HR professionals and the challenge of selection

By Obodo Ejiro

Late 2012, BusinessDay held its first Human Resources forum, bringing together HR professionals from Nigeria’s large and medium-sized organisations to discuss talent management challenges in Nigeria. The forum provided a good platform for BusinessDay’s Research and Intelligence Unit (BRIU) to conduct the first-ever survey of HR professionals in Nigeria. Forty questionnaires were distributed to participants at the forum. The response rate was 100%. The survey focused on issues relevant to recruitment of Nigerian talent. The results showed the following:

•HR professionals are essentially indifferent to a candidate’s university when short listing for interviews or aptitude tests.

•HR professionals rate most candidates interviewed for jobs as “below average.”

•Creative or entrepreneurial skills are most lacking among candidates interviewed according to respondents.

•HR professionals are optimistic that the quality of manpower available in Nigeria will improve in the future.

•HR professionals say general business qualifications are currently most in demand by Nigerian employers

•Candidates with professional accounting qualifications are likely to have an edge in the Nigerian labour market as they are the most in demand by employers.

•There’s a shortage of candidates with engineering skills in Nigeria. HR professionals see these skills as being in high demand over the next five years.

•The average starting salary for college graduates in Nigeria ranges from N50, 000.00 to N100,000.

•Online job sites are now the most preferred mode of job advertisements for Nigerian companies.

Does a candidate’s educational route have an impact on his/her labour market attractiveness?

Our survey respondents overwhelmingly said “No” when asked if the nature of ownership of the university attended by a candidate has any impact on how HR professionals assess and select candidates for interviews and aptitude tests. The survey asked whether the kind of school impacts how they shortlist candidates for management-trainee positions or entry-level positions.

The results show that HR professionals are basically indifferent to nature of ownership of the university candidates attended in shortlisting them for interviews or aptitude tests. In practice, most vacancy adverts ask for candidates to have a minimum grade of “second-class upper” (2.1) to apply for a job. A critical look at the survey responses however shows some salient bias by HR professionals.

Nearly half, 48%, of HR professionals agree that a candidate is likely to be shortlisted for an interview or test because he/she attended a foreign university. This is quite significant and shows an inherent preference for candidates educated outside of Nigeria. This bias is not surprising considering the perception that the Nigerian university system is not turning out candidates suitable for employment.

Among Nigerian university graduates also, there is a bias for candidates from federal government- owned universities over private owned universities and state owned universities.

Thirty percent of HR professionals surveyed said they would pick a candidate for an interview or test because he attended a federal university. That’s compared to 18% who say they would shortlist a candidate just because he/she attended a private university. Also, interesting is the fact that 21% of HR professionals surveyed agreed that attending a state university is a disadvantage to being shortlisted for an interview or test.

Victoria Island – corporate capital of Nigeria

Our survey respondents confirmed the unofficial bias by Nigerian organisations for Bachelors degree holders over holders of the Higher National Diploma (HND). Sixty-nine percent of HR professionals surveyed say a candidate with a bachelors degree will have a higher chance of being shortlisted for an interview/test than a candidate with a HND. This is confirmation of the anecdotal experience of holders of HND in the Nigerian labour market who often find themselves rejected by the labour market, despite spending five years to acquire an HND. The Nigerian government seems at loss for a permanent solution for this anomaly, which has significant financial and psychological costs for those holding an HND.

The Diploma/Degree controversy

Over the years, there’s been a growing controversy on the way candidates who hold a Higher National Diploma (HND) are treated compared to candidates with a bachelors degree. Holders of the HND qualification have become basically unemployable by most Nigerian organisations who don’t consider them as well trained as their university counterparts. Some organisations —especially banks — actually prefer employing holders of the Ordinary National Diploma (OND) in the low cadre of their organisations rather than HND holders.

In 2006, in a bid to resolve the non-acceptance of HND qualifications by employers of labour in Nigeria, the Federal Government set up a committee to examine how it could merge Polytechnics into campuses of existing universities. The report of that committee was not made public, so the controversy drags on as the Polytechnics and Monotechnics keep supplying manpower held in low regard by the labour market.

No Preference for certain universities

HR Professionals say they have no preference for specific universities in shortlisting candidates for interviews, as 70% of the HR respondents answered “No” when asked if they have specific university preferences. It is worthy to note that 30% of HR Professionals also answered “Yes” to whether they have a preference for Federal Universities in shortlisting candidates for interviews.

Since nearly 90% of graduates available for employment are products of the Nigerian public tertiary education system, which has many challenges such as poor infrastructure and overcrowded classrooms, how do these graduates perform on job interviews?

HR professionals were asked to rate the average Nigerian graduate interviewed for a job on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest.

The results show 70% of respondents rating candidates at “5” or below. The highest frequency rating was 5, with 37% of respondents rating the candidate as average but only 30% of respondents considered the quality of candidates interviewed for jobs as above average.

Source: BusinessDay