A job hunter's paradise

What does an aspiring IT employee in Pune does to get his dream job? He just walks into Tamanna, a hotel outside Hinjewadi IT park, and orders for a sumptuous meal. Sounds intriguing?

Tamanna is the haven for both job hunters and recruiters, due to its proximity to the Rajiv Gandhi Software Technology Park of India (STPI), Hinjewadi. The eatery plays host to over 1,000 visitors every day, who are either scouting for a job or are probable employers.

An employee with a leading IT company, seeking anonymity, says that human resources personnel from leading IT companies visit the hotel and are seen browsing through bio-dat as and conducting preliminary interviews. The restaurant doubles up as a meeting point for prospective job-seekers serving a very unique purpose.

He also admits that one fine morning he walked into the hotel with a curriculum-vitae and had landed up a job with a business process outsourcing firm. "Recruitment activities are yet to gather pace in the city. Here word of mouth scheme still plays an important role. However, a meeting point like this goes a long way in helping the prospective employees," he adds.

The Hinjewadi IT park houses over 120 IT, IT-enabled services (ITeS) and BPO firms including Infosys, Compulink, Wipro, Tata Technologies, Cognizant and Geometric Software among others. Even though, employee attrition is on a much lower scale in Pune, still it is one of the major issues plaguing these companies. The hotel opens at 7 am and closes by around 11 pm, doing brisk business throughout the day. This is all the more important as a majority of the companies have canteens and food courts at their premises, curtailing the need for staff to step out for food.

Compulink chief executive officer Vishwas Mahajan confirms this. "Tamanna is a job seekers' joint and a number of recruitments have taken place here," he said.

He, however, claimed that his company has not been hit by employees leaving the organisation as it has numerous employee retention plans.

An industry analyst said that advertisements in the leading newspapers are still the preferred way of talent hunt. But Tamanna has its place, as it is one of the easiest, cheapest and fastest mode of recruitment.

Manjula Rajoli, human resources manager with Wipro, admits that she has heard of the hotel. She further said, "Our company has not been affected and we also don't conduct recruitments at Tamanna".

Prabhakar Shetty, chairman and managing director of Tamanna Group of Hotels, said that the 300-seat hotel with a cafeteria, roof-top and a multi-cuisine restaurant, is a meeting point for employees and employers. In the same breath he also denies that the hotel has deliberately positioned itself as a head-hunting joint.

"People would be meeting at the hotel and might be offering or accepting jobs. We have never done anything to position Tamanna as a recruitment joint," he said.