Wisdomjobs.com, an end-to-end online recruitment and career solutions portal, recently released a survey on “Hiring Freshers: Challenges Faced by Recruiters”.
The survey, conducted across 10 cities with 850 recruiters from 10 industries/ sectors, understands the challenges recruiters address while hiring freshers.
The survey also takes a look at the skills and qualities that recruiters are looking for, in freshers.
With freshers making up the major chunk of annual hiring for most mid- and large-sized organisations, recruiters and companies invest a lot of time and effort in ensuring that they find the right talent. While recruiting freshers offers the most cost-effective means of hiring entry-level talent, hiring them brings its own set of challenges for hiring managers.
Inaccurate resumes
Freshers lack the requisite experience and exposure when it comes to creating an impact upfront with their resumes.
Consequently, recruiters have to sift through several incomplete and inaccurate resumes when they are hiring freshers. Consequentially, resume-related hurdles are the most commonly cited issue by recruiters.
* 62% of the surveyed recruiters said that they regularly came across embellished resumes.
* 52% of those surveyed said that falsified educational qualifications/ fake academic degrees were the major embellishment.
*24% said that fake projects and internships were the biggest falsehood while 20% also mentioned non-existent colleges as a common lie in fresher resumes.
Skill gaps
*57% of recruiters felt that the engineering freshers they hired did not have the necessary technical skills required of their profiles, including coding skills. The corresponding number for non-engineering graduates (MCA) was 35%
*36% of the recruiters said non-engineering undergraduates were under-skilled in their core areas while the corresponding number for postgraduates was 40%.
Attitudinal issues
Since freshers enter their workplaces directly from their academic environments, quite often, the transition is not smooth. From lack of awareness regarding workplace etiquette to unrealistic expectations regarding their roles and from lack of exposure to a collaborative environment to inability to meet deadlines, there are many reasons why several freshers find it difficult to adapt to the demands of their workplaces.
*52% of the surveyed recruiters said that freshers struggled with team dynamics.
*42% of them said freshers were unable to meet work deadlines.
*Nearly 25% of the respondents said freshers had inflated opinions regarding their own capabilities.
Geographic divide
It goes without saying that freshers from the metropolitan cities have access to a qualitative educational facilities, more opportunities, and exposure to better extra-curricular facilities.
*Nearly 40% of the recruiters from metropolitan cities said that were happy with the core skills of freshers while the corresponding number for other cities was 35%
*While 55% of recruiters from metros were satisfied with the communication skills of the freshers they hired, only 28% of recruiters from other cities felt the same.
City-wise hiring
In city-wise satisfaction regarding overall quality of fresher hires, Delhi tops among the metros with nearly 50% of recruiters hiring for fresher jobs in Delhi, followed by recruiters hiring for Fresher jobs in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata in that order with 46%, 43%, 39%, 38% and 35% respectively.
