How a recruitment gaffe still resulted in highest customer satisfaction

Disclaimer: This has not happened in any of the organizations I have worked in, either in the past, or currently. However this is a story (which is claimed to be true) and published some time back in a foreign newspaper, based on an interview with an HR manager. The time period of this is around the time of the dot com boom. Every company everywhere across the world was trying to reap the fruits of this boom. A factor that probably added to the dotcom boom, was around the same time computers too had a boom (it was sometime shortly after if I remember a biggie in the software world allegedly saying, when PCs first came on the scene, that 64K memory is more than sufficient for any one). As computers and memory chips shrunk and also became easily available, prices for hardware started hitting "rock bottom". Combined with this, we also had the boom in internet. Networking and Internet which was earlier just a "Research area" and confined to perhaps Defense applications somehow came out of the closet, if I may say so. And so, everyone was trying to reap the fruits. Training institutions opened left right and center across the world, promising jobs in the "El Dorado" of it all - the world of sofware engineering, where salaries were high. And with it came the issue of recruitment. Now as we know, recruiters as it is have a difficult time. How to fulfill the ever increasing need for professionals? While it is easy do so, in an area like mechanical engineering and with burgeoning number of engineering colleges in those days churning them out dime a dozen. More so with more than a dozen different skills required in software engineering e.g. Oracle skill is not the same as java skill and COBOL and Foxpro is something all together different. Another problem is that often with one genuine CV it is possible there are at least a dozen fake CVs floating around. It is often very difficult to sift the wheat from the chaff, considering the huge number of CVs received. In one particular case, there was this requirement of 3 professionals, and about a thousand people had camped outside the office gates since the night before. Another of my observations, having done a fair amount of interviews etc. is that often the "chaff" get calls (Project managers and others in doing interviews, would second me on this), while the "genuine stuff" perhaps misses out. Perhaps it is because the "genuine stuff" is more busy with actually doing work, and often downplay the work done, whereas the "Chaff" often does everything else, including "polishing" up their CVs and ensuring that their CVs stand out. Some where along, recruiters too started using the software technology, to help them in their work. And with it came search engines, which shifted through tons of CVs, based on some keywords, e.g. Java, Oracle, CMMI etc. So if a company was looking for Java professionals, and they came across the word "Java" in the CV, the CV would go for further processing, else it would be sifted out. There was this carpenter in a foreign land who was looking for a job. He went about diligently creating his CV. One of his skills he mentioned was "I am very good at table design". A friend helped email his application to hundreds of companies, in the hope that it would get recognized in at least one of them. Now in one of the software organizations, there was this urgent requirement for Oracle PL SQL, and guess what? The search engine caught these words, and immediately the person was selected. Requirements need was urgent, rather as they say "It should have been met a month ago". :) And the difference between supply and demand mind blowing. And so, without as much as a real interview (or rather a perfunctory one), the guy was selected (more so since he stated that he was immediately available), and immediately put on the job (packed off to customer site). The carpenter could not believe that he had got a job offer, and for so handsome a salary (perhaps many times more than what he probably expected). It did not take much time to recognize that the guy perhaps knew nothing of Oracle (except perhaps that it referred perhaps to a group of people, who claimed to receive divine revelation). The project management team was not very happy about it. They wanted to send him back. But those were also the days where cost of airlines tickets were fairly high (and not just "free" tickets that we now have, where every one is having a blast at the expense of the poor shareholder and tax payer). Cost of accommodation which was also being provided was high. So what to do? How to just send him back? After all, it was not the mistake of the carpenter. Surprise, surprise. The project was a green field project, and turnkey. And so, there was a requirement that also included setting up the office space. And then the "Eureka" moment came in. And so, the carpenter was roped in on this to help set up the office, including furniture etc. And here the carpenter did a really wonderful job. And guess what? The customer was highly satisfied with the office set-up. And gave a rating, what we in Tech M, would say in CSAT as 5/5. And that is how, in spite of all the mess, everyone was happy, the organization got high customer satisfaction rating, and the carpenter a promotion

Dominic Mascarenhas