The Hindu Business Line : Hire the hirers

The HR sector has been busy filling up talent slots in IT and other sectors - missing the growing gaps in its own line-up. Hire the hirers first, experts tell the sector.

A study by Elixir Web Solutions, a New Delhibased recruitment process outsourcing firm, shows that the recruitment industry is going through a crunch of 200 professionals every day.

Build the militia for the warfare. Simultaneously, build the army," is the advice of Rajan Sabhlok, Lead, HR and Recruiting, BPO, Accenture India, for young HR managers.

At a recent Nasscom-HR summit on `War for Talent,' he was responding to a query on how to handle the problem of the growing lacuna in HR talent, particularly recruiters, in the country. It's clear India does not have enough HR horsepower to handle the needs of the IT/ITES (IT-enabled services) industry, says Rahul Varma, Senior Director, HR, Accenture India.

These sectors in the country, expected to employ about two million people by 2010, i.e, double the number of people they employ today, will predictably suffer from a severe shortage of competent HR talent soon.

Disquieting numbers

According to industry estimates, in the people's business, for every 50-75 persons recruited, one HR job gets created. This roughly translates into a demand for 40,000 people skilled in the HR area for the tech sector alone in the next three years.

This excludes the needs of other booming sectors such as retail, telecom, textiles and the recruitment industry itself, which needs as many people.

A study by Elixir Web Solutions, a New Delhi-based recruitment process outsourcing firm, shows that the recruitment industry is going through a crunch of 200 professionals every day.

Large organisations are often recruiting in excess of 1,000 people per year and one recruiter can effectively handle 5-20 placements a month. Generally recruiting teams are often as large as 15-20 people, with some organisations having recruiting teams with over 150 people.

Says Nirupama V.G., Associate Director, TeamLease Services, "Both in IT and in the recruitment industry, people play a crucial role. If you don't have people, you lose billing hours which translates into loss of revenue."

Ramping up HR capacity

No wonder then, companies are ramping up their HR capacity like there's no tomorrow, taking the attrition rate in the recruitment industry to BPO levels: 65-70 per cent per annum.

Take TeamLease for instance. In the last four years since the launch of the perm recruitment division, the headcount is around 650 people in just this division. In the next 18 months, Nirupama intends to hire 1,000 recruiters, a tall order considering the low supply levels. So where does she hope to get her people from? "From competition and from the industry for which we need recruiters. For instance, if we want recruiters for the BPO or the retail sector, we look for people already working in BPOs or in retail companies as they have some amount of domain knowledge."

Therefore the war for talent is now beginning at source: i.e., hirers are being hired first, both at recruitment divisions of companies and at recruitment firms. The country produces one million graduates every year. With a little bit of training, this pool can be filled easily.

Selling it as career choice

But the task on hand is to how make this an aspirational career choice of young graduates. Industry experts feel that 18-20-year-olds have to be educated on the changing role of HR itself. That it has moved from being a support function to a strategic function.

Says Jacob Samuel, Associate Partner, Elixir Web Solutions, "The recruitment function is getting aligned to the business function and you have recruitment heads reporting directly to the CEO." Whether this would be incentive enough for a career choice, is anybody's guess.

But it is true that HR is increasingly transitioning into a line function that can create strategic and competitive advantages for the company. HR managers are increasingly serving on the boards of companies. "So, are we building the capability to deliver the needs of the future?" asks Varma.

Accenture initiative

In a first-of-its-kind partnership, Accenture has tied up with XLRI, Jamshedpur, to cater to its internal HR needs.

It has launched an HR training academy where recent graduates seeking careers in HR can access specialised skills that the IT and ITES sectors would require. In fact, the first batch of 34 professionals (screened and now Accenture employees) is undergoing training at the organisation.

At the end of the 24-month programme, the participants will receive the `Accenture and XLRI Certification in Human Capital Management.' During the programme, the candidates will go through both face-to-face and virtual lessons.

Though the faculty mainly comprises professors from XLRI, top management executives of Accenture, from India, and other locations, will also coach the candidates on various aspects of HR. Varma says this will help them build a long-term trained workforce and give a differentiated approach to HR. He also believes that India is a breeding ground for future HR best practices and thought leaders.

Elixir exercise

Elixir, which currently employs 300 recruiters, is working on a similar exercise where it haslaunched a recruitment course for fresh graduates.

The Elixir School of Recruiting in Delhi is expected to give industry-ready professionals in a year's time. And the new crop of recruiters will be used both internally and to service the company's clients across 13 verticals. Samuel says Elixir plans to start similar training schools across the country.

`Three stages to HR career path'

"What I am very worried about is the shortage of experienced and trained HR professionals today. When the industry hires software professionals in such large numbers, there is a commensurate need for mature HR professionals who would make those recruitments happen and deploy good HR practices across the numbers," says Hema Ravichandar, Strategic HR Advisory, and formerly chief of HR at Infosys Technologies.

According to her, "When I graduated from an IIM (1983), there were probably 10 candidates across all IIMs who specialised in HR. And another 100 from XLRI and TISS. Now, if you take a headcount, chances are that the count would at the maximum reach only about 150 across these same institutions! This is what should worry us."

In HR, as in any other stream, one would typically have three types of roles — the strategisers, the managers and the executors. While the strategic level designs the HR philosophy, and drives the HR agenda, it is the management and the execution levels that deliver on the promise. The shortage is felt at all the three levels but it is specially at the execution and management levels that the crunch is really bad. People who are strong in HR concepts, who have an eye for detail and most importantly, empathy for the customer, in this case the employee stakeholder. She says, "You can't possibly have mistakes in offer or increment letters!"

At the manager level, there is an acute shortage of good quality professionals. "There aren't enough number of people at this level. In contrast, at the execution level, the industry does have the numbers but the quality leaves a lot to be desired. This actually impacts the quality of HR Service Delivery in organisations. And is what requires attention," she says.

Talent upgradation

Infusion of fresh talent is just one of the challenges that the industry faces. Sandeep Kanwar, CEO, TalentPro, a Chennai-based recruitment firm, says that HR personnel themselves need constant development and training in order to position themselves appropriately, both with employees and employers.

"They have to identify and tap strengths in people. For example, in the IT/ITES segment, or even the telecom segment, the HR personnel must be equipped with certain skills that will help them be effective."

He feels the basic skills include good communication and planning skills, but besides these, they must be trained in effective multi-tasking, managing expectations of both employees and employers, internal customer/employee management and stress management techniques, to name a few.

"It is important that the HR personnel be approachable and sensitive enough to other people's needs, which earns the trust of the other employees. The truth remains that the HR department forms the all-important link between the management and the employees, thereby operating a two-way communication channel for both."

So, the challenge for the HR team in the IT/ITES sectors, as others, lies not just in ramping up numbers but also in harvesting skills that could bring in better quality of people into the industry.

anjali@thehindu.co.in

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