Testing for Comfort

ISPAT International, the brainchild of L.N.Mittal and the runaway success in worldwide production of steel, is based in the Netherlands and UK. The company was established in 1976 and now has an active presence in 14 countries across the world. Despite its name and the origin of its visionary founder, Lakshmi Narayan Mittal, its commercial presence in India is very limited. While steel is the group's main business, other activities of the LNM Group include a privately owned venture capital fund, shipping, power generation and distribution, and mining.

Nevertheless, of its 110,000 employees, many of the management staff are Indian expatriates, who have been hired from the best management schools of the country. The hiring of professionals for the world's second largest producer of steel is a task that necessitates a great deal of thought and care. Since the locations of Ispat's plants are across the world, candidates for the company need to conform with a large degree of adaptability to conditions that are many and varied.

For their 2003 hiring, Inder Walia, Director, HR for the group, considered the Indian School of Business, a premium business school located in Hyderabad. ISB offers a unique intensive one- year course in business management at the graduate level. The diplomas offered are co-signed by the deans of Kellogg Business School and The Wharton Business School, USA. The intake to ISB is very refined, requiring high GMAT scores in excess of 600, and industry experience of two or more years. While there are a few students who are fresh graduates, this is more the exception than the rule. The course is very intense and vigorous and despite the extraordinary facilities available, the students are constantly stretched and tend to become well-honed corporate citizens after the course.

As Ispat's recruitment is handled from London, Inder Walia of Ispat chose to work with Talent Management International (TMI Network, Hyderabad) one of the country's top placement organisations. The brief was to develop a series of online psychometric tests to measure attitude, personal profile, career preference and learning styles, and shortlist on the basis of the results. The requirement was for marketing and finance professionals, which indicated Dominance or Influencing profiles for the former and Steadiness and Conscientiousness profiles for the latter position. The learning style for the marketing professionals were fixed as Active-Intuitive-Visual-Global, while for the finance managers, the focus was on Reflective-Sensing- Verbal-Sequential learners. In both cases, the career preference tests needed to indicate a predilection for marketing or finance career as the case might be. The tests were administered online by TMI in conjunction with the Career Advisory Services division of ISB. The shortlisted candidates were then invited to participate in a group discussion on topics that required an understanding of Ispat's line of business (which required prior research by the candidates). The unique methodology was to require role reversal in the positions taken by individual participants, which revealed the adaptability to changing paradigms, and the degree of comfort in the process. Post lunch, all the candidates were asked to participate in a limited outbound exercise that demonstrated individual ability to work in a team, capability to think out-of-the-box and generate innovative solutions to simulated problems. The process was designed to be highly participatory and acutely revealing. The observers were able to pinpoint with accuracy the ability of the candidates to conform to Ispat's requirements and their psychosocial strengths and weaknesses. The exercises took the form of a prioritisation, which revealed a degree of international exposure and presence of mind, a mind/body coordinated activity that indicated energy and teamwork coupled with lateral thinking and problem solving skills and a final sequential logic exercise that pointed to the ability of candidates to innovate, solve and replicate solutions.

On the basis of the pre- and post-lunch activities, which were held in a relaxed atmosphere of friendly intercourse, a final shortlist was generated and the selected few were requested to present themselves at an individual interview. The interview touched on the individual ability of the candidate to fit in with the corporate philosophy and the requirements of the job in the several locations of Ispat's plants. Candidates were encouraged to voice their apprehensions and question the interviewers on any areas of concern they may have had.

The final selection was made by the close of the evening, with Ispat being satisfied that they had the right candidate for the right job, and all candidates, both, those selected and otherwise finding the process innovative and enjoyable. There has always been a need for selection processes to be made less stressful and more accurate, and the convergent method employed by Ispat International through the unique and very effective system designed and executed by TMI Network Limited amply addressed the need to the satisfaction of the company and the candidates alike!

ABHIMANYU ACHARYA

abhi.hyd@cnkonline.com