sorry folks, nothing new to report here, but hiring still sucks big time in india. a small list of some situations we’ve encountered over the past month:
- interviewee, while being screened on the phone, decides to hang up abruptly to take another call (we could tell from that funny buzzing noise that speakers make when mobile phones ring). we call him back and ask him if he hung up on us to take another call. he responds “yes”
- interviewee does not show up at previously agreed upon time. we call him, only to learn that he’ll be coming 4 hours later. he shows up to the restated time 1 hour late, only to tell us he doesn’t feel well. he sits for the interview and doesn’t last more than 10 minutes
- we ask interviewee what his strength is, as we’ll focus our questioning only on his strengths. he says “ask me anything!” we encourage him to specifically state his strength, so that we can hear a well-thought out response, but again, defiantly, he seems to be einstein’s lost kin. we ask him a question, and he chokes up, unable to answer.
i don’t know about you guys, but when i was interviewing for jobs years ago, i made sure any angle of my self-projection was put together as best as possible, whether it was the way i looked, dressed, the manner in which i answered questions, my body language, the way i sat, etc. we’re a far cry away from that here in india. the job market here, especially within these “shallow skilled” jobs (bpo, junior level engineering, support, financial services, etc.) is way too forgiving. person x with a limited range of shallow skills can easily get (and will expect) a 20-30% pay increase no matter how long his tenure at his previous job. what the f*ck!? there are a few major issues with the candidates that we’re seeing coming through the door:
- resume fabrication
- shallow skill set/complete lack of depth
- no interview etiquette
while this may (hopefully) be a medium-term issue for us small companies trying our best to hire best-of-breed talent, this also smells like an amazing business opportunity. there is talent out there, but you need to weed through this landfill of candidates before you can find a respectable, deep, passionate candidate. what is the best way to do that while minimizing the time that an entrepreneur has to spend meandering through some of the ridiculous situations listed above?
Unfortunately, this is how it is in most of the cases. However, there is another group of true cultured resources, who excel in their respective fields. But…as the saying goes…they are indeed the rare breed. Perhaps the new generation BPO culture is partly to be blamed for such attitude.
innINDIA, thanks for your thoughts. it’s hard to say if anyone is to blame, since there are so many facets that lend itself to this type of hiring environment. the country is experiencing such tremendous growth in some areas, industries literally don’t have time to wait for the sophistication of the candidates to catch up, but in their impatience, they are fostering a type of attitude that works against creating long-term human resource value.
Hi,
I totally agree that there are a set of individuals out there who have been offered way too many jobs in the recent past. This has been a result of the BPOs facing attrition rates in excess of 45% and thus anybody who can speak English is hired. Not only is this leading to a growing feeling that Indians do not have the right attitude but also creates an unhealthy atmosphere.
However, besides a few bad fishes that are spoiling the pond, there are loads of resources available that really make India a talent hunt ground. If you look at the exceptional skills that people here posses not only in terms of speaking English, or technical degrees. There is no such feeling of working 5 days a week or only 9 to 6. They are ready to push the limits as long as it guarantees personal & professional growth.
Deap, I suggest that you get in touch with a professional recruitment agency and you will be able to filter a lot of junk out without paying a hefty amount.I suggest that you can look at some of the leading jobsites like Naukri.com. They have services where a professional team speaks to people, schedules interviews and all that you have to do in the end is interview them to find out if they match your requirements
Thanks
Sachin
Hey Deap
The business opportunity you talk about is what recruitment agencies were suppose to do. Weed out. But we lost them somewhere to greed and really lack of good talent. I sit and work with some of the best brains in the country, but even there I can see the need for polishing.
Also, recruitment at start ups needs a perception change. Everybody ‘thinks’ that startups don’t pay and thats why don’t even apply there, whereas the truth is that most start ups have the money to hire good talent and infact all the ones I applied to were paying way above the average mark my peers are getting paid.
Anyways
Good Article and best of luck finding good people and then even more luck to retain them I guess.
Cheers
Shitij
hey sachin, shitij, thanks a ton for your thoughts.
sachin, we’ve currently engaged three separate head hunting agencies that specifically focus on tech/it, and we’re still finding a ton of resume fabrication and unprofessional behaviour. we’ve sifted through naukri.com many times and we find the site inundated with a lot of garbage. you see, part of what i did not communicate clear enough in the post is the exact type of talent a startup requires – self-actualizing, deep, passionate, and fluid – almost the anti-christ of what is available in india in abundance!
shitij, i think you bring up a very good point by contrasting our experience with the public perception of startups. part of it may be educating the market about startups, the culture, the expectations, etc. this is perhaps something we can do a better job of, and i’ll certainly give it a shot going forward. at this time, i’d juggle live grenades while riding a unicycle if i could just get my hands on the right guy/gal!
Try concentrating on referrals and friends of friends of friends. Recruitment agencies have lost their credibility.
Anyways is there a place with the job profiles you are looking for. I dont mind forwarding it in my friend circle.
Hi,
Delving deeper into the perception point made by Shitij, I think there is more than just monthly pay to it.
Job philosophy in India, predominantly has revolved around job security and continuity. In case of start-ups, lots of people know about the money that founders / investors make when it’s acquired or other chosen exit route opted. What most of them do not know is what happens to their job in such an event (job security).
Most of the guys in their late twenties have witnessed (directly or indirectly) the unfortunate dotcom bust, pink slips and lost jobs. This makes them concerned about the sustainability of the business model, revenues and the firm itself (job security again). On the other hand, tier 1 & tier 2 IT companies offer that comfort level.
We don’t really have Marissa Mayers of the world as role models. Rather, we haven’t really marketed the success stories of both, stock options realized as well as career progression of early stage startup joiners.
I am sure there are enough passionate talented challenge seeking guys here in India. It’s about educating and attracting them to startups. Hopefully, Indian startups would soon innovate a talent acquisition model. Attracting and retaining best talent has never been easy for any company.
I wish you all the best and hope you get the best of the guys soon.
“self-actualizing, deep, passionate, and fluid”
@Deap – Right on! Startups need a different breed of people to lead and work in them.
We’ve been trying to hire (non-IT) using naukri. It is certainly a pain. It takes several man hours to go through the pile of resumes to find out that half of them are from BE/BTech/MCA candidates applying for a totally different job with a totally different skill set.
I agree with Shitij that it helps getting referrals from freinds or fof. I think Tech events can help too.
It is interesting to read about educating people about startups. I read a post by Komli/Pubmatic’s founder a couple of days ago.
http://amargoel.com/2007/07/14/startups-are-way-too-risky-arent-they/
Deep,
I fully agree with you and I have some more examples of such things which set me off.
I really don’t like that while sending resumes many candidates send a single email to various software companies and put email-ids of different software companies in CC or BCC of same email.
Sometime when I call candidates after receiving his/her resume and tell them name of my company, they ask me where is your company located and is it a programming position or teaching position like in some training institute.
Sometime when I call candidates, somebody else pick up and talks in a rude way when I ask about the candidate. Sometime they start joking with me considering I am some friend of them acting like an employer.
I can do nothing but ignore and forget about such candidates.
However I think to a large extent our current education system and training infrastructure is responsible for such unprofessional behavior and poor skills of candidates.
I think in India one is never taught what is required for a job, in ever mushrooming computer institutes you are not taught to be ready for a programmer’s job as soon as you finish the course. You need to learn on your own.
Another irony is that in most of computer institutes teaching staff are those guys who tried but couldn’t become a programmers so we have a situations where a bunch of failed programmers are trying to teach students and make successful programmers out of them.
I personally visited a few local training institutes in Nagpur and offered them my assistance and guidance in training students so that in turn I can also get some trained developers for my small startup.
But I am very sad to say that response from them was rather unprofessional. Some of them made me wait in their reception before meeting them, didn’t call me back when they said they would, didn’t return my calls. Finally I gave up as these were all the reputed institutes atleast in Nagpur.
Its nobody’s guess that only unprofessional candidates will come out from such institutes.
Having said that I will say industry, people, everything is changing and maturing and I am optimistic about the future and that these hiring problems will diminish with time.
interesting thought, gaurav. where we’re going to start spending some time is trying to mine out the self-taught engineering talent in india. the institutionally trained minds tend to be too conformist and not cavalier enough for us – imagine a company saying that! we’re really looking for people that don’t need the day-to-day hand-holding, but understand the merits of teamwork. the guys/gals that spend most of their waking hours thinking generally about problem-solving, analytics,and logic, those are the guys/gals we’re after!
sachin, i feel your pain. again, i think the onus is now on us to get even more innovative with our recruiting techniques. most of ya’ll have heard some of google’s tactics, i.e. posting puzzling mathematical equations on hoardings, and asking people to solve it on some obscure URL, etc. i think employers need to start thinking along these lines.
Hi Deap,
I would not like to add on much, except for the fact that i do not blame this on the trend. I do believe that such cases persists but its hard to believe that you find people with such reckless attitude all the time. One needs to change his perception. While its very easy to quote how an interviewee behaves, when you turn the table, the interviewers are no exceptions. I myself have come across numerous interviewers whose attitude is not only astonishingly surprising but also embarrassing.
While taking any kind of interview, be it in a big firm or a start up, one needs to take notice of the thinking process of the candidate instead of his bookish knowledge. If a person can think right, he can do right!
These are just two personal point of view and i have no intentions to offend anyone. By the way its a very well worded article and more so over, an apt article. I believe hiring is directly proportional to the people. If people are good, hiring is good else both suck!
What todays generation needs besides etiquettes, etc etc is ‘realization’ and ‘the need to value things’.
Google also uses Google Adsense Ads on various tech blogs (with Java/Python content) to try and get the right people. Not sure how well they perform though.
See http://www.zefhemel.com/archives/2004/08/16/why-java-sucks for an example.
Hi Deep,
I think you expect pple to line up in front of your company…but why should they do that..I mean your company has a 20% probability of surviving 2 years , so these are the people that you will get
If you are a big brand…then u will get good people. Or a compelling business model….
best of luck..I hope I am wrong about the 20% comment above…
cheers
Ninad
ninad,
about the only thing i can thank you for is expending a the last few brain cells you had for the utterly retarded comment you left above. a line of people is exactly what we don’t want. unfortunately, talent is at a level here where it takes about 100X the amount of manpower to create the same level of market value in a company here as opposed to a company of identical industry and service offering abroad.
Well, it’s all a matter of perspective.
Employees have a lot of options these days so it’s quite obvious they don’t give startups much importance. I once heard a smart man working for TCS say that he was planning to leave for a smaller company. He was sh*t scared of job security and the like. All because, the smaller company had just about 10 thousand employees.
Hating startups is a cynical, ugly and contentious thing to do, but hey, you don’t really show them your business plans and revenues to allow them to make an informed choice. They just look at your office, and take your word for it.
I happened to join a startup after college because throughout I was the lowest all-clear, but people don’t really do that, and for good reason.
But if you think about it, you don’t really need all those people, do you. There are great people who are looking for jobs.
I’m sure you’re willing to vouch for the ones you offered a job to.
I feel your pain. Over the last 4 years have tried to hire web designers for the 2 jobs that have been through. I have had people negotiate a salary on phone. Even before they send me their resume!
It gets worse when they actually show up. People with just basic skills in photoshop, no dreamweaver, no html, no flash and 20 years old asking for ridiculous sums of money…!
Hi Deap
I am the ex-CTO of a website called PaGaLGuY.com. I won’t belabor the obvious. I’ve jumped through similar hoops for hiring at PG. In the end I’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t really go “out there” and find the kind of passionate people that you want. You have to make them want to come to your place.
It does sound a bit counter-intuitive. You have to become the mecca of geekdom. THE place where every geek finds solace and succor. Towards this end, I’d suggest that you start building a relationship with local tech colleges and filter out the wheat from the chaff.
Start participating in open-source initiatives like FOSS.in and BarCamps. Thats another place to get in touch with geeky underbelly. Of course I am assuming that you haven’t already done this.
Cheers and best of luck with the venture.
ps: Burrp! is excellent and for a self-confessed food freak, it’s manna from heaven. I was wondering if you’ve checked out the comprehensive guide to food joints in Mumbai created for Lehman Brothers employees. Its a comprehensive 555-page manual for Mumbai eateries.
hear your pain.
I guess, its welcome to India time.
There is like a complete lack of professionalism in the IT sector. At one time, this was a premier workforce.
Instead of going thru the naukri path, have you thought about going straight to the campuses and recruiting?
Fresh grads these days are ready to try out new stuff and are mostly from what I see passionate about what they do that is until they get into the easy money mode of switching jobs. The mediocrity sets in after the first job.
With the kind of culture burrp has, I’m sure you would get the kind of person you want, who is really passionate about what he is doing while still liking the place enough to stick around a long time straight from a college rather than through any employment portal.
The skill set part I’m not too sure about what you are looking for… But am sure a college grad from a reputed institute would be ready to acquire the skill you’d want within half the time you’d take to recruit otherwise.
It sucks big time! What you mentioned is so true. People are just used to working on projects and then leave. We need a whole new course or something on “online product development” and “what it takes”…Its got to do with short term thinking..its happening everywhere..even in the stock market..people want quick returns and don’t want to wait it out…
speaking from experience since we moved from pure-play services (what most of the IT firms here are doing) to saas.
Sahil
PS – I think I met you at Barcamp last month, right?
This is my experience when I was looking for a job last year:
I graduated from a very reputed college and wanted to work for few years before I pursue my post graduation. It is so difficult to find a good “job profile” for a graduate.I worked with this big consultancy and I hated the kinda worK I was doing.It was basically data mining.The same was for my other college frens.We tried looking for some good job profile with some small company.But surprisingly it is difficult to find about available jobs with small cos rather than big companies.There are million job consultancies in delhi but most are associated with the big names..I guess start ups or small companies should have a job portal or smthing where they can advertise the varied”job profiles” they offer.Good point about small companies is that employee’s scope of work is vast and thereby more to learn. These days most graduates from “good educational background” are more inclined to work and give mroe weightage to job profiles rather than big names. There are companies with lots to offer and there are deserving people ..Its just the connecting medium that is missing!