Small companies hiring more people

Earlier people preferred to work with large multinationals but now they are accepting offers of small companies looking at the bright future.

A 52-year old Madan Kotnala who throughout his 30-year career, had worked only with large multinationals like Federal Mogul and Tudor India, two months ago took an exceptional decision of to join Su-Kam. He was GM of US-headquartered Exide Technologies (christened Tudor India) that sells the Prestolite brand of batteries has now joined inverter maker Su-Kam as the head of its battery business. Kotnala informed, “Su-Kam is a growing company in a fast growing segment. I could see that it is entering into new segments such as telecom and auto, and there was an opportunity to contribute to its growth from one to multiple products”.

Last year in October Su-Kam with held is plans as banks in wake of global crises had slowed down giving loans. Kunwer Sachdev, managing director, Su-Kam said, “We had just started new solar and telecom verticals at our company when this happened”. Now, over the last few months company has again started hiring. The company will be hiring 30 senior and mid level executives for its solar business and another 10-12 for its new telecom business.

Rajeev Karwal, founder, Milagrow, a small business advisory firm pointed out, “As the economy improved SMEs have restarted expansion plans that had been dormant during the slowdown”. Companies have been looking for talent at all levels across sectors and the last two quarters have been much better. “The improvement might not be comparable to the growth in the stock market but companies are starting to hire for expansion and growth,” says E Balaji, CEO, Ma Foi, an international HR service provider.

According to Sachdev companies which are still growing, such as his can provide greater challenges to senior professionals who have worked for long in larger companies and multinational firms. He said, “They get a lot more recognition here, and get to play a crucial role in the growth of the business by bringing in their experience”. He added being an entrepreneur himself, he gets to learn a great deal from their experience.

In July-September quarter there has been increase in hiring by 40-50% over the previous quarter and about 60-70% higher than the January-March quarter, said Amit Tandon, director, Empryean Partners, an HR services firm. But salary expectations at present are 10-15% lower than before and some professionals who lost their jobs during the downturn are accepting 30-35% lower salaries. Tandon also pointed out that small and medium companies now have got a better opportunity in campus hiring, especially at tier-II colleges.

Apparel retailer Ritu Wears also faced a hard time during the recession and had to put its expansion plans on hold. “Non-availability of capital was the main reason,” says Sanjay Sahni, managing director, Ritu Wears, a 116-crore (revenues) company. During this time still it managed to open three stores this year. At present the company is in the process of hiring 35 senior and mid-management people as it has plans to open seven new stores in the next 12 months. Recently it has hired people from larger retail companies such as Pantaloon, Shoppers Stop, Shahi Exports, Lifestyle and Wadhawan Retail. Sahni told he was able to attract many people at around 10% lower salaries with the promise of faster growth opportunities.

Parag Tandon, who has recently joined Ritu Wears as a business development manager from Pantaloon is eager about his new job. Before joining he conducted thorough research on Ritu Wears and other smaller retailers. “The company has shown impressive growth over the last two years. It has professionalized and I feel I can add value to the company with my experience,” says Tandon.

Milagrow, which recently started an HR services division, is responsible for the hiring for Ritu Wears. Karwal stated today professionals are now looking for quality jobs rather than taking decisions on salary bases. “Even fresh MBA students are willing to work for small companies and take on responsibilities,” he says.

Even there is a rise in the hiring of IT and ITeS by small firms, now it’s not as much about the work culture it is more about opening up of new business opportunities. Currently almost 10% of SMEs (small and medium enterprises with up to 999 employees) in India are planning to hire additional staff, as per the records of recent study conducted by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners. According to the study the impact of the current economic downturn on local and regional economies is of greater concern to small businesses than to their medium business counterparts. However these same small businesses did not get much affected by changes in the national and global economy as the mid-market firms. Kalyan Banga, research analyst at AMI-Partners said, “A major reason for this is that most small businesses (84%) have only a single location, earn almost three-fourths of their revenues from local areas, and their operations are mainly confined to local territories”.

Aerospace component maker Quest Global, which supplies to Boeing and Airbus, earned revenues of Rs 363 crore last fiscal, is now looking to hire more people after its future funding of $50 million comes through this November. “We need to raise fresh capital now to finance our expansion and hire new people,” says Ajit Prabhu, CEO, Quest Global. Prabhu informed the company has not decided how many will be hired, but according to source within the company the sales force is being largely ramped up in numbers.

Prof K Kumar who heads the business incubation cell at IIM Bangalore stated, “SMEs saw slower growth, and immediately put brakes on hiring. However they are now back”. BPO firm 24/7 Customer is planning to hire around 1,000 people this year as the globally the conditions are looking better, clients are repeating their orders and new orders are also coming aboard, said its chief marketing officer V Bharathwaj. The company which has been developing new technologies in its labs is proposed to hire PhDs, and Masters degree holders in mathematics and statistics to further push research. Therefore taking into consideration this figure, the total hiring go up to 1,500 people, which will be good in view of how hard the slowdown had hit the BPO industry.

Some of the companies like the Rs 35-crore Kevin Enterprises are waiting before they start hiring again. The company, which supplies process design solutions and equipment to the chemical, fertilizer and oil and gas industries, is expecting positive result as the economy is improving. “But we are not yet out of the woods,” informed its managing director Kevin Shah. He is expecting to do good business by the end of this fiscal, when he will start hiring. “We are waiting for the business to turn around so we can pick up the quality talent available in the market today,” he said.

IITs average pre-placement salaries lowered by about half per cent

Though the recession clouds are shedding away but it’s after effects can be felt. This year the average pre-placement salaries being offered to students of India’s foremost technology schools (IITs) have been lowered by about half in comparison to the same time last year, the sources informed.

Even the number of companies who have registered for final placements has also dropped drastically by 45% this year, an anonymous expert informed.

According to IIT Bombay officials the average salary for IIT students passing out this year has been reduced extensively from Rs9 lakh earlier to Rs5 lakh.

The IIT Kharagpur students are facing even graver situation as their salaries have been reduced by 65% to Rs 4 lakh.

At IIT Bombay up till now only 12 companies have registered for the final campus placements, as against to 45 companies by October last year. While at IIT Kharagpur, only 10 companies have registered for the final placement, down from 38 earlier.

While at IIT Lucknow the registrations have reduced to eight from 25 last year, and of IIT Kanpur has dropped by 48% to 12.

Experts believe that some large companies like Accenture, Wipro and Infosys might be visiting campuses only in March next year thus this can be the reason for the drop in registrations.

As per earlier reports this year, there has been rise in job offers made to students of all the seven IITs, as Indian corporates have started hiring in big numbers supported by the revival of the economy.

Prof PK Jain who is taking care of campus placements at IIT-Roorkee told, “Things are better this year and we even see a 10-20% increase in average salaries”.

This year many public sector companies, especially in the core sector, are showing interest in placements. IITs are expecting big recruiters like Larsen & Toubro, Gas Authority of India, Tata Motors, Oracle, JP Morgan and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), who pick up around 10-15 students, to return this placement season.

Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield-services provider last year gave the highest package of $100,000, is also expected to visit IIT campus.

Adobe Systems, will be recruiting 4-5 graduates from each of the seven IITs, whereas finance companies Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank have already given their offers.

HCL will hire 2,000 people in couple of months

After a long pause, almost one year, the companies have started hiring. HCL Technologies Shiv Nadar told his company is planning to hire 2,000 people in the next couple of months.

Recently in US and European market business acquisitions have created additional talent requirement in the company. In order to support its new clients including Energy Future Holdings and Oncor the company will be hiring over 200 people in a few months in Texas.

D K Srivatsava, global, head (HR), HCL Technologies, pointed out, “We are hiring 2,000 people domestically who will support our delivery functions. Some of these new entrants will be freshers while most will be laterals and senior delivery support staff.”

Last year, in spite of global economic crisis HCL remained optimistic, this year also the company will continue hiring throughout the fiscal. Last year it had hired around 15,000 people.

From this year HCL has formulated a bench policy under it will be investing in training, reskilling, deskilling and multi-skilling. Srivatsava explained, “That decision has paid us great dividends”. Earlier five years ago, HCL had started an employee campaign called ‘Directions’ in which every employee was included in the growth and transformation of the company.

Srivatsava told, “When the whole world spoke about ‘customer first’, our motto was and still is ‘employee first and customer second’. We have been promoting collaborative working, inclusiveness, sharing of tools and technologies through ‘Directions’ over the years. This has helped our employees develop lateral thinking and leadership qualities”.

He told after this positive employee campaign the company gained confidence and courage as a result of which company took bold decisions like venturing into mega merger and acquisition (M&A) deals like that with Axon “when the rest of the industry chose to remain conservative.”