To be held in New Delhi on August 19 and 20, the IT Placement Fair will add a whole new dimension to the IT recruitment process by getting various employers and candidates together under the same roof to evaluate each other for the purpose of filling job vacancies, says MCS president Amandeep Narula.

``The placement fair reduces hiring time and cost per hire considerably. During the fair, an employer can recruit on the spot as many professionals as it needs for a fixed fee. In addition to this, our website will act as a Virtual Placement Fair for those of our clients and candidates who cannot attend the physical fair,'' explains Narula.

Starting with the New Delhi fair, the company plans to hold a fair every month for the rest of this year in Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore. Beginning next year, it will increase the frequency of the fairs to one every 2-3 weeks in major cities like Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai, he adds. So though in 2000, the company will hold only five fairs, starting 2001, it will hold 24 fairs a year.

MCS estimates that over 70,000 IT candidates will visit its fairs every year. It expects IT specialists at all levels, from team members to team leaders, project leaders and senior managers to visit the fairs, too. Some of the areas that are expected to be covered in the fair are Software Developers, Internet Technologists, Telecom Professionals, Web Developers/Webmasters, Systems Engineers, Database Administrators, Network Administrators/Engineers, QA/QC Analysts, Application Developers and IT Marketing Professionals.

How much do customers have to pay for getting into the placement fair? Rs 40,000, Rs 55,000 and Rs 75,000 for stalls of 6.25 square metres, 9 square metres and 16 square metres, respectively.

At present, there is no revenue model, but the cost is expected to be met through selling booth space in the placement fairs. ``We estimate that we will collect 70,000 resumes within a year. Once that happens, we will start a virtual placement agency on the Internet, give companies access to our database and charge on a per hire basis. We will not publish the contact information of the candidates on our website,'' says Narula.

She adds that once the company identifies a desirable resume, it will intimate to MCS that it would like to interview the resume's owner. ``We will then arrange an interview with the candidate just like an offline agency does. Since part of the work will be done by the company in searching the resume database, we will charge them significantly lower than the standard 30-60 days' placement fees.''

Some of the companies that will participate in the New Delhi fair are HCL Perot Systems, Metamor Global Solutions, Infogain, Systems America, Velocient, SSI, Polaris and Hero Corporate Services.

``We are also launching PlacementFair.

com, a career portal, where the participating companies will have access to all the resumes collected during the fair for three months. It will provide a meeting ground for IT/telecom candidates and employers. The company is giving a free unlimited job posting facility to companies who participate in the fair for up to one year,'' he adds.

PlacementFair.com is targeted at experienced IT and telecom professionals. The strategy it will use to attract these professionals to the fair is direct e-mail and telephone contact and well-placed media advertisements, says Narula. And since MCS is an IT placement agency, it has a large all India database of IT/telecom professionals with their contact information.Explaining further that as a recruitment tool, the placement fair holds out many advantages both for companies and candidates, Narula says it also provides companies an opportunity to develop an in-house database of resumes with the Boolean search facility.

MCS relies on state-of-the-art computer systems, which facilitate online recruiting and also help it maintain a large and impressive repository of active resumes. It sources talent from India, China and even Vietnam through its local business connections. The company has to its credit a response time rate of 48 hours in most of the cases.

Currently, MCS has offices in Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune and Bangalore. Plans are afoot, though, to expand into other cities around big metropolitan areas so as to attract talent from these areas, Narula says.