We can use expats to start the business, but need locals to expand: Steve Ingham, Group CEO, PageGroup

Indian professionals will soon start demanding more flexibility in their jobs as the recruitment market is evolving really fast, Steve Ingham, group CEO of British-based recruitment business PageGroup, told ET in an interaction. Healthcare and lifesciences, consumer, infrastructure and manufacturing are among the fastest-growing sectors, even as India has the potential to emerge as one of their top 10 markets in the coming years.

How have you seen the Indian job market changing?
About 10 years ago, just before the global financial crisis, when we had come down to India to explore the market, we interviewed multinationals we had relationships with to find out how they went about their recruitment. In the white collar space at that time, the recruitment market was underdeveloped compared with many other markets in the world-—we saw this as a big opportunity. But we have found the market growing faster after coming here. People are moving jobs more often, we are seeing people being more flexible in terms of location and industry sectors. People are ready to retrain themselves, explore new industries, new cities for better opportunities. We are seeing a trend of more globalisation; people are more flexible globally than they were ever before.

Where do you see things going from here?

One trend that I see coming—it exists in other developing economies— is that people want to work in a more flexible manner. We’re used to people working in permanent jobs, but things will evolve in away where people will want more flexibility. There will be the emergence of more temporary, contract, interim, freelance workers. This trend is not here in a big way within the white collar qualified market, but it will be. That’s something we see in other geographies around the world.

What’s the future of job creation here?
In the Indian market, people are way more educated than in many other economies around the world. As a result, skills in areas such as digitalisation and IT are very advanced. The Indian economy will play on that. We see that emerging and growing really fast.

Where does India rank for you in terms of markets?
India is one of our newest markets, and currently it is ranked in size at about 25th out of the 36 countries we are in. In terms of potential, though, it ranks among the top 10—probably 6th or 7th. There are two reasons for this: population and size of the economy, and the other, limited competition. Last year was a record year for us, we were up by over 20% in India, compared with an overall average of about 9.9%. We expect India to grow fast. The only constraint is not the market, it’s us. It’s how fast we can grow our own people to manage more people. In 2009, we had 70 people in Asia, today we have over 1,000. In India, we started six years ago, now we have 100 in 2 offices. We can use expats to start the business, but then to expand, you need locals. You need to grow local directors here. In 2-3 years, we should open in second-tier cities and multiply exponentially.