Big Picture of HR Recruitment in Bangladesh

Adventure in Quest for Gems!

From my experience so far in the field of human resource recruitment, I have discovered that there are various challenges that HR recruiting agencies face in Bangladesh. The primary challenge is to track down the most qualified people within a reasonable amount of time from a huge population suffering from appropriate media access. There are difficulties in screening and the selection of candidates too. Prevailing skills gaps in the country is a major reason behind the former; and lack of presentation, communication, and English language skills even in many educated people accounts for the latter.

There are few common media platforms in Bangladesh to bridge the gap between jobseekers and recruiters that can accelerate quality matching process. Till now, the most preferred communication tool is job postings in newspapers, magazines and campus notice boards. However, since there are too many newspapers in the market, postings in only one or two newspapers cannot ensure the optimum reach to the entire target audience. Also, the quality of education at many universities is questionable.

At present, there are few online job portals in Bangladesh. There again the problem is somewhat similar. Everyone in the target audience does not have timely internet access or any regular access at all. Many at least have online profiles, but do not regularly update their résumés or leave their résumés incomplete with missing information that is often required to meet the short listing criteria.

Finally, in response to job postings in printed media, many unemployed people with irrelevant backgrounds submit their curriculum vitaes which increases the time required for screening out the most suitable candidates. All these significantly hamper the efficiency of communication between the parties and make the searching process harder.

On the part of professional HR recruiting agencies, sometimes it is hard to select the right candidate who is best suited for the vacancies at the client organizations. Often, clients do not initially want to disclose their names or the salary range of the incumbent in the job postings. This intensifies the difficulties for the recruiters in searching. For example, on one hand, since there is no specification regarding offered salary, the most eligible people who are already employed elsewhere do not eagerly apply for the job, being confused whether the job will meet their salary expectation at all. On the other hand, many other unqualified people apply just because they are out of jobs right then and have time to do so. Ultimately, the yield is very low from the search.

Sometimes clients also fail to clearly identify their needs. Most of them provide the recruiters with very broad, generalized job specifications of the vacancies which do not communicate the most important qualifications that candidates must have. Without specific knowledge of such requirement, it is hard to find out the right candidate. In such cases, usually the candidates are selected through generalized testing methods which hardly evaluate the qualifications required of them. At times, strong references for ineligible candidates diminish the efficiency of screening process even further. Often, managers at many organizations lack professional training in HRM and may have a reactive approach towards staffing.  They want to give the briefest description of the job as possible, so that they can focus on their other job duties. Many times, the emphasis is on the speed of the recruitment, rather than on placing the right individual for the position from the perspective of qualifications and fit into the company culture.

Regardless of who or what accounts for the actual reason for these difficulties, recruiting agencies faces many of these challenges as an inevitable part of their job.

Hence, finding the right candidate for the right job is more challenging than it may seem. It is like a search for the right gems out of a vast quarry. Sometimes we find a diamond when the client is looking for a ruby – so timing and need is another complexity to this issue.

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Tags: communication gap, HR, human resource, industry big picture, mismatch, recruitment challenges

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