Job sites' share in lateral hiring remains stagnant

Companies say referrals a better option.

Reasons citedJob sites are not updated regularly and hence there is no real increase in the number of registered candidates in the database.Companies feel new talent is not being registered at the job site and look at other channels for their requirement.

The share of third party job sites in lateral hiring has remained stagnant between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of total lateral hiring, according to large information technology companies.
"Contribution from job sites has remained at about 20 per cent over the last two years," says Mr Achuthan Nair, Vice President - Resourcing, Wipro Technologies. He attributes this to a better understanding of hiring costs.

Two large IT companies that did not wish to be named said they had not seen any rise in contribution from job sites.

Mr T. Sridhar, Senior Vice-President, Cognizant Technology Solutions, says there has been a marginal dip in the resumes sourced from job sites. "Jobsites are not updated regularly and hence there is no real increase in the number of registered candidates in the database," he says.

Mr Ambarish Raghuvanshi, Chief Financial Officer, Naukri.com, says despite the stagnant 20 per cent contribution, demand for hiring from job sites has not diminished. "We get about 3,000 resumes a day (more than past daily averages) for jobs in IT services companies," he says.
IT majors do not expect sourcing from third party Web sites to increase in future. But they are buoyant about employee referrals.

In most companies, over 50 per cent of lateral hiring (about 25 per cent of total hiring) is through referrals.

Of the 11,000 people hired by Wipro Technologies in the last six months, 16 per cent was through referrals.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has hired 1,920 of the 16,000 people this year through referrals.

Though referrals contribute less than 1.5 per cent of lateral hiring, Mr Shantanu Dhar, Deputy General Manager - Human Resources, HCL Technologies, says the company plans to increase this percentage and will hire about 1,100 employees through referrals this year.

Referrals provide candidates with right skills and experience. Referred applications are processed within 30 days while regular applications take 60-90 days, say sources. Processing costs are reduced by at least 12 per cent, say senior consultants in industry.
Companies are encouraging referrals by compensating employees for every referred candidate hired. Cognizant pays between Rs 5,000 and Rs 50,000 per candidate depending on the level at which the referral is made.

Infosys Technologies has reward mechanisms to suit referrals at different levels and TCS has a `Buddy Lao' (Bring a buddy) scheme.