The Hindu Business Line : Does this one fit?

Study One: Shyma is one very unhappy HR manager. Her organisation's Head of Sales has pointed an accusatory finger at Shyma's apparent inability to recruit a couple of strong Program Managers for one of his critical clients - positions which (Shyma has been oft reminded) have been open for several weeks. Internet advertising, contingency sourcing through HR vendors, word-of-mouth calls - nothing seems to have turned up that particular specimen fitting both the client's brief and the company's wallet. To add to her misery, she has been informed of a unique skill set, the exact combination of which has to be sourced, realistically, within the next 48 hours.

Study Two: Ranjan Joy, a resourcing executive for a young BPO, has not slept in the past six days, as he prowls around the Net, hunting for an elusive Blue Pumpkin expert, a position which he thought was behind him. His company does not believe in retaining the services of consultants ("Too expensive! And after all, we do have you to handle our sourcing, right?"). After two offer rejections and one no-show, Ranjan is working on non-existent schedules trying to fill a requirement that has now assumed gargantuan proportions in his mind.

Study Three: Syed's recruitment budgets are haywire, as he looks at the number of CRM replacements he has had to fill just in the past three months. The ubiquitous replacement guarantees offered by his regular HR consultants have once again disappeared into thin air, as his time deadlines defeat the purpose of wrangling a free replacement out of the manpower agency.

WELCOME to the age of IT Recruitment Trauma - where lives are measured by the numbers of technical tests one designs and administers, where manpower acquisition targets are stiffer than the most ardous FMCG sales numbers and where sudden deaths occur just about once every couple of hours.

Only the most stout-hearted have a place in this new era of just-in-time recruitment. The specifications for a recruitment manager in the IT/tech space (and their tribe is ever-increasing), reads, "Ability to handle pressure, (when you have to sprint against deadlines which are just that - dead), strong multi-tasking skills (to manage the Line manager, the HR head, the recruitment consultant, the outsource vendor, the passport office and the EPF department almost synchronously), excellent communication and negotiation skills (to ensure that the candidate whom your business head said had the makings of a genius, believes you when you tell him that he is truly lucky that you are deigning to make him a `great' offer)".

The good news is that the Indian software/technology industry is thriving and all software exporters are poised to climb newer heights. This, of course, means that the supply of skilled, trained and `on target' candidates has to be blindingly rapid and seamlessly on-time to keep up with the surge.

If you assumed that the narratives mentioned at the beginning of this article were flights of imagination, think again - fact turned stranger than fiction as Recruitment Managers swapped true-life tales on a recent Saturday afternoon in Chennai. In order to provide penetrative insight into the issues faced by the IT recruitment professional, this scenario was taken up for scrutiny at a meet in Chennai. IT recruitment behaviour was brought under the microscope using several data collection instruments, including the unstructured personal interview and the open-ended questionnaire, culminating in an energetic focus group session.

HR/Recruitment Managers from over 60 corporates, ranging from dynamic transnationals to sleek software centres, opened their minds to allow glimpses into the unique recruitment issues faced by his/her company. The focus group discussion, with a group size of nine participants took place on a leisurely Saturday afternoon and the lunch was peppered with lively exchange of recruitment-anecdotes, as the recruiters turned raconteurs. The managers also aired their wish-lists - copy-book recruitment methodology modified to fit today's scenario. As the originally planned three-hour session grew in length to throw sharp focus on the current mores of IT recruitment, the moderator's pad reflected the following:

HR manager as partner, not recruiter

: Since the days of the last software/dotcom upswing, one major take-out which most IT companies have recognised and internalised is that the right way of managing recruitment is to start from the very beginning. The HR manager is part of the project scoping team - no longer is she just the bargain hunter. She would be part of the group that decides the strength of the project, its feasibility and its cost-benefit. While this ensures that there are no lapses between the pre-sales pitch and the fulfilment, it demands that the HR manager change focus from being a reactive procurer to a proactive associate keeping her antenna tuned in perfectly to the trends around her. The proverbial ear-to-the-ground is critical in determining which skill sets have to be stocked up in advance. If the occasion merits, the HR member is also part of the pre-sales team, understanding the subtle nuances of the project and adding a hands-on approach to selection.

Honey, I shrunk the recruitment life-cycle

: The recruitment life-cycle, starting from the creation of the resource need, till the incumbent actually joins the organisation has crumbled - what earlier was a period of maybe 20-30 man-days, has been transformed into a minimal 10-15 days, in several cases it is merely half that number.

The key reason for this is the fact that the industry is still in a highly competitive mode with projects getting assigned overnight, requiring that the staffing happens equally fast — leap-frogging the normal, technical test-assessment centre-HR interview-line interview-salary negotiation-medical exam-final offer process — to a simple, techical-cum-line interview and HR-cum-salary meeting. In most situations, the business would rather go for an accurate skill-set match rather than an ideal all-round professional.

Salary, still the determining factor

: While the junior level professionals displayed alarming zeal in switching jobs, the companies were prepared for it, given that salary, even if it represented a minimal 5 per cent increase, was the biggest lure. But the recruiters also felt that once the programmers survived the initial tendency to job-hop, they stayed with the organisation for at least three-four years. Senior Project Managers and Program Managers were more impressed with the brand of the company and the flexibility in working styles, rather than salary per se. However, negotiating a 30 per cent hike from one move to another, at this level, recruiters felt, was par for the course. Benchmarking of salaries and benefits was fast changing into a separate industry by itself, since every IT firm on the brink of growth was keen on keeping up with the Joneses. Recruitment was most time-consuming and exasperating at the level of Analyst/Project lead. Here, the attrition numbers jogged at a brisk pace, with a lot of companies adopting the ex-employee network to add vital manpower numbers.

Recruitment Consultants! Seek alternate careers

!: Existing databank, word-of-mouth references, employee referrals, Internet advertising, print ads - all of these methods of recruitment, in that precise order, are favoured over the usage of a recruitment consultant. Breach of contractual terms and lack of performance guarantees made the recruiters swap the personnel agency route for the above-mentioned vistas. The Print Ad method was used when the number of positions to be filled was significant (from company to company this varied, swinging from five positions to 500).

The participants expressed a distinct antipathy towards the larger recruitment firms, opining that the sloth of these firms adding to their more expensive consulting time, made them the absolute last choice. Smaller recruitment firms with sound network of contacts, investing time and resource in aggressive key account management, made for a better, if not the best alternative.

Retention, less expensive than recruitment

: By a rough estimate, for every recruiting rupee, it takes just 40 paise for retention. And the feel-good factors associated with it made the HR initiative a distinct culture builder. Soft loans, re-skilling endeavours, sign-on bonuses staggered over a 18 month time frame and round-robin on-site projects, were retention hooks, which served to cut the attrition rate. A few sharp HR managers also went in for key man insurance to pad the nick of resource cuts. Women managers who negotiated for flexi-time and crèche-support made for better resources.

Recruiters were happy with an 18 - 24 month stay-span for a junior-level programmer and a three-five-year span for a middle management professional. The technique of `re-employment' that has gained prominence now, enables both the company and the employee to understand the relevance of the position and the commensurate skill sets. All these serve to extend the career of the employee, leading to reduced recruitment costs.

The retention culture percolated down from the CEO.

Retrenchment, a harsh undeniable truth

: A number of reasons could be attributed to it, but the single largest retrencher of manpower still continues to be the IT industry. With the negative connotations to retrenchment slowly ebbing out, HR managers are far less sensitive about handing over the pink slip to the odd employee.

Retrenchment is slowly but surely being accepted as a necessary surgery, performed upon emergency to prolong the organisation's subsistence. Non-performance seems to be the mantra driving the process, averred the respondents.

The author is the CEO of AVTAR Career Creators and can be reached at sr@avtarcc.com.

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