Nearly 10% lateral hires occur via social networking sites

NEW DELHI: Pradeep kumar, a 28-year-old engineer with a mid-sized Pune-based technology services company, decided to put up his profile on networking site LinkedIn, purely out of curiosity. He followed it up with profiles on Facebook and Orkut out of peer pressure, as almost all his friends were on these sites.

But Kumar took this new medium seriously. With every achievement at work, a project completed, a promotion, onsite work done in the US and UK, he diligently updated his pro file. His software development work for multimedia handsets was duly acknowledged by friends, who left notes praising him. And one day, he got a ���connection request��� from a recruitment manager at the Hyderabad office of an MNC IT consultant.

Kumar replied, and he got a job offer in return. He was not looking for a change, but the new offer came with a promotion and a 30% salary hike. Kumar now works in Hyderabad for the MNC, all thanks to virtual social networking.
It���s the latest face of headhunting, where word-of-mouth is making way for peer group recommendation.



What started as a trickle in new media has become a full-blown trend in the last one year, with almost 10% of all lateral hirings, recruitment of experienced professionals, happening via these sites. HR managers are increasingly trawling networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and LinkedIn to weigh the merits of profiles as they search for the right candidates for their organisations.

Headhunters ET spoke to said they trust these websites enough even to look for CXO-level candidates. Recently, an IT consulting multinational with its India head office in Gurgaon hired its country head from a social networking site.

In another instance, 26-year-old Prateek Sharma (name changed) joined a Gurgaon-based telecom software developer, Aricent, as marketing manager, from nVidia, a chip maker, where he worked at its Mumbai office as a product manager. He was hired from LinkedIn, the professional networking site which boasts of 48 million registered users, with about three million from India.

LinkedIn has seen a three-fold increase in membership in the last 12 months in India, and is setting up a local office. It is now looking for a country head, through its own site of course.

"Business-oriented social networking sites provide instant credibility to a professional's profile, with the referrals and recommendations of the person, thus aiding recruiters in captivating mindshare," says TCS global HR VP & head Ajoy Mukherjee. TCS, India's largest IT company, has almost 3% of all hirings coming from such media, specifically LinkedIn and Facebook.

Bangalore-based MindTree Consulting has already hired 30-40 consultants through social networking sites. Industry players reckon that almost 15-20% of lateral hires could come from social network sites in the next couple of years. Companies are also tapping Twitter, the micro-blogging site, to look for talent. MindTree plans to have its recruitment URL on Twitter, encouraging people interested in joining the company to follow it. Aricent plans to link Twitter to its career site to assist those looking for a career in telecom software development.

Sanjay Shelvankar, talent acquisition head for MindTree says social networking sites help to connect with passive candidates. "A typical CV is usually embellished with key achievements while on social networks, since the candidate's friends, bosses and peers are watching, employees don't claim something they haven't done," he says.

Aricent HR head Indrajit Sen says in the next fiscal, the company may end up using these sites for up to 20% of all its hirings. "It is non-intrusive. We have access to the entire profile without asking for a CV," he says. So, just how much of a threat does social networks pose to online recruitment sites?

R Sundar, CEO, Times Business Solutions, which runs TimesJobs, says all avenues, advertisements, headhunters, job sites and virtual social networks, are working in tandem at present.

Sure, he does acknowledge the strength of social networking sites and says his firm is launching peerpower.com, its own variant. "Virtually any form of communication can be perceived to be a threat, like water can be considered as a threat to any brand of cola. Success will be determined by the business model, cost efficiency and the speed of targeted delivery," he says.

Infosys HR head Mohandas Pai is of the opinion that virtual networking helps particularly in identifying the right candidates for specialist jobs, like experienced professionals in technology infrastructure management space.

For companies like Infosys, which employs about 1 lakh, it's easier to tap via employee referrals, but for small firms like the 1,200-strong knowledge process outsourcing company CPA Global, social networks help expand the recruitment net. "For instance, when hiring legal risk analysts in a due diligence process with over 10 years experience, we have found social networks more useful than other avenues," says CPA Global's VP for HR Rakesh Kher.

Cost and speed are other factors that drive HR mangers out of conventional channels and into the new media. Typically, a complex profile could take up to four months to hire. With social networks, it may be cut down to a month. For those like CAP's Kher, cost too is a factor. On an average, companies pay headhunters 8.33% of the annual salary of the person hired, while tapping into social networks is almost free.

MindTree claims that at about Rs 40,000 being the recruitment cost for a single lateral hire (with at least five years experience) from a consultant, it translates to a saving of about Rs 16 lakh for the 40-odd professionals it hired from social networks. That could change as numbers grow and social networks take their cut on people hired.

Rishi Das, co-founder & CEO, Career-Net Consulting, a Bangalore-based headhunter which works for about 250 companies, says social networks are also a good avenue to reach out to senior talent who normally won't post CVs on job sites.