From Teachers to IAS officers to Ex-servicemen, India Now Hires Them All

Warm greetings to all my readers !! I hope your Deepavli went lightening and brightening !! Today I come up to you with the introduction of a new trend that has been noticed in recent recruitment sector in India. Read the whole story below and share your views about the same. I would be eagerly waiting for your feedback.

A few months ago, IT firm Wipro hired a missile expert for its learning and development team. His job is to create a challenging environment using graphic simulators and train employees to implement different strategies to overcome a crisis.

The company has tried more such permutations and combinations, including hiring a schoolteacher and an ex-navy officer. "The business scenario now requires one to work with different variables and getting people from diverse backgrounds helps," says Abhijit Bhaduri, chief learning officer.

Corporate India is looking outside the traditional box to meet its hiring needs as the work environment becomes more complex. The more diverse the candidate's experience, the greater the profile match.

Ex-servicemen, for instance, are being looked at for roles that involve people management, learning and development, marketing and sales. Indian administrative service officers (IAS) and teachers are being recruited for corporate strategy, counselling and training manpower.

"Defence personnel bring in the resilience that is most crucial to the corporate world today and are being hired for HR, marketing, project management profiles," says Jarmanjit Singh, who joined Wipro as a senior facilitator in 2011 after spending 11 years in the navy, including five postings in training units. The Essar Group plans to hire IAS officers for its marketing and sales profiles. People from the civil services are the best bet for remote locations, and to work around bureaucracies when new projects come up, says Adil Malia, group president.

Companies like Philips India have sent diktats to their search partners to look at diverse profiles. Under their year-and-a-half-old programme, 'New Directions', the company has hired doctors and teachers for its marketing, product management and customer education profiles. "The success ratio of getting such a candidate is one or two out of 10, but the result is an extremely diverse workplace, which is the goal," says Yashwant Mahadik, HR head.

The hunting grounds for such profiles are often management schools, where the officers enroll for executive programmes, social networking sites and copious amounts of networking to get the best fit, say HR heads of companies. IT company Infosys participated in a job fair for ex-servicemen this April for positions in purchase, administration and human resources besides security.

Mid-tier IT company MphasiS hired nearly five women on a sabbatical as part-time counsellors for its Baroda branch during Navratri. Their role was to act as employee arbitrators because the company, in the past few years, had seen a spike in employee altercations during the festival. The company was looking for freelancers who had some work experience, understood behavioural requirements and could give of their time.

The trend is not restricted to the IT and ITeS industries. Executive search firm Maxima Global's clients in the infrastructure space want ex-servicemen and teachers to help them motivate and retain engineers. "They are needed for teams working in tough locations, building hydel projects, highways, transmission lines projects, towers and laying roads in remote locations," says Srinivas Nanduri, partner, board and leadership hiring for the company's Indian arm.

However, this may not become a universal trend. "Such hires are like paramedics, not doctors," says S Kandula, HR head of iGate. The company has hired mathematics teachers for analytics departments too but the HR head insists that recruitments like this are possible only if the candidate's record shows the work is relevant to the post's demands.

Source: TOI