Entry level tech recruits could get more

Job portals, referrals make 'free market' a fait accompli

Human resources managers from technology firms who met here for a discussion on "corporate challenges in campus recruitment" agreed that there was little they could do about the "free market" in recruitment. Irrespective of what happened on campus recruitments, a student could easily keep looking for greener pastures.

Ironically, technology itself was the chief culprit in creating this situation, as regardless of what the firms or managements of the top engineering schools in the country did, a candidate "can always go on the Net". And, as things stand, a company dare not refuse to tap that medium for a competitor will.

So, to recruit more effectively, recruiters are staring at budgets that will have to accommodate between 15 per cent and 20 per cent increase over last year's entry level pay, particularly among the product specialists, says Rishi Das, who runs Careernet Consulting, a recruitment firm. But, this figure can mean nothing. Pay can vary from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 8 lakh, so it isn't clear if the hike will be across the board.

Das's firm organised the panel discussion here on Wednesday and brought to it professors from the Indian Institutes of Technology and a handful of other respected engineering schools.

It also brought HR managers from companies like Lucent, which makes telecom equipment, Juniper Networks, Goldman Sachs Services, a captive applications development and operations back office in Bangalore for the New York-based investment bank and Open Silicon, a foundryless chip design startup.

Everything from the lack of "brand awareness" to the marriage market, with parents refusing daughters to young men working for companies they have never heard of, is affecting the product engineering company's effort to hire and retain talent. The long "recruitment cycle", from August of a year to July of the next meant that companies could expect serious distortions in their plans.

Even after firms attended campus recruitment events, made firm job offers to students, which were accepted, there were no guarantees that all the students would turn up for work on day one. "Only 20 per cent of them turned up," for the rest decide on other jobs. Even among those who turn up, up to half can leave in six months for a variety of reasons, including, not liking the job.

That last one is largely because "on the ground" there is little collaboration between industry and academia, both sides agreed. Partial solutions aired included workshops to help students think about what their long term goals are, pre-placement interactions with alumni working in various companies, and internships which can be converted to jobs.

The interns can also go back and spread the good word about the firms they work in, some suggested. "That works like magic," said Sathya Gupta, a vice-president of engineering at Open Silicon.

The IITs have now also initiated a process that will help "sharpen" the recruitment process for all concerned. They have pushed the placement process from August to December, cutting down the entire cycle by nearly half.

"This was made possible by going back to the four semester post-graduate courses," said Kushal Sen from IIT Delhi, "so the masters degree students graduated at the same time of the year as the undergraduate students."

For the companies this means "we can plan better" and expect those plans to be distorted less, says V Kartikeyan, director of human resources at Texas Instruments India.

In the end, everyone seemed to agree that pay packets not withstanding, giving a potential recruit a clear feel for a "career" as against a "job" Is key to hiring, and keeping, him.

There wasn't much talk about "her", though, with the brief exception of a mention of one all-girls college and vague murmurs of how important the issue was. Perhaps that is also a clear indication of the lack of a robust industry-academia-students interaction that will benefit all.