Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Saturday, Oct 16, 2004
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Saturday, Oct 16, 2004 |
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Human Resources Industry & Economy - Events Info-Tech - Outsourcing Rising per-hire cost, attrition bugbear of BPO firms Our Bureau
Chennai , Oct. 15 RISING per-hire costs, attrition, problems of `bad hire' and choosing the right hunting ground for recruitment are among the challenges that HR managers of person-intensive BPO companies face today. At a seminar at The Hindu Opportunities Fair, HR chiefs from various companies spoke of the strategies their companies have adopted for recruitment and retention. While e-Serve International, one of the top five BPO companies in India with 7,500 staff on its rolls, prefers to work with `channel partners' for recruiting, Cognizant Technology Solutions relies heavily on employee referrals. Vision Healthsource, a BPO company operating in the health space that recently became a part of Perot Systems, strives towards creating a brand identity through advertisements and, therefore, prefers to recruit through job ads. Mr K.S. Kumar, Head (Human Resources), e-Serve, said that the company preferred to spend money upfront on recruitment infrastructure so that the per-hire cost is kept low. Because a bad hire could have as serious implications as loss of business for BPO companies, the company has put in place a process of verifying everything, from the candidate's identity to testimonials. Consequently, hiring costs are higher and therefore, the hiring process itself is outsourced. The company has tie-ups with about 100 recruitment agencies across the country. Per-hire cost could be as high as Rs 8,000-15,000 for a BPO company, Mr Kumar said. e-Serve spent Rs 5 crore on recruiting alone last year. Companies such as the relatively smaller Vision Healthsource have to attract talent first. Therefore, the company stresses on brand-building logos and other visuals in its recruitment ads, said Mr T. Ramanand, Head (HR), Vision Healthsource. A strong brand is not relevant only in sales but in attracting and retaining talent, according to Mr Bharat Chadda, Senior Vice-President & Country Manager (India), Sutherland Global Services. The discussion also veered around campus recruitments, especially on which institutions to select from. Mr T. Muralidharan, Executive Chairman, TMI Network, a Hyderabad-based company that specialises in recruiting and recruitment ads, said that at campus interviews one came across "most unreasonable behaviour", such as romantic expectations of a job and undue comparisons of salaries. He added that most companies targeted the same set of institutions. Mr Kumar said that e-Serve was always checking on the standard of the institutions from which the company directly recruited. For instance, the company recently found that the standard of education at a Mumbai institution had dropped because they had adopted a policy of reservations and e-Serve stopped campus recruitments from there.
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