Scramble for talent

?No SME tech companies turned up for the placement session. In 1998, it was not easy to find a tech or a manufacturing company belonging to mid-enterprise segment coming to the campus to take students,? says Chowdhury. ?Maybe some day, I?ll try out such a company,? she says.

Today, the scenario is no different. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, does perhaps one of the largest placements in the country from a single place. This year, the number was 1,400 and the placements took place over three months.

Gautam Sinha, the IIT Kharagpur professor who is in charge of training and placements, says that none of the 180 companies that visited to hire engineering students, was a start-up or a mid-size company this year.

?This could be more or less true for the past many years too. I believe the mid-segment companies, especially the tech companies, feel that they have no chance to stand against the big brands and pay packets offered by companies like Microsoft, Wipro and IBM,? says Sinha.

In the case of XLRI?s placement, there was no mid range company and big names like Hewitt Associates and Accenture Business Consulting were large recruiters. Hewitt recruited around 18 students and Accenture around nine across HR and from other streams, according to Sagar Balan, secretary of the XLRI?s placement committee.

When it comes to compensation packages this year, IIT Kharagpur?s mean salary for engineering and technology students across BTech, MTech and MSC degrees was Rs 5.15 lakh per annum and, for managers with work experience in the two years management programme, the mean was Rs 8.78 lakh per annum.

Now compare the IIT students? entry-level mean salary offered by the best of Indian and multinational brands with the entry-level salary offered by one of the best known telecom software companies, Subex Azure Ltd.

Subex, which would have revenues of $150-million by the end of the current fiscal, offers Rs 3.5 lakh per annum for engineers and Rs 3.75 lakh for management trainees. The Subex human resource department, from its inception in 1998, has never gone to tier-I engineering and management institutes.

Says Sanjay Paul Antony, senior vice-president for human resources at Subex, ?It is a total scramble for talent in IITs and regional colleges. We recruit fresh engineers from tier-II and tier-III colleges and institutes. The reason being, we feel comfortable with the system of the recruitment of these institutes, the quality of technical manpower we get and the low attrition rates.?

According to Antony, one of the reasons why he as the HR head is not comfortable with recruitments from tier-I institutes is the policy of single-day recruitment. ?In tier-I technical institutes, the recruitment is done in one single day. Our recruitment is spread over four rounds of discussions and over a few days. This helps us and the prospective employee to understand each other?s wants and needs.? The common feeling in well known B-schools and engineering institutes is that the start-up ventures, as well as established mid range companies don?t like to come to the campus as they feel they have no chance to compete with the big companies.

It is ultimately a demand and supply mismatch, says Uday Damodaran, who is in charge of placements for XLRI. ?That could be one of the reasons why mid range tech companies are losing out. The number of students passing out in our two HR streams has remained constant in the past few years, though by far demand outstrips supply.?

The demand for good technology hands is increasing every year. The top five recruiters employed about 30,000 students this year from Anna University?one of the largest tech institutes in the country, churning out 90,000 engineers every year, according to a Cognizant Technology Solutions spokesperson. Three years back, the top four recruiters?Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Cognizant?together recruited the first 1,000 students. Two years back, three companies recruited the first 1,000 students and last year, two companies recruited the first 1,000. This year, TCS alone recruited the first 1,000.

This obviously makes the job tougher for start-ups and the mid segment tech sector companies. Stock options are prominent in their strategy to attract the best of the fresh talent. Rediff, for one, gives stock options to its new employees with a partial lock in periods.

Sharad Sanghi, the chief executive officer of remote

infrastructure management services firm, NetMagic Solutions thinks that there should be a wholesome approach when it comes to remuneration package for the freshers. ?Besides, no compromise on compensation, flexibility on employees loans and opportunity for training and learning, there should be an environment of empowerment.? NetMagic entered into the managed service business after its employees decided that this would bring synergy to its existing data centre business. ?It was not a management decision. Rather, the employees suggested it in a strategy meeting. This is what I mean by empowerment,? he explains.

Damodaran believes that now a sizeable number of students are willing to join the mid range tech companies. ?They are the second and third generation students, and don?t have to fear about economic stability. These students are willing to take a risk if the start-ups and tech companies can properly market themselves in the campus.?

Manish Agrawal, vice-president for marketing at Rediff.com, also believes that the students from premier institutes are now getting into an experimentation mode and they are not risk averse. With an annual revenue of Rs 131 crore, Rediff is perhaps one of the few mid sector companies that regularly visits IIMs and IITs during the placement session. Chandan Ghosh, a final year student in finance at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), says students are interested to join good start-up ventures, provided they are compensated by things like high learning curve or positions.

Incidentally, in last year?s placement, the IIM-C had around 8-9 start-ups and mid range companies like Feedback Ventures and Verve Consulting participated in the campus placement. ?We encourage good start-ups to come to our campus.?

But a practicing HR professional like Deep Mukherjee, vice-president of TeamLease, the specialised staffing company, says that the difference between a technologist coming from a tier-I institute and that from tier-II or tier-III is not substantial. There could be around 5% variance between the two sets of students.

?While there is practically no difference as far as the talent and skills of the students of lesser known institutes are concerned, the difference is because the students of the well known institutes get better infrastructure and exposure,? Mukherjee says.

Antony of Subex believes that ultimately, it depends on the HR policy of the organisation and how the talent is harnessed. ?For us, the difference we make for our employees is openness in our work culture and steep learning curve while working in the organisation.?

Sharad Sanghi thinks that corporate culture and compensation package will make the difference. ?Stock options with transparency and working hour flexibility will help the mid range corporates to attract best of the talents.?