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Indian private sector is going through a tough time. Not for the corporates, who are increasing their profits either by employee retrenchment or hiring freeze even though staff is needed. But for the job hunters who are either looking for a change or have been out of job due to layoffs. Many of them have spent days or months looking for a new role but hardly get any call.
However, the other side of the story is there are lot of openings in India and companies are finding it difficult to fill up those positions. So why is this paradox where job seekers say not enough jobs and companies say not enough talented people? Let’s delve into this which I have observed of late.
1) Too much focus on specific technical skills
Indian hiring managers are too much focussed on specific technical skills. While it is true that there are role specific requirements which they need to fill, it should also be kept in mind that a person can acquire technical skills in few months if he has the right attitude and clarity of thoughts. So if they pay a little less attention to technical skills and more to other aspects like communication and thought process that will do more good. This will be a good hiring strategy in the long run.
2) Tech enabled hiring process
Nowadays use of AI tools to scramble through resumes of candidates is inadvertently rejecting those who might be a good fit. These tools are trained to look for specific keywords in resumes. This should change as I highlighted in first point leaving the deserving ones behind.
3) Aversion to career break
Yes, hiring in India is biased against people who have gone for a career break. For some reason, hiring managers have repulsion to this if they find it in a candidates resume. What they don’t realise that when a person has taken a long break, their perspective is reset and may bring in a different viewpoint on the job he is applying for.
4) Archaic salary budget
Hiring managers want jack of all trades but when it comes to pay, they tend to be as exploitative as possible. For them, salaries should be as per Indian standard but want world class people. This needs to change. If you want good experts, you need to pay good. Period.
5) Master of all
It is expected that a candidate should know everything. What is not realised is that some people may be extremely good with specific domains but not in other domain. Because of that, a candidate good on one subject matter, loses out because he was not good on others. This wastes time of both company and candidate. Moreover, it also affects morale of the interviewee. As I said earlier, companies should look for long term strategy which will help with employee retention as well as employee confidence in the organization. Stick with specific domains, expect basic knowledge on other fields. If candidate does not know, can be ignored as it does not take long to acquire basic knowledge on other fields.
All in all, the hiring process and candidate selection is messy in Indian private sector, specifically in IT industry. If this changes, then it will happen for good, both for Industry and job hunters.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint