India Among Five Most Difficult Markets For Recruiters

Employers around the world say that India and China are among the five most difficult markets to recruit talent highlighting the widely acknowledged skills gap that is prevalent in the region. Self-monitoring , intellectual curiosity , professionalism and confidence are some of the traits that prospective employees lack in India.

The ability to differentiate from competition is the foremost challenge today for companies and will remain that way for the next three years as per findings by Universum, a global consulting firm that helps employers improve their attractiveness to prospective jobseekers. Coming at a time when there is increased competition across India Inc for talent acquisition, especially at the leadership level, many companies are increasingly opting for honing talent internally to face this challenge.

"Over 85% of respondents affirm to have aligned their talent attraction strategy to their business plan and recruitment needs," said Joakim Strom , MD, Asia Pacific at Universum. Four out of 10 employers said they were currently facing the problem of finding the right and competent people and another four in 10 said that this unavailability of right talent could be an issue in the future as well.

Most HR heads across corporate India admit to facing a dearth of top notch talent more at the top level. "The big issue is of finding people who have a global view and a strategic foresight and that is the talent pool which is shrinking. In the context of our business which is rapidly evolving we need leaders who are capable of rearranging priorities," says Hari T, chief people officer at the IT major Mahindra Satyam. But now we are not waiting for people to come from outside we are building talent internally, in fact we have decided that 90% of the leadership will be from within the system and only 10% from the outside, he says.

The Universum survey pointed out that around 45% of respondents felt their primary concern was the ability to differentiate from competition. "Indian companies are becoming more open to hiring professionals from unrelated fields who may not be a fit right away but have the soft skills. Employers say they if people have had the right experience in the past even if it is not necessarily in the same sector they can be put at the helm...this is seen more across mid and senior level hiring ," says Kamal Karanth, MD of Kelly Services, a global staffing company.

The survey also revealed that employers in India believe the two main reasons why their top performers leave are for money, followed by new challenges for professional development in another company.

Source: TOI