sahil parikh’s work+life stream

After the Tata NEN Hotteststartups competition we have been literally flooded with resumes from all over India. I personally go through all the resumes, mark the ones that are worth talking to and then start dialing people to see if I can chat with them comfortably over the phone and get to know how they started in their field. Good communication skill is important for any business and that's the one thing I look for in a candidate - can the candidate express himself/herself clearly.

This 2-5 minutes (sometimes it even takes 30 secs) phone call eliminates a large number of applicants. Interestingly, a lot of people have even forgotten that they have applied for a job or they don't know what we do. This is ground for elimination. How do you apply to job when you don't know what the company does? Its like throwing darts at the board and lets see how many actually hit.

Next, only a few get through to the live interview at our office and then we make our final decision to hire. Luckily, we run a small company with few team members and hence our hiring process is not that frequent. Though, its always a good idea to look out for candidates when you really are not pressed to hire - who knows, you might just find a 'value' candidate in the process.

Are there any hiring processes that you use to find the right candidate?