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    India Inc is hiring from places where they have no offices

    Synopsis

    Hiring from locations other than the cities where companies have offices has shot up to 35% from just about 5% in the pre-pandemic times, showed a recent survey by recruitment firm CIEL HR Services, shared exclusively with ET.

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    For companies looking for talent, it no longer matters where a candidate is based as long as they meet the skillset requirements. Hiring is getting location agnostic - companies are increasingly hiring from places where they have no offices.

    "The pandemic has dissolved location constraints. We are taking work to people instead of bringing people to work," said Balaji Kumar, chief human resources officer at Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI).

    Executives at companies like Tech Mahindra, Byju's, Publicis Sapient and NTT confirmed the trend.

    Hiring from locations other than the cities where companies have offices has shot up to 35% from just about 5% in the pre-pandemic times, showed a recent survey by recruitment firm CIEL HR Services, shared exclusively with ET.

    The agency tracked hiring trend of 181 companies in the last six months and helped them recruit 15,090 people over the last six months, of which 35% were hired from outside the base location. They will work remotely.

    "These companies are now tapping into a talent pool that is remarkably bigger than that they traditionally considered for resourcing," said Aditya Mishra, chief executive of CIEL HR Services.

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    Employers have started defining roles that can be performed remotely and hence are agnostic to the location of the candidate.

    Cities in demand for talent for remote working roles include Ooty, Patna, Nagpur, Chittoor, Coimbatore, Hubli, Indore, Kolkata, Madurai, Mangalore, Salem, Tiruchirappalli, and Thrissur.

    According to the CIEL survey, hiring is taking place for functions like sales, operations, HR, finance, supply chain, customer service and technology.

    This is happening across sectors such as edtech, foodtech, fintech, healthtech, e-sports, tech centres of global companies, shared services centres, ecommerce, IT services, consumer goods, construction, engineering, as well as pharmaceuticals.

    Of all the main metros, a large number of job postings in Mumbai were filled up by candidates in places like Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Hyderabad, Indore, Kolkata, Lucknow, Noida, and Pune, among others.

    Next is Bangalore where only 61% of the job offers were handed out to candidates living in the city. The rest went to professionals in places like Chittoor, Coimbatore, Indore, Mangalore, Kolkata, Patna, and Tiruchirappalli, to work remotely.

    "These new normal times have enabled 'work from anywhere' and thereby encouraged employers to broaden their hiring outreach," said Kumar of LTI. The IT services firm has hired more than 4,000 employees in the last two quarters.

    Tech Mahindra's global chief people officer and marketing head Harshvendra Soin said the IT services company is increasing hiring from tier 2 cities.

    Digital consulting firm Publicis Sapient is also recruiting from across non-office locations such as Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Chandigarh. "The skills we are aggressively hiring for are product management, engineering, experience and data," said Preeti Gogoi Ravat, senior director, talent acquisition, at Publicis Sapient India.

    Technology service provider NTT Ltd, which has a pan-India presence, is largely hiring technical talent with capabilities in infrastructure services cutting across domains like networking, cybersecurity, data centre and collaboration technologies.

    “Pandemic has made it more acceptable for other engineers and talent to adopt a WFA (work from anywhere) policy. As an organisation, we expect there will be some roles in which it will be possible for employees to work away from a traditional office,” said K N Murali, head, HR and administration, at NTT Ltd in India. NTT may hire 750 to 1,000 people from locations where it does not have offices, Murali said.

    There is likely to be a shift in hiring practices across companies, including adopting a “hire-from-anywhere” policy, said experts.
    The Economic Times

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