recruitment trends in the it secor

Recruitment Trends 2011

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Recruitment Trends


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Recruitment Models as of Today

The recruitment business landscape has changed remarkably over the past decade. The industry has grown rapidly, diversifying its services and making record profits year on year. The war for talent, the growing importance of soft skills, the drive for efficiency and the need for flexibility have all led to an increase in outsourcing and advertising to recruiters and greater efforts to reach candidates through advertising on and offline. Today, some forms of the traditional recruitment approaches are almost dead. Who reads newspapers and looks for the job by the mail? Who faxes anymore? To determine the need for new recruitment strategies we have to realize the gap between the existing models of recruitment first.

The gap created between the two existing models is due to a number of factors discussed in the paper. Two of these main factors are new expectations and new opportunities for the potential candidates. To compensate these gaps and to keep with the times companies look out for new and innovative methods of recruitment.


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Common Recruitment Practices

1) OUTSOURCING

Advantages of outsourcing:

In India, the HR processes are being outsourced from more than a decade now. A company may draw required personnel from outsourcing firms. The outsourcing firms help the organization by the initial screening of the candidates according to the needs of the organization and creating a suitable pool of talent for the final selection by the organization. Outsourcing firms develop their human resource pool by employing people for them and make available personnel to various companies as per their needs. In turn, the outsourcing firms or the intermediaries charge the organizations for their services.

One study in 2004 found that over 90 per cent of organizations surveyed had outsourced at least one element of activity to another organization. Further, nearly a fifth had outsourced work done by their own employees in the past. More and more companies are off-shoring back office functions to Asian countries, where they can be done for half the price, and in a different time zone – often allowing companies to operate 24 hours a day. Further, companies are finding that outsourcing elements of their business adds flexibility to their business models. Organizations are able to buy in services without the risk of taking on greater numbers of staff themselves. These, therefore, help them respond to


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new opportunities quickly, through accessing just-in-time services without tying their hands for the future. 2) EMPLOYEE RERERRALS Employee referral programs are the most powerful corporate recruiting tool, bar none. They can produce a high volume of quality hires who have been statistically proven to have lower rates of attrition. When designed well, they can not only be cost-effective, but they can produce one of the highest ROIs in the entire HR function. Firms with well-designed referral programs can tune them to produce over 70% of hires (AmTrust, for example, has reached 78%). To be successful, referrals must become a valued part of the company’s culture and a standard way of doing business. Every employee must actually believe that the key competitive advantage over others is the entire company’s involvement in the recruiting process. No centralized recruiter can know as many working professionals in a discipline as the employees themselves. Advantages of employee referrals:

Generates high percentage of hires at low cost Produces employees who are more productive on the job Produces employees who have higher retention rates Produces fewer non-qualified applicants Functions successfully across borders in global organizations Reduces the burden on recruiting departments Produces higher ROI Produces hires more quickly than alternate sources

Some of the Benchmark firms while designing an ERP are Cisco, Sun, Adobe, SAP, EDS and Microsoft.


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According to the Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey 2011, where 10 represents the highest quality of candidates, it was found that best outside talent comes from referrals, direct sourcing and social networks


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3) WEB 2.0 - WEB 3.0

Simply put, Web 2.0 is the evolution from text-based, online brochure-like websites to websites that are interactive, allow control and input from the candidate, and provide information in a variety of formats, including video, audio, graphics, and text. Web 2.0 sites tend to focus on blogs, wikis, and chat and they keep the boilerplate to a minimum. The advent of YouTube, cheap video cameras, ubiquitous broadband connections, and a sophisticated video-savvy worker means that video tours of corporate campuses as well as interview clips from employees, management, and the CEO are all becoming requisite to a positive website experience. Good recruiting sites are reducing the number of words and adding more graphics, pictures, videos, and live interviews. They advertise job vacancies through worldwide web. The job seekers send their applications or curriculum vitae i.e. CV through e-mail. Alternatively job seekers place their CV’s in worldwide web, which can be drawn by prospective employees depending upon their requirements. RSS distribution RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is increasingly being adopted as an effective distribution tool for job listings. Hotjobs was one of the first major job boards to embrace RSS feeds. Google also offers an RSS feed for its Google Base job search results, so even if you don’t have one of your own site you can upload your jobs on to Google Base. This has made it even easier for recruiters to increase both candidate reach and flow at relatively low cost.

Web 3.0 acts as the semantic web, or a web that will aid in making suggestions as your final result. Web 3.0 aims to bring meaning to your search with relevant, meaningful results. Web 3.0 is the next stage where organizations have greater scope to develop entire applications tailor-made to meet their needs - again accessing via the cloud without the need to install and manage software themselves.


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Reaching the passive job seeker –

The ability to reach passive as well as active customers, people who may not have been aware of a job, or even looking for a move. Log on to Amazon to buy a book and you will immediately be informed which other books you might be interested in, based on the preferences of other people who Amazon believes to have similar taste, or on the basis of your prior behavior. People all over the world are now buying books that they weren’t looking for and possibly had never even heard of only minutes earlier.

According to Jobvite, recruiting passive candidates is the leading strategy adopted by companies when competing against other employers


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Some advantages of e-recruitment:

Low cost. No intermediaries Reduction in time for recruitment. Recruitment of right type of people. Efficiency of recruitment process. Reaching out to a larger audience Gives a 24*7 access to an online collection of resumes. Online recruitment helps the organizations to weed out the unqualified candidates in an automated way. Recruitment websites also provide valuable data and information regarding the compensation offered by the competitors etc. which helps

the HR managers to take various HR decisions like promotions, salary trends in industry etc

However, apart from these common methods of recruiting there are a number of rising trends. Below we shed light on some these trends and on the impact they have on the industry and recruiting as a whole.


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Emerging Trends in Recruitment

Technology is becoming central across recruitment spectrum as globalization has changed the business dynamics. Over the past ten years, technology has revolutionized the ways in which we relate to – and can collaborate with – one another. It has spawned new social norms, new organizational forms and entirely new business models. Unsurprisingly, this tidal wave of change has burst into recruitment and dramatically changed how things are done. The most creative companies are matching gaming technology with business scenarios, inviting candidates to simulate a ‘day on the job’ as part of their recruitment process. Potential BA recruits are asked to turn around a plane in a short space of time, while dealing with a variety of issues – a disabled passenger, late arrivals and airport pressure. Candidates applying for a role at Orange, the mobile phone operator, get hands-on experience of dealing with customers through a call centre simulation – testing their ability to prioritize tasks and deal with difficult customers. These technologies, though still in the early stages, allow candidates to get a feel for what the job will really be like, and help employers identify the best people to do the job. Intel relies on technology for all aspects of its operations. The Software Revolution – New technologies ultimately spawn new software’s that have impacted almost every industry.

The financial services industry has been visibly transformed by software over the last 30 years. Practically every financial transaction, from someone buying a cup of coffee to someone trading a trillion dollars of credit default derivatives, is done in software. And many of the leading innovators in financial services are software companies, such as Square, which allows anyone to accept credit card payments with a mobile phone, and PayPal, which generated more than $1 billion in revenue in the second quarter of this year, up 31% over the previous year.

Today's dominant music companies are software companies, too: Apple's iTunes, Spotify and Pandora. Traditional record labels increasingly exist only to provide those software companies with content. Industry revenue from digital channels totaled $4.6 billion in 2010, growing to 29% of total revenue from 2% in 2004.

LinkedIn is today's fastest growing recruiting company. For the first time ever, on LinkedIn, employees can maintain their own

resumes for recruiters to search in real time—giving LinkedIn the opportunity to eat the lucrative $400 billion recruiting industry.


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Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming. This includes even industries that are software-based today! Great incumbent software companies like Oracle and Microsoft are increasingly threatened with irrelevance by new software offerings like Salesforce.com and Android (especially in a world where Google owns a major handset maker).

In short, technology and software is eating the world!

Watch for all of the following out of Intel in the year to come:

Intel will have a digital marketing team working on retrofitting Intel’s content for mobile devices in 2011, including the whole process of searching for and applying for a job.

Sejal Patel, recruitment marketing project manager, will be working on consolidating and revamping the company’s Facebook pages in 2011. Right now, Intel has a main company page; a more career-focused page called Discover Intel; and pages for some countries such as Vietnam. Patel would like Intel’s jobs to be fed automatically to some of these pages. Right now, not a lot of Intel jobs are posted on Facebook; Keith Molesworth, channels and ERP manager says Facebook is “more of a conversation” right now.

Better search engine optimization. Intel looked at using Jobs2Web but has yet to do so. (Generally — though it’s doing a pilot with an employee-referral vendor – it has chosen to do a lot of its social media recruiting toolmaking in-house, partly for financial reasons, partly over concerns its org chart, email addresses, and other sensitive information could get out, and partly because of its own expertise.) Anyhow, it’s rethinking how it names things; “Discover Intel” for example, doesn’t ring a search engine’s bell like something worded more about careers.

Improving coordination. Right now, the different owners of the Intel social media initiatives don’t communicate as seamlessly as the company wants. A job candidate may, for example, ask a question on one site, and may not be directed to a conversation going on about that topic on another Intel recruiting page, simply because the Intel managers running the channels aren’t aware of all that’s going on. Intel could turn to a tool like ObjectiveMarketer.

Simply better using social media. Marketing and Branding Program Manager Allen Stephens says that “95% of our work is broadcasting, and 5% engaging.” He says Intel wants to make sure the community aspects of social media recruiting aren’t ignored. He also says that some Intel recruiters are “really good” at social media recruiting, while others are barely aware of all the many channels the company’s using. When Intel needs to ramp up in a certain area and for a certain job function, he wants


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the company to have data already in hand showing what channels will work best. To that end, Intel’s thinking about identifying “social media ambassadors” so that the manufacturing team, or software team, has 1-2 recruiters “up to speed in all social channels we have out there, engaging in a consistent way,” Stephens says.

We will see the mismatch widening between available talent & new jobs despite our getting large number of graduates who pass out as only 15-20% are employable.

90% of Graduates, 75% of Engineering Graduates and 77% of MBAs in India are unemployable. Only one in four engineering grads in India is employable, based on tech skills, English fluency, and teamwork and presentation skills. This is the average percentage of candidates that are rejected from the number of applicants according to Nasscom.

The main problem is that Indian educational institutes just make their students aware of the basics and facts theoretically. The unawareness of the practical implication of the facts learnt poses a huge problem. Even the teachers are illiterate in this regard as their own practical knowledge about the subject is absent.


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Growth of Engineering Degree Level Institutions in India

There is a growing demand for engineers and to meet this demand IT companies cannot restrict themselves to hire from tier I colleges only. IIT batches of engineering students represent just 1% of technology graduates in India. There are more than 2,000 engineering colleges in India, of which 100 are tier I, 150 odd are tier II and rest are tier III colleges. A typical large IT company in India, which makes 15,000+ offers to fresher’s every year, restricts visiting to 100 odd colleges. Companies therefore have to reach out to more colleges while maintaining a certain level quality in its hires.

To effectively do this IT companies must standardize selection tools in such a way that they can manage to recruit a similar quality of candidates across campuses.


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An increasing majority of vacant jobs will not be advertised anywhere. Forget web advertising vs. print media. More and more jobs just won’t get announced at all. Networking, social media, and skilled, specialized recruiters will fill most jobs before they ever hit the mainstream media. That has huge implications for us in the way we develop business, access talent and make the match. And also for the skill-set of our recruiting staff.

The Advertised Job Market is frustrating and slow and troublesome for BOTH the employer and the applicant. For the applicant, it means lots of competition--particularly for entry-level positions. For the more experienced or specialized worker, the Advertised Job Market may barely exist: the employer's network is faster, cheaper and more effective than advertising.

Growth Of Social Recruiting: There has been a significant growth in social recruiting since 2009

Social Networking Sites are gaining significance due to their easy accessibility. They are global and available 24/7, provide personalized and authentic contents and can be fun and engaging. Everyone is there, and if not, will be soon seen there.

Jobvite is a recruitment software that provides the most complete and up-to-date information regarding sourcing, applicant tracking, reporting and recruiting data. The tables below (provided by Jobvite) adequately demonstrate the growth of social networks for recruitment purposes.


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2/3 Companies have successfully hired through Social Networks


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It is interesting to note that social media has resulted in increased investment in other categories as well…

(data as per the Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey,2011)


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Diversity at Workplace is at the forefront of leadership mindset as this helps generate a broader range of ideas, greater creativity and innovation, increased motivation and leverage of cross cultural experience.

In respect to female diversity within organizations women have become the new workforce. They have less unemployment: In January of this year the unemployment rate for men was 8.8 percent, yet for women only 7.9 percent. A number of organizations including HP and IBM have designed specific strategies to attract women. One organization, Cigna, has invested 2 million dollars to recruit and develop executive-level women. Pepperdine University found that the Fortune 500 companies with the best record of promoting women outperformed their competitors by anywhere from 41 to 116 percent. Recruitment efforts aimed at increasing diversity need to be revised if they are to find success, which will then lead to broader acceptance. Organizations must

First accept that a broader definition of diversity is required, one that goes beyond race and gender. Second, diversity recruiting efforts need to be based on a business case that addresses a specific business problem. Even a social

cause must lead to some tangible benefits or else it will never gain widespread support; in business, the benefit should be an improvement in company performance.

Last, diversity programs must involve managers in both defining the requirements and deciding how to integrate diversity recruitment with business needs.

When staff diversity is sought, respected and enhanced, organizations have a greater ability to –

Respond to changing workforce demographics , including greater participation by women and members of other historically underrepresented groups

Strengthen collaborative modes of working by accentuating interdependence, partnerships and alliances Build innovation, creativity and problem solving through multi cultural, multi disciplinary teams


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Reputation and Brand – of recruiters – will become a valuable asset to companies. We will not be able to influence brand via traditional PR and media anymore, because social media is so viral, so transparent and so powerful, that your business can be destroyed or made by it at lightning speed.

Some of the newest trends in recruiting today come from marketing, and this includes employer branding. An employer branding strategy is a way for a recruiter to represent an employer to job applicants in a way that makes the company an appealing place to work. In the modern recruiting world, employer branding can be a powerful way to attract qualified candidates to a client. By marketing your client as a great employer, recruiters can get the best talent on board with their client.

Recruiting and marketing have a lot in common because recruiters have to market an employer’s positions to applicants and sell an employer to candidates. Part of a marketing-based recruiting strategy is employer branding, or positioning the employer as the best place for candidates to work. Marketing professionals talk a lot about branding, what a brand means and how to market a brand, but it can be somewhat confusing to recruiting professionals that don’t have a marketing background.

Event Recruiting – Sponsoring events where the candidates you are seeking attend to. By giving a presentation and advertising your company in a way which will attract the candidates and letting them know that your company knows what the participants are looking for, you can bring in the most suitable candidates which you might consider hiring. The Intel webpage includes an event recruiting calendar with information about the time and location of the event.

Re-Recruiting – When you’re most qualified or experienced staff leave the company let them know that they’re welcome back. The

reasons they leave maybe for a change of location, a new challenge or higher pay which you can’t afford at the moment. But if they are not satisfied at the new place, they’ll always appreciate the old one. This can also reduce on training cost and time which you might have to spend for a newly hired employee. This of course cannot be applied to all employees.

Making Every Employee A Recruiter – This does not mean asking employees to refer their friends and family to the company. This also can be a way of advertising. Equip every employee with a company card stating the company contact details and an attractive “we are always looking out for dynamic individuals…..” This can be very useful when employees know how to effectively hand out these cards to the most eligible individuals.

Casting A Wider Net - Expand your recruiting to include some people who do not have all the skills you would like, but who have potential to contribute if they are trained.


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Job Boards Faltering - As companies build their own recruitment databases and even more importantly their own communities, they can use creative ways to source talent. Communities themselves will evolve around certain disciplines/careers/industries and hence negate the use for paid job boards. Why pay for a large job board in the active pool when we can reach passive candidates in a free community?

Job boards will have to look at community-building themselves and earn their revenue through product placement advertising rather than paid-for job advertisements.


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Use of Employee Referral Bonuses – Use of bonuses to stimulate employee referrals. According to the Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey 2011,

Employee Referrals have been a better source of recruiting outside talent than direct sourcing and social networks!


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Want quality candidates? Use Referrals!


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The Effect of These Trends on the IT Sector

According to the IT Employer Survey conducted by HeadHonchos.com – the Indian information technology sectors is likely to witness a 20 per cent increase in overall workforce levels in the coming year. Hiring is set to increase across all levels, including 9.5 per cent for middle management and 4.5 per cent for senior professionals. The survey was based on the views of HR professionals from the top 100 IT companies in India and forecasts trends of work-force growth and expected attrition, said the report in the Business Standard. The survey revealed that IT sector will continue to see double digit growth this year. As many as 76 per cent of respondents expect the increase in headcount to be in the range of 11-15 per cent whereas 36 per cent expect this figure to be as much as 16-20 per cent. As many as 97 per cent of the respondents said the industry will see

a significant increase in overall workforce in 2011. However, the HR managers also warned that this year is likely to be more challenging than the previous year when it comes to attrition. The overall attrition rate is expected to hover around 14.4 per cent. There will be a double impact on hiring as the increase in manpower count is accompanied by replacement hiring on account of the attrition numbers. The survey said attrition is expected to be 13.6 per cent across the industry for fresher and junior levels, for mid management attrition would be around 9.2 per cent and senior management levels it is expected to be 4.8 per cent. Companies are planning to focus on compensation, skill development and improvement of work environment this year to curtail attrition levels.


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The Importance of Web Content

The ability to update and maintain your website might be the key to the potency of your institutional marketing effort. While e-mail, print, and other methods of interacting with students and parents remain vitally important, there’s no question that college Web sites have taken center stage in the effort to convey key messages and engage prospective students. If your website isn’t being updated regularly you may be missing your best opportunity to reach and recruit prospective students.

Over time, college Web pages have been augmented by video, Flash-based design and other visual elements deemed more likely to grab and hold students’ attention than pages of text. The pressure was on to keep content fresh, make it more interactive, and hold copy to a minimum, because according to common wisdom, students who grew up in the world of e-communications were unlikely to sit still for pages of information.

A successful marketing and recruiting effort does not just rely on the presence of clear and powerful messages. It is equally important to be able to express the messages through a vigorous, compelling Web site that intrigues prospective students, answers their questions, and encourages them to return again and again for more information and interaction, all while continuously reinforcing a carefully honed organizational identity. A good Web site is an extension of the company itself: thriving, growing, and changing along with the company, while maintaining an unmistakable sense of its requirements, goals and objectives.

Therefore it is obviously quite important for a company to make use of efficient content management system (CMS), a software tool that makes it possible to match consistent design with accurate, up-to-date content across the site. A good content management system allows users to organize text, images, and files within a system that interfaces easily with the Web site in order to create new content or update information. Ideally, a CMS can be used to manage the entire lifecycle of Web site pages, using simple tools to create content, publish and distribute it, and archive material.


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Adi Dhar 25/12/2011

recruitment trends in the it secor

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