I had a busy work this week. The
company had decided to hire two IT guys. The last guy had left the firm two
months ago. He didn’t even give a notice or anything. He just didn’t show up
for work that day only calling to tell us he would not be coming back. The IT
department had recommended the company hire two guys since the work had
increased two-folds since we installed a new system for the office.
The HR suggested we place an
advert for the vacancy in the local dailies. It was a bit expensive but it
would give us a lot of reach to the wide demographic of people who read the
paper daily. My boss, Mrs. Wright was against us getting the new employees
through the Employment Agencies since its really costly and may delay the whole
process.
I searched for the newspapers
contacts via the internet on the website. I called the sales office for the
most read daily and inquired about advertising costs. The figure was not as high
as I figured so forwarded the typed words for the advert and paid via a cheque.
The advert was to be printed the next day.
Early the following day, I bought
the newspaper and checked how the advert came out. It was as I wanted. The advert
was placed on the first page of classifieds and the company name was not
mentioned. By around two o’clock, my inbox was full with applications coming in.
The advert seemed to have attracted a lot of interested people. I went through
some of the applications and shortlisted them to a figure around ten. I showed
the HR the final list. She was impressed but she thought it would be best if we
called in the head of IT, Fred, to come and screen the list to about five who
would be contacted later on for interviews.
Fred came in and gave his opinion
on how we would take in the candidates. We decided to call in the ones who had
a bit of experience of about two years. The date set for the interviews was for
this Friday. It was only two days away. Since we really needed to fill the
vacancy as soon as possible, Friday was the perfect date for it.
On Friday morning, I set up the
boardroom to be used for the interviews. Three of us, Fred, the HR and I were
the ones to conduct the interviews. The candidates were expected to arrive from
10am. I was hopeful that we would get a good candidate and end this process. I
went back into my office and worked on some work that I had. After some time,
the phone rang.
“Excuse me but the candidates are
here.” The secretary said.
“Thank you; please show the first
one to the boardroom in five minutes.” I replied and hanged up.
I alerted the HR and called Fred from the
extension and asked him to meet us at the boardroom. The first candidate was a
young man aged twenty four. He had a Diploma from a well-known college with two
years’ experience. He seemed confident enough. He answered the questions well.
The second candidate was a lady. This would be interesting since the IT
department had no female. I was impressed with her but she didn’t perform well
at some of the questions. The third and fourth candidates flanked out from the
first questions they were asked. The fifth candidate performed fairly well. We
promised all of them to call them and let them know on how they had performed.
We were left with the tedious work of discussing would best fit in the organization.