Fresher Hiring Becoming Increasingly Challenging for Recruiters, Finds Wisdomjobs.com Survey

HYDERABAD:
Wisdomjobs.com, one of India’s leading end to end online recruitment and career solutions portals, today 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 organizations, 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
Ajay Kolla, Founder & CEO, Wisdomjobs.com said, “Be it campus hiring or large-scale walk-in drives, recruiters and companies grapple with several problems that are unique to fresher recruitment. From sketchy resumes and insufficient practical exposure to unrealistic expectations about the job and attitudinal issues, recruiters feel are some of the problems which companies deal with as they try to onboard fresher talent.”

Inability to create quality 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.

Issues with Fresher Resumes
62% of the surveyed recruiters said that they regularly come across embellished resumes.
52% of those said that falsified educational qualifications/ fake academic degrees was 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.
18 % of the recruiters surveyed mentioned erroneous and copied resumes as a common occurrence.
35% also mentioned vague or unclear information in fresher resumes as a problem.
With regard to the key challenges in handling fresher resumes, nearly 65% of recruiters said that gauging ability is a major challenge, 43% mentioned ascertaining authenticity of information, and 30% said quality of resumes is the biggest challenge.

Skill gaps and insufficient technical skills
57% of recruiters felt that the engineering freshers they hire do 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 recruiters say that non-engineering undergraduates (B.Sc., BA, or B.Com.) are under-skilled in their core areas while the corresponding number for postgraduates (M.Sc., MA, or M.Com) was 40%.
27% of recruiters opined that MBA freshers do not have necessary skills to fulfill their job requirements.

Major areas where skill gaps are found in Freshers as per Recruiters:
57% of recruiters surveyed said freshers are below par in technical Skills, including coding.
Almost 70% opined that freshers need to brush up their oral communication skills.
55% of recruiters also felt that freshers should improve their written communication skills.
40% of those surveyed said that freshers lag in problem-solving and analytical thinking while 38% said that they lack logical reasoning abilities.
Nearly 60% of recruiters said freshers have poor presentation skills.
45% of recruiters said that freshers lack the MS Office skills required to fulfill their job requirements.

Beyond Aptitude: Attitudinal Issues
Since freshers enter their workplaces directly from their academic environments, quite often, the transition is not smooth or easy. 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 tough to adapt to the demands of their workplaces.

Where are Freshers falling short, attitude-wise?

52% of the surveyed recruiters said that freshers struggle with team dynamic
42% of them said that freshers are unable to meet work deadlines.
Nearly 25% of respondents said that freshers have inflated opinions regarding their own capabilities.
Close to 33% of recruiters said that freshers have unrealistic expectations regarding their workplaces and initial salaries.
37% of recruiters felt that freshers lack concrete career goals and try to set goals as they go along.

The Geographic Divide: Metros vs. Other Cities

It goes without saying that freshers from the metro cities have access to a better quality educational facilities, more opportunities, and exposure to better extra-curricular facilities. As seen in the survey, this is reflected in their better- rounded personalities and better communication skills as compared to their peers from other cities. However, it also 25% of the respondents said that freshers have unrealistic expectations from their employers regarding salaries. However it throws up the fact that in aptitude and knowledge of core skills, they are on par with the freshers from the metro cities.

Nearly 40% of recruiters from the metro cities said that they 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.
Nearly 60% of metro recruiters felt that freshers had reasonable practical exposure (projects, internships etc.) while only 34% of recruiters from other cities felt so.

City-wise Satisfaction with Quality of Freshers

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 saying that they are happy with the quality of freshers they hire, 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.
Among the other cities, Coimbatore is on top with 48% followed by Trivandrum, Nagpur and Ghaziabad with 45%, 44% and 40% respectively.