Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Fake resumes - An Indian Recruiters Nightmare

You feel elated ..you have spotted the perfect resource for the job.. the profile speaks of years of experience with Multinational firms ..degrees from reputed Colleges ..only to find out-if you are lucky- after rounds of interviews that it is Fake .

How severe is it ?- It is estimated that close to 30 % of Profiles available in the Job market within the IT steam in India have some element of falsification

So what is the way out? The most common answer I have heard -"We need to build Information databases at a National level....." .

In this country being a Freshman is a curse .. Most people I have talked to say they do it out of necessity - You dont get job till you show a few years of experience on your resume . This is the root cause ...we should work towards tackling this

Monday, December 18, 2006

Who is the Culprit

One of the most common laments I hear from Hr executives of IT/ITES companies that I work with is about "unprofessional nature of recruits.." ... candidates chasing multiple offers.....high turnover ... expectation of 40-50% hike every year ..

Someone even predicted that if the spiraling employee cost continues IT companies would no longer be competitive in the global space and the "Indian Greedy employee will be a victim to his own doing"

Such hue and Cry is understandable as rising employee cost and turnover pinch the bottom line and raise questions on the efficacy of highly paid management gurus in the Human resources function.

On the other hand it is not as if an entire generation of workers woke up one day.. smelt the money and turned greedy .. especially when most of us have seen our fathers work with one single company from start to retirement .

The seed I suspect was sown by the very people who are complaining today ... they hired at will to take advantage of the dollar conversion rate and fired at will when projects failed to materialize .. People were asked to pack their stuff and leave within 30 minutes of being sacked .. A western concept undiscovered by Indian employers till then . How then can companies today expect employees to not jump at the next best opportunity available to them .

The "Great Indian Middle class" has just tasted consumerism and they will continue to demand more despite HR Gurus resurrecting dusty old Indian values like Loyalty (read -continue working for peanuts).... and this will have a trickle down effect on other strata of society.

It is this pinch that is driving companies to scale up the value chain and not the farsighted vision of highly paid management consultants.