Vodafone steps up campus hiring in India, hires 150 from B-schools

NEW DELHI: Vodafone India has stepped up hiring under its Discover Campus programme, recruiting 150 so far in 2015, or almost half the number it took in the previous four years. As much as 58% of those hired for traineeship with the company this year are women, its human resources head said.

Discover Campus is 12-month training cum-development programme to groom future business leaders. The company said it provides fast-track career growth and challenging opportunities to them.

Based on their performance, these trainees are absorbed across various verticals of India’s second largest telecom company.

A small selection of its Discover trainees get an opportunity to participate in a two-year international assignment programme, called Columbus, across the Vodafone Group, Human Resources Director Ashok Ramchandran told ET.

“We not only have some terrific examples of this successful programme within India, but also six examples of successful export to the Vodafone Group,” he said.

Since its launch in 2010, Vodafone has hired 292 people until December 2014 through the Discover programme from more than 20 top-ranked institutes, such as IITs, IIMs, Xavier School of Management, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Management Development Institute and Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies.

Those hired start their career as management trainee. As much as 38% of such hires are now working in mid- and senior-management, Ramchandran said.

The programme enables the company to identify, retain and develop high-quality talent from leading Indian educational institutes, he said. The trainees undergo a one-year intense development programme consisting of role rotations and cross-functional exposures and then graduate into important roles.