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India – Skills shortages forcing firms to seek talent in other sectors

31 July 2014

A dearth of skilled professionals has resulted in increased cross-sector recruitment, with the trend becoming more significant than ever before, reports mydigitalfc.com.

Moorthy K Uppaluri, CEO of Randstad India, commented: “Two significant shifts are seen in the hiring patterns in the staffing industry, which are causing considerable changes in the way talent is employed. A major shift in strategy is just-in time hiring. Firms are no longer creating a pipeline of talent expecting future business.”

According to Mr Uppaluri, they plan ahead and work with hiring agencies to recruit staff as and when required. High-growth industries such as IT are constrained by strained profit margins; over 85% of the cost in these sectors relates to people. Demand-based hiring is helping companies improve profits, as well as cash positions.

As the talent crunch is increasingly felt across industries, companies are looking beyond related educational qualification and experience to select staff. They have started doing competency-based hiring, irrespective of the sector in which the candidate has prior experience or knowledge.

High-growth sectors are in need of skilled workers who will fit into jobs with minimum training. Their talent pipelines have been shortened and they are now forced to look for people in different industries.

Slowing sectors have a different set of problems. They can’t spend as much money on talent and are opting to hire candidates with relevant skills, albeit from other sectors.

“Earlier, this used to happen only in support functions, such as legal and HR. Now, employers are drilling down to functions like sales from other sectors to bring in people with varied competencies and rich domain experience,” Mr Uppaluri concluded.