The Hindu Business Line : When head hunters come under firing line

New Delhi/Chennai, Nov. 23 The uncertainty caused by the slowdown in the West is showing up in several ways for the IT and BPO companies: the diluted importance of their HR function is one; a change in skills-required is another.

Even HR professionals now prefer keeping in regular touch with recruitment firms, given the pruning in HR and recruitment teams of various companies. An official in a recruitment agency points out that some large recruitment firms have shed 50-100 people. He also cites an example of a colleague, who left the firm for a corporate position, now looking to join back.

Ms Hema Subramanian, CEO Live Connections, a recruitment firm, points out that competition in the recruitment industry is bound to go up now. “After all, when a HR person loses a corporate job, he or she only needs a PC, a Net connection and a phone to start his or her own firm!” she opined.

Skills

IT companies now look at niche capabilities seriously. “‘A solution architect with 10 years’ experience, for instance, could well be in demand,” said Mr E. Balaji, CEO, Ma Foi Management Consultants.

Flattish salaries for various corporate positions are adding to HR firms’ woes as they mean muted realisations. Mr Agrawal said that global companies facing issues in their overseas headquarters are naturally clamming-up, whereas Indian companies are hiring relatively more aggressively.

Telecom saves the day

Sectors worst affected from a recruitment standpoint are real estate, retail, IT and BPO (particularly those focused on financial services) and financial services, itself. Interestingly, telecom is looking up, thanks to new players such as Swan and Unitech, and aggressive expansion by existing ones, said Mr Shiv Agrawal of ABC Consultants.

“The telecom sector is looking at a net hiring of over 500 people a month. Other sectors that are hiring aggressively are pharma, healthcare and insurance,” he said.

Mr Balaji of Ma Foi agrees that telecom continues to look bullish as far as hirings are concerned, with about 15 per cent surge in recruitments.

In fact, Mr Sanjay Chandra, Managing Director of Unitech – which decided to sell 60 per cent in its telecom arm, Unitech Wireless, to Telenor last month – recently stated that his Group was adding 100 people a month ‘largely for telecom operations’.