1. BACK<br />ON Even though the job scenario <br /> Has become buoyant,<br /> Companies are particular about<br /> What they want<br />TRACK<br />KALPANA PATHAK<br />Sudesh Sen; head of a Mumbai-based recruitment firm, is taking six month to close C-suite assignments for his clients. This is exactly double the time he would take over a year ago.<br />“My clients now want specialised CEOs. Its about nuanced jobs. Niche areas like oilfield services, logistics, port development and education, which were unheralded before, are being looked at right now and vanilla CEOs will not do” says Sen. On the other hand, standard positions in organizations are filled in by internally-groomed executives.<br />This selective recruitment, however, is not limited to C-suit hiring. Head hunters say post slow- down, companies have boiled down their options to specifics, even for mid-and senior-level manpower requirement.<br />So while jobs are back, companies are particular about what they want, “At present, companies are very focused on getting the right talent for the job. Unlike earlier, where the focus was not on productivity<br />Infrastructure is the key to double digit growth<br />Sanjiv Goenka<br />The downturn appears to be over and the economy is regaining its momentum. Our GDP is expected to grow by 8.5 per cent this financial year on the back of strong industrial and service growth numbers in the past six months and the expectations of a good monsoon.<br />Still, the holy grail of double-digit growth will elude us. Blame it on sluggish infrastructure development. <br />The shortage of energy and transport hamper the ability of our people to produce, trade and consumer goods and services, while inadequate water and sanitation systems prevent our peoples from being as healthy and productive as they can be. <br />In the context, Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh deserves kudos for coming with an incisive management solution to the problem. His idea that the Planning Commission set quarterly targets and monitor compliance for five key infrastructure sectors –power, roads and highways, ports, civil aviation, and railways – will help inject momentum and accountability in infrastructure development programs. Also, the referral of the knotty issues to the cabinet committee on infrastructure, instead of letting disputes between ministries fester, is a useful solution.<br />The Planning Commission deputy chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deserves special credit as well for his proactive approach to accelerating infrastructure development. He has made it clear that the country’s scare resources will have to go to better performing sectors. That should wake up the management of the groups that take their funding for granted and tend to work without a care for deadlines.<br />But at the same time, we have to acknowledge that some people do not welcome infrastructure projects with great enthusiasm at the local level and this has to be settled. In addition, there are environmental issues involved. The impasse between the Ministry of Environment and Forest and the Ministry of Roads Transport and Highways overtaking a highway through the Pench tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh is an example of that.<br />The stop-start progress of roads and highways and power projects underscores the need for a greater political support for the infrastructure development agenda. Also, the investable trade-off between the potential common good and established local interests has to be negotiated and not imposed.<br />A democratic settlement can delay things, sometimes interminably. But that can be taken care of with a multiple options and time-bound approach. Finally, there is always the judiciary as the arbiter to resolve deadlocks.<br />Regulation of infrastructure remains a messy affair with differences over jurisdiction coming in the way of speedy execution of infrastructure projects.<br />We as a country do not have a lot of experience with impartial, independent regulators in a competitive environment. So, we are seeing the evolution of a regulatory culture and, as expected, there are problems.<br />For example, the Planning of Commission’s idea to have a super-regulator for infrastructure instead of having separate regulator for each activity has not found many takers, as the established regulators do not want to let go. However< the escalation of inter-ministerial issues to the cabinet committee on infrastructure should help. The stakes are high for the government, as a large part of its budget is spent on infrastructure.<br />The private sector has made useful contribution to infrastructure development in the country. In fact, it is the public sector that is lagging behind targets. The private sector is set to meet the target of$ 500 Billion investment in infrastructure during the current plan period of 2007-12.<br />The creditor for the telecom revolution in the country goes solely to private enterprise. The success of telecom could be replicated in other infrastructure areas too by creating enough room for the private sector to pursue profits and growth.<br />Importantly, while the government is prioritizing speedy execution of projects in the energy and transport sectors, double- digit economic growth will not be possible without a significant improvement in irrigation infrastructure to boost agricultural productivity as well.<br />There also needs to be a dramatic improvement in people’s living conditions for everything else in t he economy to matter. So, drinking water and sanitation infrastructure also needs an urgent investment.<br />But on having a warm body in the seat, now people have a clear metric in mind to measure performance,” says Ashok Reddy ,Managing director and co-founder of Team Lease Services, a staffing company.<br />HR experts say the job scenario is very buoyant and they are singing up assignments every day. Reddy’s firm, for instance, has been handling around 3500 open positions daily against 500 positions still six months ago. Pre-slowdown, his firm used to handle around 10000 open positions every day.<br />Along with large players, mid-caps are also flexing their muscles and using the post-recession opportunity to hire teams and talents.”During the slowdown, a lot of headcount rationalization (Natural and forced attrition) happened leading to loss of ‘flab and muscle’ but the companies are now starting to rebuild muscle”, adds Reddy.<br />According to on-line employment firm Naukri, the job index for April at 1,019 is up 6 per cent from 926 in March this year. Even the monster employment index climbed 8 points (7 per cent) in April. The monster employment index for April at 125 points was the highest in the last seven months.<br />Driven by sectors like IT, health care, banking and insurance, life science and pharmaceuticals, the Naukri Job Speak Index Surpassed pre-downturn levels. A Year on year comparison of the job index shows all industry sectors, cities and functional areas moving bin a positive direction.<br />HCL Technologies plans to hire 5000 freshers in 2010,compared with the 2000 it hired in 2009.In the quarter gone by, the gross employee addition was, 7316, taking the headcount to 58129.<br />“We have been doing more of lateral hiring than just freshers. However, going forward, we have decided to rely more on freshers, train them and use them. So, we will be increasingly using freshers in our business,” says HCL Tech CFO Anil Chanana.<br />A similar trend can be seen in mid-size IT/BPO companies. Mumbai-based Patni Computers, for instance, plans to up its headcount by 2500-3000 employees in 2010 and the normal ratio of engineering to non-engineering graduates is 2:1.<br />The company expects highest hiring upswing in the area of IMS< BPO and application development.<br />“We are anticipating positive hiring, based on our business outlook and we plan to hire 2500-3000 employees in 2010. With the economy recovering, we will also witness a reduction in bench levels and enhancement in utilization levels this year,” says Patni Executive Vice-President and Global Head (human resources) Rajesh Padmanabhan. <br />The Naukri job index for Hyderabad, Pune and Bangalore crossed the July ’2008 mark for the first time in April. Hiring activity for Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune moved up by 18,17and 10per cent respectively in April’2010 over March’2010.Although the index for Delhi and Kolkata saw a dip in the April index, the three month moving average index moved up 7and6 per cent in April ‘2010 over March’2010.<br />A deeper analysis of the hiring activity reflects that the IT industry which was grappling with recession has seen things moving in a positive direction with hiring activity moving up by 48 per cent in April-2010 over April 2009. This was also reflected in the Naukri Hiring Outlook survey (Jan-2010) where 85 per cent of recruiters in the IT sector said that new jobs will be created in 2010.<br />“The first quarter of the year started on an optimistic note with a jump in hiring sentiment across cities, industries and functional areas. We can see that the job market has recovered sharply from the depths of gloom and the April job index has surpassed the pre-downturn levels,” said Sumeet Singh, national head, marketing and communication, Info Edge.<br />According to Monster data, online recruitment activity rose in 18 of the 27 industry sectors between March and April. Healthcare led all industries with a 29-point gain in April, continuing its upward trend, indicating a relatively high level of online recruiting in support of scientific research and development activity. The banking and financial; and IT categories also edged higher in April.<br />The first quarter of 2010 has seen most of the industries on the path to recovery. The IT and insurance sectors have seen the maximum movement on the recruitment front with their job index moving up by 16 per cent and 11 per cent on a month basis, respectively. Both these industries for the first time witnessed their job index surpass the July’2008 levels. The IT-enabled sector has seen a consecutively upward moving index for the past four months.<br />Hiring activity for the banking sector moved up by 8 per cent where ICICI Bank, India’s largest private bank, plans to increases its headcount by hiring 5000-7000 people this year and Bank of Baroda plans to hire around 3200 people. Hiring activity for the oil & gas sector moved up by 11 per cent in April 2010 over March 2010.<br />According to Sen, the recruitment industry is back to where it was in 2008, but substantial correction has set in. “Companies all are linking emoluments to performance. In many cases performance is not measured annually but there are around six criteria in place. Pay packets have not gone out of control like they had before the slow-down,” adds Sen.<br />The year 2009 saw little or no incentives from the companies to their employees. Even as companies cut pay packets as part of their austerity measures, there were no complaints from employees as having a job in place was more important. But now the workforce at these companies has started looking out for greener pastures, say industry players.<br />However, in terms of retention strategies, companies are incentivising people to performance and hence have linked achievements to rewards. Also, the selection of right people for the right job ensures reduced attrition.<br />As the recruitment industry looks up, headhunters are rubbing their hands in glee. Reddy’s firm expects to more than double its business from the present Rs 9 crore to Rs 20 crore. “The positive trend in the market has kicked in the last five months, and our billing has gone up around 40 per cent as compared to the previous months,” Reddy adds.<br />Team Lease has also put in place an assessment team. “We now have an entire assessment team in place which is independent of the recruiters. The team comes up with methods for mapping industries, skills, etc and each job gets measured and formulated. While at present assessment is more for the entry and mid-level recruitments, for senior management recruitments, psychometric tests are in place,” adds Reddy.<br />