Sumit Mitra, head – Group HR & corporate services, Godrej Industries and associate companies.

“We have found simulated games, role plays and even theatre interesting alternatives which work well – it offers us a better opportunity to judge group interaction, initiative, creativity and problem solving skills,” he added.

Group discussions work best when organizations are hiring in volume. “However, in the professional hiring space, when an organization is looking for niche skills group discussion do not serve as the best option,” said Savneet Shergill, head – talent acquisition, Dell India.

“Some candidates take longer than others to open up or have limited ability to stand out in a crowd even though they have great depth in terms of knowledge and skills – No organization will want to end up losing a potential candidate with great subject matter expertise!” added Shergill.

If not managed sensitively, GD’s can also tend to be very impersonal and that can keep great candidates away from applying in future. Moreover, this method does not provide the candidates with an opportunity to ask questions about the company they expect to join.

“I must admit that GDs are a cruel process and perhaps not the best. In as far as selection of personnel from the market is concerned, we do rely on GDs where at junior levels we have large number of applications. But then, as you go up to more mid levels and beyond, there are no GDs employed,” said Ernest Louis, VP – HR, Asian Paints.

For a group like Cummins, though, group discussions continue to be an essential tool for filtering applicants when the numbers are large, the organization does not lean on group discussions alone for assessing an applicant’s character and values. This is because Cummins looks for personality traits such as decisive, driven to win, agile, passionate and caring in a candidate.

At Cummins, the hiring process includes preliminary screening on the basis of academic records, technical and analytical tests, and personal interviews, according to Nagarajan Balanaga, vice president HR – Cummins Group in India.

According to Asim Handa, CEO India, Gi Group, a global staffing and recruitment firm: “GDs becomes cost expensive as one needs to ensure at least 3-4 candidates at a single time, a moderator to manage the GD, a venue (in case hiring is for a new location) and many other such limiting and costly factors.”

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